You pant up the mountain during training, then rush to the next meeting at the office, and in the evening you have to drive the children to football training. After this stressful time, do you wonder why your performance on the mountain isn't improving? Despite regular training. Despite the "normal" heart rate values. The answer: your heart rate is lying. The stress of everyday life is affecting you more than you realise. The training stimuli have done your body more harm than good. This is where heart rate variability - HRV for short - comes into play. This relatively new parameter in sports science describes the duration from heartbeat to heartbeat. The measured values are in the millisecond range, which requires precise measuring devices with ECG-accurate chest straps. The easiest way to measure HRV is with modern heart rate monitors from Polar or Suunto. Professionals use long-term ECG devices that record data for more than 24 hours.
It is not only intensive stress such as hard training sessions that influence HRV. Stress, breathing, sleep and the autonomic nervous system also have an effect on HRV. When we are relaxed, the heart's variability is greater. It decreases with increasing stress. The more we exert ourselves, the more evenly the heart beats. This is why trained people have a higher HRV than untrained people.
THE BEST MEASUREMENT METHODS
