How many regularly use HRV to guide your training? I’ve been tracking HRV with a Tickr chest HRM for a couple of years using the free Elite HRV app and more recently KubiosHRV as well. I view it as one helpful data point but am not fully convinced the science is there yet. Since Christmas, I’m also tracking it overnight with a new Oura ring, which claims to be 98% validated against an ECG. So far, my Oura HRV is quite low, around 20 rMSSD, while the morning chest strap varies, usually from 40 to 70 rMSSD.
Phil Cavell said on a podcast that knowing your HRV is more important than knowing your FTP, so I’d to discuss our thoughts and experiences for those interested.
I’ve also purchased a new Polar H10 HRM and hope Micheal and Alan can point me how to measure DFA-A1 as they mentioned on the group chat once I’m using the right monitor.
If you want to use HRV to estimate threshold, then you need an app to record HRV values in real time, and some way of analysing the results.
HRV logger is the app I used. See HRV Logger FAQ - Heart Rate Variability Tools for an introduction to the app and how to use it for threshold estimation.
People recommend Runanalyse as an app to analyse the data, but I used a spreadsheet.
I’ve tried to use the HRV Logger once, and will use it again next week. The DFA alpha 1 = 0.75 fell close to my 75% of HR Max that I have been using as the upper limit of endurance zone. So that was pleasing. But the data were very noisy – I took 6-minute intervals in my ramp up of power, but even so the alpha 1 score did bounce around a lot. When I did that ramp, I did not know that alpha 1 = 0.5 is also taken as the boundary of the upper [anaerobic] threshold, so next time I will persist past that point to get an estimate of the upper threshold.
If you want to use HRV to guide training readiness, then you have several options. Kubios is often recommended, but I like HRV4training, which involves a daily HRV reading in the morning, ideally before you get out of bed, on your phone. There is a ton of information from the founder of HRV4training, Marco Altini, on https://www.hrv.tools/. Personally, I find this interesting rather than deeply informative, but perhaps I’ve not yet dug myself into a deep hole. I have used HRV measurements in the morning for about 8 months, using HRV4Training. I’m not entirely sure at this point that I’ve seen anything radically useful. I have noticed that the daily advice depends heavily on how I respond to the questions rather than simply on my HRV score – but since I’ve answered the questions [muscles sore, tired, drank a lot etc], I already know when I’m feeling rough and when I’m feeling great. The HRV score itself does sometimes score outside the expected range, but I don’t generally consider this to be well correlated with my feelings about being sick, overtrained or such.
Hope that this helps. Like a lot of technology, there is a deep dive waiting to be made, so be prepared!
Hi David, basically what @Michael_Webber said I’m using 3 iPhone apps EHRV and Kubios for morning readings and HRVLogger for the DFA-a1. My morning readings are showing inconsistencies between the 2 apps. While the RMSSD ranges reported from both apps are broadly similar, individual readings can vary widely. For the DFA-a1 you need to setup a workout that, after a warm up to 60% FTP, ramps up through your endurance zone. With default 2-minute blocks in HRVLogger, 6-minute intervals increasing by 5% power can be used. If you want to collate HR with power you will need to be able to identify the point in the workout where you get to the 0.75 DFA reading. You can see this live in the app and after completion but you will probably need to export the csv file to examine more closely. The following article explains this better than I have click here
Thanks, Michael and Alan, that’s helpful and the Pez article is just what I needed. Michael, I’m aware of the HRV thread on the main forum (also one on the Trainer Road forum, which does not require a subscription), but I’m interested in discussing if using HRV is different for over 60’s. As a general rule, it declines as we age. As I noted, my overnight Oura HRV is quite low. Now that I have a Polar HRM, I’m doing a comparison of HRV using four different apps to see if they are consistent. I will report here on my results after a couple of week.
I recently purchased a Garmin-Dual HRM to replace my older ANT only HRM and using the Kubios App to monitor HRV. The data history is only 3 weeks so far, but comparing my average RMSSD to e.g. Alans it scores pretty low (in the 16-22 ms range). Yet I am not convinced about the value of time invested. So far readiness values and bodily feeling are randomly coinciding., but I am still patient. Just figuring 3min/d for HRV monitoring sums up to 17h/a. That’s 1-2 training weeks!
The best thing that I’ve got from HRV so far is confirmation that my aerobic threshold is at ~75% of HRmax. But I’d like to see what happens if I dig a deep training hole…
@Mathew_Leroy I’ve only got 3 weeks of readings at the moment and comparing EHRV with Kubios the averages for RMSSD are 77 and 100ms respectively. One thing I have noticed is that Kubios reports poor quality 5 out of 21 readings for EHRV there is only 1 reading that is not ‘good’ and that’s labelled as ‘ok’.
I had quite a few artifacts in the past using my Tickr with EHRV and Kubios. FWIW, one morning after awful, inadequate sleep, EHRV recorded a very high HRV but warned I should definitely rest that day, while Kubios said my HRV was 99% and ready to go! I didn’t need an HRV to tell me I felt awful, but found this interesting and reduced my confidence in Kubios. For my current test, I’m comparing Oura ring, EHRV, Kubios, HRV4Training, and HRV Logger.
So far out of 21 readings I had no bad quality reading with Kubios. I am using Garmin Bluetooth HRM and Android App. I happy to learn from your experimentation and just lean back and watch you chaps
I’m interested in surveying the daily HRV range of others in this group (in addition to Mathew’s and Alan’s reports of 16-22 and 77-100, respectively). I’m doing a comparison of multiple HRV apps that I will share in detail later, but one thing is already clear: my HRV range is much lower than my Wahoo Tickr ( with EliteHRV and Kubios apps) previously led me to believe. My rMSSD (which Oura uses as the HRV metric) across various apps (with Polar HRM) is between a narrow range of 14 -22 ms. Of course, aging is known to reduce HRV But how to increase your HRV? Cavell says in Midlife Cyclist that mindful breathing and meditation are the best ways to raise HRV. Well, I’ve been faithfully doing mindful meditation for four years. I wonder how low my HRV would be if I hadn’t adopted that practice!
@David_Williams: you should not be comparing your HRV to the values of other people. Perhaps the most accessible person to read on this and on age effects is Marco Altini, whose blogs you can find on the HRV4Training web page.
My month average rMSSD is 59, though a bit lower in the past 7 days [which were heavy training]. I hope to recover this week…
Thanks, @Michael_Webber. Yes, I’m aware that the baseline trend of each individual is most important in evaluating HRV (even if my male ego is bruised by the realization that Wahoo Tickr was just leading me on!) My apps have given me a green light despite my status as a “basement dweller.” I’ve read Marco blog posts and found them helpful.
I’ve started to measure HRV on Aug 05th 2021 using iPhone camera + HRV4Training but unfortunately I can not find any correlation on the chars nor on my perception.
Unfortunately I’m almost giving up because liking or not were are getting slaves of those metrics.
@Gato_Felix I’ve spent more than 9 months using HRV4Training, pro version. Looking at the history of my correlations [the app computes these], I find:
only 2 day-to-day correlations over 0.2 – mental energy and motivation; one variable [power] has a correlation of -0.39 with HRV, but I don’t know what that is measuring. Basically, there’s nothing there;
on the baseline correlations [ie, longer term], the stronger correlations are with sleep, perceived performance, relative effort and intensity. Neither TSS nor RPE seem to have much effect.
I am coming to the conclusion that I’ve learnt something from this. If I remember that sleep, perceived performance, relative effort and intensity are important for my recovery status. If I know this, do I need the app?
Hi David,
It’s worth reading the article which is frequently referenced when the subject of DFA-A1 comes up. The technology is still very much in the developmental/research phase.
The Polar H10 is the standard for HRV data acquisition with consumer devices. There is a good article on the H10 setting out the accuracy of the HRM.
Besides the equipment, HRV data quality can be compromised by how the reading is taken. Subjects need to be completely relaxed when taking the reading. Any distractions - watching the news, reading emails, or having a conversation will impact the validity of the reading. Your reading heart rate should be very close to your resting heart rate for an optimal reading. That will allow you to establish your HRV baseline, and from that you can start making interpretations of your state of readiness from your HRV reading results.
If you are interested, much of the leading research on HRV is listed here.
Hope that helps.
I’ve recently discovered that I have chronically low HRV. A month-long test comparing the Oura ring with 4 apps (Elite HRV, HRV4Training, Kubios, HRVLogger) are all consistently in the 17-21 ms for rMSSD. I’ve attached charts from EHRV with my age/sex-related placement. The good news is that the trend is what is important and a low HRV does not necessarily mean a low readiness score, as I regularly get good-to-go scores. But from what I read, the potential bad news is that a chronically low HRV predicts a higher risk of heart disease and mortality from several causes. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/01.CIR.102.11.1239 Although HRV does reduce with age, mine is lower than my average peers. I wanted to throw this out for discussion in case others have a similar pattern. As for me, I follow all the recommendations to increase HRV, including good sleep, meditation, healthy diet, and (of course) exercise.
Biofeedback is said to increase HRV and the Elite HRV app has a built-in module for biofeedback. I plan to try that (20 minutes per day) and see if it makes a difference.
I’ve had some poor experiences with HRV & training. Some years ago I got a first beat sports sensor & app & used it about a year. Its advice on when to work & when to rest was at odds with the PMC tracking I was doing. It routinely advised me to rest when I was fresh and to work when I was feeling dead. Since then I just referenced some tech papers on rmssd & sdnn and used my iPhone for comparison - only to find I’m off the scale on the high side: RMSSD ranging from 80 to 120 and SDNN 160 to 306. So I just consider it a poor experiment in my case. I’m 70yrs old.
I’m using 3 iPhone apps EHRV and Kubios for morning readings and HRVLogger for the DFA-a1. My morning readings are showing inconsistencies between the 2 apps. While the RMSSD ranges reported from both apps are broadly similar, individual readings can vary widely. For the DFA-a1 you need to setup a workout that, after a warm up to 60% FTP, ramps up through your endurance zone. With default 2-minute blocks in HRVLogger, 6-minute intervals increasing by 5% power can be used. If you want to collate HR with power you will need to be able to identify the point in the workout where you get to the 0.75 DFA reading. You can see this live in the app and after completion but you will probably need to export the csv file to examine more closely. The following article explains this better than I have 
for EHRV there is only 1 reading that is not ‘good’ and that’s labelled as ‘ok’.
But how to increase your HRV? Cavell says in Midlife Cyclist that mindful breathing and meditation are the best ways to raise HRV. Well, I’ve been faithfully doing mindful meditation for four years. I wonder how low my HRV would be if I hadn’t adopted that practice! 
green light despite my status as a “basement dweller.” 
