The values in the first screenshot are “Recovery points”. That’s already a log transformed and scaled value of your RMSSD. The app does that to give you a user friendly daily score. That score can only be used within the app itself because all apps have different ways of doing this (Recovery Points, Readiness, …). It’s the result of an algorithm ran on the RAW values.
In the second screenshot, you have the RAW RMSSD values. To interpret those, you need to evaluate your daily score to both the 7-day and 60-day average. I’ll try to explain a bit…
A low daily score is often fairly easy to explain by a hard training the day before, a rough night, a party with to much food and drink, … Or maybe an upcoming cold. Or a measurement problem, like reading an upsetting e-mail before your daily measurement.
If it’s a one day situation, just take it easy that day.
A downwards trending Baseline (= 7-day average), can be the result of a hard training block, training camp, several consecutive days of climbing stages… But can also be that cold that is catching on, a jetlag caused by travel or another situation causing stress that takes several days. An upward trend in Baseline is usualy seen during a recovery week.
Your Normal values (= 60-day average +/- a fraction of the standard deviation) are mostly stable unless you are experiencing a LifeStyle change. Downward trend can be caused by a long term sleeping problem, a career change involving more work stress. Upward trend might be the result of better sleeping hygiene, reduction of cafeine/alcohol.
So you need to look at all three and see if you have an explanation. If so, you now what to do.
A low daily score while the baseline is trending up and within the limits of your Normal, is probably nothing to worry about. A downwards trending baseline going beneath the lower boundary of Normal might indicate a stress situation with longer duration. An upward trending Normal simply means you have a healthier life.
All of this came from a couple of hours reading on the HRV4Training blog. There’s loads of info there. And it is very good info. I’m getting pretty good at interpreting my own results with this info and then HRV starts to really make sense.
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