TheEnglish acronym HRV stands for Heart Rate Variability. Translated into Italian as Heart Rate Variability, HRV measures and studies the variation in heart rate (HR), that is, the time interval between beats. Cardiac variability is a useful tool for deepening your understanding of your body. The more you know about your physique, the more you will be able to make the most of it. With HRV analysis you can get a lot of important information: your overall health level, your current training load, and your ability to recover at different stages of preparation for the season.
In addition to this you can keep an eye on HRV to delve into other much more specific and targeted aspects. In most cases the mean and instantaneous values of HRV are not determined directly by the cardiorespiratory system but by the interaction of the two branches of the nervous system (sympathetic-parasympathetic).
What determines your HRV
Your heart variability also depends on your lifestyle. There are certain choices-such as starting to exercise or increasing the volume and quality of exercise-that can directly and permanently change your HRV. Having an active lifestyle, accompanied by sports activity, can help you extend your life and especially improve its quality as you age. Sportsmen and especially athletes have higher HRV on average than sedentary people who tend to have modest values. Scientifically, it has been shown that low HRV levels are associated with lower well-being and especially higher cardiovascular risk in the elderly.
Several studies have established that aging per se is associated with a decrease in overall HRV. If you are consistent in your training as you age, in addition to the benefits in terms of well-being, muscle and overall physical efficiency, you also get better protection of the cardiovascular system. Continuous and focused physical activity is very important at every stage of life: understanding well what volumes and intensities you can sustain therefore becomes crucial. This you cannot decide on your own, but it will be the doctor who issues your sports fitness certificate and/or the coach who follows you who will tell you the parameters to follow.
If an active lifestyle already lifts you above the average condition of the sedentary population, you will be able to achieve even better results with sports activity. Thanks to several studies done on cardiac variability, we have had confirmation that exercise is not just a momentary passion or a way to get fit as much as an effective tool for staying healthy over the years.
Measure your HRV
To do an analysis of your HRV you need to pay special attention to the measurement phase. Knowledge of cardiac variability and its aspects is important, but obviously the data on which you base your considerations must be reliable. Set up a protocol to follow each time you take the HRV measurement. Especially useful is the first measurement in the morning as soon as you wake up. You need to be completely relaxed so do not, for example, check your smartphone to see if you have received messages, emails or other notifications from social media and other applications. The only thing you can do is to go to the bathroom to prevent the effort in holding back the first need of the morning from somehow altering your peace of mind. Wait to drink coffee and all the more reason to eat breakfast. Measurement should be first thing in the morning. You can sit to measure it or even stand if you have a very low resting heart rate (less than 50 bpm). Choose a device that is validated for measuring your HRV. Measurement cannot be approximate or unreliable.
In order to have a historical data set for analysis, you have to make measurements consistently and evenly. You should always do it at the same time of day, and waking up is definitely the best time because it is not affected by the course of the day. You must be in the same position (always sitting or always standing) and you must do it at least 4 times a week. You need to enter the important notes to interpret the measurement. An abnormal figure after a night when you rested as usual after a “normal” day may be a sign. The same data taken in the morning after a night when you didn’t sleep or were very sick definitely has a different value. HRV is also affected by your emotional state so do not take the measurement when you have an important race or the day of a study or professional exam.
HRV and RHR
Cardiac variability as an indicator of stress, recovery level, and mental and physical well-being is the most correct and simple system to use in your home. An alternative is the Resting Heart Rate (RHR) level, which involves measuring your pulse rate daily in a situation of complete rest. They move in the opposite direction because cardiac variability improves as its value increases while resting heart rate improves as its value decreases also indicating a better level of aerobic fitness.
Cardiac variability is measured just awake or during an activity while RHR is measured just awake, during sleep, or even at a time of complete relaxation during the day. The important thing here, too, is that the measurement is always taken at the same time and in the same manner. Cardiac variability is more sensitive to stressful situations than resting heart rate and is also for this reason an indicator that anticipates situations of overtraining or poor recovery. Cardiac variability drops before a disease anticipating its arrival while resting HR tends to increase during or after the disease not helping to predict it.
As you can see, the strengths of studying your cardiac variability are many. This is a very simple procedure you can use every day that provides you with useful information. Start measuring it with an appropriate instrument and then let me know if you found any interesting information for your training or any alarm bells for your health status.
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