43 - Marco Altini and HRV4Training

• 1:00 what is HRV (heart rate variability) and how is it relevant to training?
• 2:00 a summary of the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system
• 3:00 the state of the parasympathetic branch allows us to monitor global stress on the body
• 5:30 on the usefulness of trying to quantify training and non-training stresses and the care that must be taken when doing so
• 8:00 factors affecting HRV and the autonomic nervous system: sleep, alcohol, illness, travel, training, work, relationships. But the effects are very individual!
• 12:30 how quickly do we see responses to stressors? Acute response occurs within 24-48 hours. Chronic response takes longer: 1-2 weeks or more.
• 14:45 HRV measurement best practices
  • Measure daily, at the same time of day / night, use proven measuring methods, 
• 17:30 what can you do knowing your acute and chronic HRV data?
• 18:30 if acute reading is low, then the capacity for more stress is reduced. Marco recommends reducing intensity on that day of training.
• 19:30 a case study in HRV-guided training - where training modification was only made when the HRV baseline (long-term trend) was below normal - demonstrated that this form of training was more effective than traditional programming with no accounting for HRV.
• 21:30 stable HRV is the goal! It is not meant to ‘improve’ over time.
• 23:00 interpreting low acute HRV score on race day. Lower is not necessarily bad.
• 23:30 understanding atypically high acute scores
• 26:15 interpreting chronic HRV data and trends
• 27:00 stable or increasing baseline is a sign that you are coping well, whereas a decreasing baseline suggests accumulation of stress that is not being resolved
• 28:00 coefficient of variation monitors the magnitude of variations between measurements. A high CoV  could signal some trouble adapting to a novel training stimulus or life stressor.
• 30:15 a low CoV combined with an abnormally low HRV trend is a sign of a system struggling with global stress and may be a signal for a state of chronic high stress - which, of course, is to be avoided.
• 33:30 is HRV-guided training a substitute for a periodized plan? 
• 36:15 is it useful to try to measure HRV during training?
• 38:15 what about live, but not-during-training HRV monitoring like Garmin’s Body Battery feature?
• 42:15 Michael’s struggles with a single daily measurement
• 45:30 body position in testing: all okay so long as the position is the same from one day to the next. 
• 46:45 the technology used by HRV4Training
• 50:30 using the Big Data collected by HRV apps for studies and new features
• 55:00 how does the athlete HRV4Training app work and what does it do?
• 58:00 the HRV4Training Pro platform

Learn more about HRV4Training or Marco at their respective websites  and follow them on Instagram and Facebook. 

Read part 1 of Marco's guide to HRV-guided training on Medium. Then use the links in the article to access parts 2 and 3.