Heart Rate Variability (HRV) response to training and lifestyle: a case study

Blog post by Marco Altini

​In this post, I'd like to show some data to highlight a few important aspects when analyzing your heart rate variability (HRV) data. In particular, I'd like to cover some misconceptions about the relationship between training and HRV as well as the importance of lifestyle and psychological aspects (context!).

We'll use my own data collected between January and April 2018, so 3 months in which I went from best shape of my life to injured and then back to training regularly post-injury, but in poor shape (detrained). We'll look at:

1. The basics: acute response to high-intensity training
2. The more interesting stuff: positive long term adaptation to high intensity and high volume training
3. Context: negative response to poor lifestyle choices following an injury
4. Feedback loop vs fitness marker: assessing full (physiological) recovery
5. Putting it all together

I hope this case study can be a good starting point to identify useful ways to look at your data using HRV4Training Pro.