HRV4Training Insights update: Analysis of acute HRV changes by sport

Blog post by Marco Altini

We have updated HRV4Training Insights section to let you analyze acute HRV changes for each sport separately, as well as all sports together, as in the current version.

What are acute HRV changes?

Acute HRV changes are changes in heart rate variability the day following a workout. We typically expect a bigger reduction in HRV on days following intense aerobic workouts, with respect to rest days or days with easy workouts.

​The acute HRV changes analysis is part of HRV4Training insights and lets you analyze systematically the effect of trainings of different intensities on your HRV. Acute changes are among the most consistent ways to analyze HRV data. Here are a few pointers if you'd like to dig more on the topic, as we covered it many times in the past:

• Our publication where we show acute HRV changes consistently reflecting bigger reductions in HRV and increases in heart rate on days following intense exercise.
• A similar analysis where we break it down by endurance and power sports. 
• ​A recent post where we show some data from users as well.

Acute changes by sport

For users that do different sports, it can be interesting to analyze systematically how heart rate and HRV change on days following workouts not only of different intensities, but also of different sports, as shown in the endurance vs power sports analysis linked above. Thus, we extended HRV4Training Insights section to reflect these changes.

Here are a few screenshot of the new functionalities that will be available in the next version of HRV4Training, to be released in about a week. To get to the acute HRV changes analysis, go to Menu / Insights / Acute HRV changes. By default, the app will show the standard analysis with all sports group together:

As you can see, the app automatically ​populates the list of sports with the ones you've been tagging over time. The number of trainings for each sport is also reported at the top. Here is my own data, and the app reports 74 trainings in the past 90 days, 42 of which are running trainings. In particular here we can see how acute changes are consistent with what we would expect, as HRV is reduced and HR is increased after more intense trainings:

With the next version of HRV4Training you'll be able to do the same, and analyze physiological responses to trainings of different intensities for the different sports you might be doing.

​Enjoy.