HRV as a Tool to Measure the Long-Term Cost of Training

Are you training harder at the cost of your health and overall energy level?

Yes, you will have days where it’s harder to get to the gym and pick stuff up and put it down; however, those days should be infrequent.

A good metric to look at over the long term is HRV (Heart Rate Variability).

This gives you an idea of the status of your autonomic nervous system (ANS) – the balance between parasympathetic which is more “rest and digest” and sympathetic which is more “fight or flight.”

Ideally, I want to see HRV going up (more parasympathetic) over time when I look at the long-term view with clients.

This tells me their nervous system is getting better over time, and we are not constantly jamming down the gas pedal.

Here is a plot of 1 year of Oura HRV data from my OCR client, Ryan Baxter. . .

Nice increase over the course of a year!

Wahooo! Great work Ryan!

Rock on!
Dr Mike

PS – If you want to learn more about how to use HRV, check out my full course on it here. You can also hear me talk all about using HRV with clients on the Muscle for Life Podcast.