HRV and related metrics from PP?

[Łukasz Szmigiel]

@altcmd I didn’t know that. I thought that OHR is too inaccurate and prone to errors from hand movement, etc. to measure HRV.

[ChrisA]

@Łukasz-Szmigiel at least on a personal level OHR HRV seems to give some insights about recovery. If this values are valid on a scientific level and if HRV is a a valid metric to rate recovery for everbody, every age, sex etc. I can not say. Another value working for me concerning recovery is RHR (dark blue), rising after a hard workout (light blue spike) over my average (dark blue dotted line) and falling again after some time of recovery.

I think it’s good to have some basic date like RHR or HRV but not too much. How this can fail, was Garmins Readiness Score for me, that tried to tie a (for me mostly wrong) sleeping score into that calculation, always telling me I was not rested, althoug I was.

[Jamie BG]

@Łukasz-Szmigiel
you might find this post comparing Garmin, Oura and Whoop HRV: https://the5krunner.com/2022/10/19/everything-you-need-to-know-garmin-whoop-hrv/
The only thing I will say that he gets wrong is that Garmin actually does plot your HRV status against a baseline HRV status (that will adjust based on your (i think, am basing it on how long it takes to derive a baseline and how slow the baseline adjusts) 3 week rolling average HRV).

It seems to be working exceptionally well, and has a major impact into Training readiness and also into Training status - which I think it much more accurate and reflective than it used to be as they incorporate your nightly HRV and 7 day avg nightly HRV against your adaptive baseline.

HRV tanked about 4 days ago and 3 days ago starting getting strained training status and training readiness accordingly started to tank too. Checked back and realized I have really been pushing hard for the last 2 weeks with very little low anaerobic - its all been high and anaerobic. So decided to listen to my watch and have reverted to recovery activity and really been taking it easy - probably just as well as body now starting to really feel it, but am noticing that I have seen my HRV level out and is starting to improve again by moving back up to my baseline (which is still in same range as when my nightly HRV tanked).

I suspect if I hadn’t pulled back when I did I could be in quite a bit of pain now (my knee joints can really suffer at times due to age/abuse so have to be careful - but sometimes just forget).

So from that perspective I think it is really adding something and can see it working the way 5k runner expects HRV to work when plotted against a baseline.

[Brad_Olwin]

@altcmd HRV is used to calculate your resources. So, it is used in the watch. Just having a graph is unlikely to be easily interpretable. As you probably know, there is a lot of information on how to use HRV to predict training readiness. Based on my own experience I am not sure this is highly reliable. How I feel will dictate in part my training.

I had a Garmin Epix 2 for 8 months and did not find the Training Readiness or the status of my training very helpful. If I am being honest it was more of a detriment than help.

[Frederick Rochette]

I have been waiting for a long time to be able to do an HRV test with Suunto and in particular with the S9P.
Coros, Garmin, Polar are doing it and I hope the Suunto teams wake up to implement this quickly now. It’s likely that it’s in the pipe and will come as a surprise like all the features with Suunto. Surprise or not, I will be very happy :-).

[Umer Javed]

@Brad_Olwin said in HRV and related metrics from PP?:

[…] I had a Garmin Epix 2 for 8 months and did not find the Training Readiness or the status of my training very helpful. If I am being honest it was more of a detriment than help.

UphillAthlete had a good article on HRV: https://uphillathlete.com/aerobic-training/why-we-stopped-relying-on-hrv-apps/

It’s more experiential/anecdotal judgement, but something that I can appreciate.

I admit this thread is more about displaying HRV instead of viability of HRV for forecasting training readiness…

[altcmd]

@Brad_Olwin While I accept your argument, I believe there is some subjectivity and a person’s expertise to assess how useful these metrics are. I feel they are a good starter for a beginner to think about physiology and other aspects that impact training. However, from a competitive standpoint it would be a bad move by Suunto to ignore this and other related metrics. Probably an extreme example, but its akin to how another infamous Finnish company dismissed Apple in the early days of the iPhone, and look where it got them. And this doesn’t have to be a fight for feature-count (which, from the looks of things, Wahoo seems to be doing with the Rival); somewhere Polar has been quite successful.

[Brad_Olwin]

@altcmd After using a Garmin and an Apple Watch as well as Resources on the Suunto, I can say that they mostly disagree with each other. My concern is not that using HRV is a problem, it is more complicated than that.
First, the data have to be interpreted to tell the user something informative and this is the problem. I think it is far more of a problem for the beginner than an experienced athlete as a beginner will rely on what they are told.
Thanks @Umer-Javed, I read that article a long time ago and it basically mirrors my own experience. There are workouts I do where on the second workout on the second day I will feel terrible. My watch would tell me not to workout hard when that was the entire purpose.
My experience with Garmin was the worst where there is a set duration of time at specific intensities (anaerobic, aerobic, easy, etc.) and my training was typically unproductive according to Garmin. A beginner would stick to the recommendations believing they were right.
Another example with an Apple Watch HRV app told me repeatedly to go easy when I was tapering for a race (when I feel my best) and then one day after setting a 50k PR tells me I am race ready (I certainly did not feel race ready having raced the day before).

So in the end I have a very negative opinion of these and have tested many of them. I appreciate that Suunto has not caved in and integrated a suggestion for training. I do not believe there is any easy way to judge recovery and I am much happier to rely on my own experience. For individuals that want to begin training in earnest and do not want to get hurt the best possible advice I can give is run with a group that has experience or hire a coach. I agree with the conclusions of the Uphill Athlete article and my own experience mirrors their conclusions.

[altcmd]

@Brad_Olwin I understand that your experience with Garmin or the like has been poor but in my experience with at least Garmin HRV has correlated well with Oura, tested over 4 months with Suunto being the outlier in consistent poor data. I don’t particularly care about suggested workouts but the synthesis of how load and readiness is made is at least well constructed by Garmin, or Firstbeat shall we say. Plus going by feel is ok but then we should also make better use of science around PA. We could ignore this space all together but the reality of the market is such that these metrics will or has become mainstay and will further make Suunto an outlier.

[isazi]

@altcmd I use Oura and HRV4Training, but nothing works as good as my feeling. Usually Oura tells me I’m doing great and should challenge myself, even if I’m in bed sick with fever. Covid booster? Fever and pain, Oura tells me I’m doing great. Everything always tell me I’m doing great honestly, maybe I’m great.

[Brad_Olwin]

@altcmd For those of you interested in a metric to tell you your training load. This is worth listening to….perfect timing.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/koopcast/id1489494447?i=1000587345880

[Brad_Olwin]

@altcmd I disagree with what you said at least with our current metrics and understanding. Listen to the podcast I shared the link for.

[altcmd]

@Brad_Olwin Will do. Thanks!

[Brad_Olwin]

@altcmd I want to be clear, I think objective metrics(HRV and others) can tell us recovery status but I don’t think we understand enough about how our physiology is integrated at this time.

[altcmd]

@Brad_Olwin I don’t think its about whether we agree or not, but where the general market is. And I guess the only way one can establish traction on whether a data-heavy, questionable accuracy (Garmin) vs a data-lite (Suunto) approach works is through the bottom-line. Curious how it evolves - interesting times indeed!