Category Archives: Heart Rate Variability

Heart Rate Variability

“CrossFit’s dirty little secret..” – by Joe Bauer

joebauerJoe Bauer is a fitness and weight loss expert with over 13 years of experience as a CrossFit coach and personal trainer. Joe’s known as AllAroundJoe on his blog. He was able to make some very interesting discoveries using
SweetBeatLife’s HRV for Training feature. Read below for his blog post and a link to the full podcast.

“When it comes to CrossFit it’s easy to get addicted. You start to see improvements, it’s fun, you see more improvements, you’re looking amazing, you see more improvements, you’re getting competitive, you see more improvements, you push even harder, you start to feel like crap.

You cannot figure out why you feel like crap. You’ve been eating great. Mostly Paleo, lots of calories.

You workout all the time. Sometimes up to 2 hours a day. You drink tons of water. You take all of the recommend supplements for muscle growth and recovery.

Lake Chelan Ice Bath

In order to start feeling better for your workouts you take pre-workout supplements loaded with caffeine, or drink coffee. It works for a little while, and you crush workouts.

What you don’t realized is that you are fatiguing your insides. You hormones are drowning.

Finally you hit a wall. You can’t sleep (or you can’t stay awake). Your energy levels just don’t feel right unless you’re jacked with caffeine.

And finally you’re workouts start to suffer. You can’t hit the numbers that you used to hit, and when you tell your body to push… it literally shuts down, and you can hardly move.

When you ask your coach they probably say to take some time off, and eat more.

You take a week off, and when you get back to CrossFit you feel better. Well, you feel better for a few days or weeks. It really depends on how many times you’ve gone through the overreaching cycle.

The problem is that every time you train you don’t fully recover.

Eventually your hormones can’t keep up. And in my case it was my adrenal glands.

These are the glands that are located on top of your kidneys, and produce that hormones that are responsible for your fight or flight (sympathetic), and rest & relax (parasympathetic) nervous systems.

In my case the fight or flight system became fatigued, causing all of the above symptoms.

The initial feeling of fatigue is what lead me to the Ben Greenfield podcast, and the SweetBeatLife iPhone app.

My HRV ReadingThe SweetBeatLife app measures your Heart Rate Variability (HRV), and the power of your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems.

The coolest things is that the HRV can tell you how recovered your body is, and if it’s ready for another CrossFit workout. It will literally tell you to have an easy workout day, or even take the day off. It does this when you simply open the app and take your heart rate for 3 minutes in the morning.

The SweetBeatLife app is so beneficial that I’ve asked ALL of our competitive athletes at StoneWay CrossFit to start using it daily. If the app says to take the day off there’s no arguing.Parasympathetic/Sympathetic

We all want to get better, and we get better during rest from hard training.

I’ve always told people to listen to their bodies, but the real truth is that we can listen, but without tools like the SweetBeatLife app we have no idea what our bodies are saying.

In this episode you learn about CrossFit and overtraining, plus…
  • The HRV tracking Sweet Beat Life app.
  • Where to learn about HRV.
  • What heart rate monitor that I’m using.
  • And much more.
Resources and links mentioned in this podcast

Sweet Beat Life app for iPhone
60Beat Heart Rate Monitor
Ben Greenfield Fitness HRV/SweetBeatLife Podcast #1, #2, #3

*above could be affiliate links. I get a small commission if you click through them and buy, but they in no way make the products cost anymore. If you decide to use them please let me know so I can thank you.

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iOS 8 and Bluetooth

There is a known Bluetooth issue on Apple’s newest iOS 8. Many of you have noticed this issue is affecting your heart rate monitor Bluetooth connection (along with car connections, headphones and speakers). Note: If you have not updated to iOS 8, we do not advise doing so.

Already updated to iOS 8?

According to Apple developers, they have resolved the Bluetooth issues in the new iOS 8.1. This version is rumored to release on October 20th. It is our highest priority to assist Apple in fixing this issue. We want our users to get their daily HRV readings!

The good news!

We have submitted a new version of SweetBeatLife and Bulletproof Stress Detective to the app store, which includes a working firmware update for iOS 8 and the HealthPatch. As soon as it is processed by Apple, it will be available for download. SweetBeatLife and Bulletproof Stress Detective users with the HealthPatch will be ready to run sessions on iOS 8.

Note: Once the apps are processed by Apple, we will send out an email to let users know to update their HealthPatch firmware.*

Update Your App!*

SweetBeatLife and Bulletproof Stress Detective users can update their applications. This update includes SweetBeatLife 1.2.2 or Bulletproof Stress Detective 1.0.2 with a pre-installed firmware update for the VitalConnect HealthPatch. The HealthPatch is now compatible with iOS 8!

How come the HealthPatch works but other Bluetooth Low-Energy (BTLE) monitors may not work?

For security reasons, the VitalConnect HealthPatch uses a more complex “handshake” to connect via Bluetooth. BTLE chest straps use “open” Bluetooth. Apple hopes to resolve the open Bluetooth issues in the new iOS 8.1.

How do you update?

Some of you have your app store set to update automatically. If you want to see which version of software you are running, select the General tab > About. If it matches with the mentioned versions you are good to go! If it doesn’t – go to your device’s App Store. You will see the Updates tab (bottom right corner) > Update SweetBeatLife or Bulletproof Stress Detective. If it says, “Open”, you already have the most recent version.

Train Smarter with Biofeedback: A User’s Experience with HRV

We love sharing our users’ feedback, especially when it is a well written review of the benefits of using HRV for Training. Below you will find a post by Van who writes his own blog about Endurance Skating. He is specifically reviewing SweetBeat, which is our first HRV application. We recommend updating to the newest HRV app, SweetBeatLife, which can be downloaded here!

Enjoy!

“If somebody was to ask me what I considered the best £5 I have spent this year, my answer would unequivocally be this: buying the SweetBeat HRV app for my smartphone. I can’t think of anything else that comes close, and it has very quickly become an essential biofeedback tool that I use on a daily basis.

What Is Heart Rate Variability?

Your HRV is the inconsistency of your regular pulse.. if that makes sense.. and 60 is NOT "Excellent".

I first heard of Heart Rate Variability (HRV) on an episode of the Fit Fat Fast Podcast, and was immediately intrigued by it. HRV measures the pulse irregularity of your heart beats; a more medically accurate description would be to say that it measures your cardiac arrhythmia. While we normally think of your heart rate in terms of beats per minute, even at complete rest your heart beat is varying within a range, so when we refer to a heart rate of 60bpm for example, this is actually a simplification of a heart rate range that is always fluctuating around this mean number.

What Determines HRV, And What Does It Tell Us?

Without wanting to geek out on the biology too much, our heart beat is controlled by the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), and more specifically the interaction of the two opposing branches of this system – the Sympathetic branch, sometimes known as the “Flight or Fight” branch, and the Parasympathetic branch, which is sometimes referred to as the “Rest & Digest” branch. When we are nervous and highly strung it is because the Sympathetic branch is dominant, and when we are at ease and restful then the Parasympathetic branch is coming to the fore. The two branches are in a constant tug of war – the sympathic branch working to speed up the heart, and the parasympathetic working to slow it down. In a fit and healthy person the interaction of these two branches will actually cause greater fluctuations in the heart rate, so rather counterintuitively, it turns out that an optimally functioning nervous system will express itself in a *higher* degree of variability. That is essentially what we are measuring when we look at HRV – not the health of the cardiovascular system, but rather using it as a proxy for the health of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS).

 

You Autonomic System is wired up to the whole sound system.

 

Your ANS is a crucial biological system that is often taken for granted, but it controls everything from your respiratory, coronary, digestive, and many other systems in the body. And just like any other system in the body it can easily deteriorate to a suboptimal level through fatigue, neglect and abuse, and when it does then everything else wired up to it also performs suboptimally.

Recording Your HRV

My new BFF

As I mentioned, I use the SweetBeat application in conjunction with my Polar H7 Blutooth chest-strap. The application calculates your HRV score based on a statistical measure of the root mean square of successive difference between heart beats – or simply the rMSSD. This gives you a score between 0 and 100 based on quite a complex algorithm which is beyond my explanation, but the bottom line is simply that the higher your HRV score the better.

Your Heart Rate Variability score is totally distinct and independent from your actual heart rate. It’s perfectly possible to have a both a high or low HRV score at the same heart rate but on different days, based on how much stress has been accumulated by your Autonomic Nervous System on those days.

Coincidentally, I also use the same heart rate monitor in conjunction with another smartphone app (in my case Runmeter) to record my standard heart rate during training sessions – learn to love your Heart Rate Monitor, folks.. it’s worth its weight in gold.

At the time of writing I’m aware of one serious alternative to SweetBeat, which is the “ithlete” app. There is also a rather simplistic app from Azumio call StressCheck which crudely measures “stress” (or HRV I assume) by using the phone’s camera light instead of a heart rate monitor to detecting your pulse pattern.

On Stress…

There are many definitions of the word “stress”, but for the purposes of this discussion we define it as the release of excessive cortisol from the adrenal glands in response to some form of stimulation. Stress comes in 3 major forms:

– Training stress
Your body has an finite capacity for exercise. The more exercise you do, and especially the more anaerobic & high intensity exercise that you do the greater the toll taken on the ANS.

– Environmental stress
Your diet can be great source of stress if your nutrition is poor and too high in inflammatory foods such as sugars and seed oils. A tough or extreme environment will also raise stress levels – poor air quality, altitude, extreme heat or cold, and too much noise will all raise stress.

– Emotional stress
What is happening in your work and in your private life has a huge impact on our stress levels. I’m not a clinical psychologist, but I think we are all familiar with these sources of stress.

The important thing is that your ANS doesn’t differentiate between different forms of stress – stress is stress, and the more you can do to keep non-exercise stress to a minimum then the more stress from exercise you will be able to handle for the same recovery. Yes folks, getting organised in your work and private life leave you greater capacity for exercise! A little stress is normal and is in fact an essential requirement if your body is to make the physiological adaptations that we desire from training, but it is a fine line when we talk about optimal stress, and too much will weaken us and impair the recovery process.

I should also stress (haha) that anaerobic workouts really do hit the ANS system far more than aerobic workouts. You can do an hour or two of light aerobic work and feel fine and have it barely dent your HRV score the next morning, but maximal anaerobic efforts of just 10-15 minutes or a heavy weights session at the gym can often result in your HRV score plummeting the next day (and leave you with pretty severe DOMS).

How I Interpret My HRV

6 months' of HRV data I have recorded - notice that my typical range is roughly between 60 and 90.

One HRV reading is not very meaningful – to be useful, your HRV must be tracked and plotted over time. It’s important to do it at the same time and under the same conditions each day, so the best practice is to record it when I wake up each morning. As the number of data points increases you will get a picture of what your typical HRV range is. Over time, should recognise a strong correlation in how you subjectively feel each morning and the objective HRV scores that you record. When you feel good your HRV should be noticeably high and vice versa.

I know that my personal HRV range at rest is is typically between about 60 and 90. I consider any score above about 78 to be a green flag to go as hard as I like for that day, between about 68-78 is OK and normal, and anything below 68 is an orange flag. When I’m really strung out I will typically see scores in the low 60s or even the 50s, and often on these days I’ll take a rest day or just do a very light recovery session at most.

Anecdotally, when doing my MAF treadmill tests, I have observed that I am able to set my best numbers on the days when my HRV is the highest, and conversely when my HRV is bumping along the bottom of my range then I’m typically much slower – the difference can be up to 20 seconds per mile, although I don’t have that many data points to go on just yet.

Importantly, your HRV score and range is not easily comparable to anyone else’s as it’s partially genetically determined. What’s important is the typical range that your HRV score falls between. However if you are seeing consistently very low readings (eg consistently below 30), you should take this as a BIG warning that your general health is likely to be quite poor.

Conclusion

The advent of Smartphone technology has opened the door to an important biofeedback technique that until very recently was out of reach of most people without expensive specialist equipment and lots of time on their hands. Apps have now become available that bring this to you for very little cost.

Recording HRV is a massive step above and beyond simply taking your resting heart rate in the morning. Over time it gives you a hugely valuable insight into how your body works, and to see how over-exercise, under-recovery, and other stress factors impact it. Professional sports teams like Barcelona FC have been using HRV for some years in helping plan their training sessions, and now you can do this also; the technology has been brought to your fingertips – all you have to do is strap on your heart rate monitor each morning and tap a few times on your smartphone.

You can kid your friends and your family how you are feeling on any particular day, but you can’t kid your body and if you’re under-recovered then it will show up somewhere if you know where to look – HRV is the window that provides us with this information. Tracking your HRV can play a big part in training as smartly as possible and getting the most from your workouts – use to introduce the flexibility in your training to leave the really hard sessions for when your HRV score confirms that you are well rested, and don’t feel bad at all if you train very lightly or not at all when your HRV indicates that your nervous system is in the gutter.

Further Info
************

http://sweetwaterhrv.com/blog/uncategorized/ronda-collier-gives-you-the-heart-rate-variability-101-presentation/

http://sweetwaterhrv.com/blog/category/heart-rate-variability/

http://myithlete.com/

http://www.fitfatfast.com/ep-24-sweetbeat-and-soap-boxes/

http://www.fitfatfast.com/ep-47-hrv-dont-stop-til-get-enough/

http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/02/heart-rate-variability-testing/

Click here for the original article!

 

HRV: The Single, Next Big Trend In Biohacking And Self-Quantification And How To Use It by Ben Greenfield

Another fantastic podcast by Ben Greenfield and Ronda Collier! Please read below and scroll to the bottom for the original link!

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“I’m really not a big self-quantification nerd.

I don’t like to be plugged into stuff all day long. It just makes me feel like a giant robot (and being constantly plugged into things like bluetooth devices just gives me the tin-foil hat wearing heebie-jeebies).

But I do religiously take one simple measurement every single morning: heart rate variability.

And the method that I use to measure heart rate variability is, in my opinion, the singe, next big trend in biohacking and self-quantification. It’s called SweetBeatLife, and all you need to use it is the SweetBeatLife phone app.

In today’s audio interview, I speak with Ronda Collier, who has more than 25 years of experience in high technology product development with a proven track record of delivering leading edge consumer electronic products. The previous two heart rate variability podcasts with Ronda (that I’d recommend you listen to before you listen to today’s podcast if you don’t know much about heart rate variability) are below:

Everything You Need To Know About Heart Rate Variability Testing

The Do-It-Yourself Guide To Using Heart Rate Variability Testing to Track Your Stress and Nervous System Health

By analyzing HRV and Stress along with additional data, SweetBeatLife provides a deep dive into health and provides insight into what activities you engage in that effect the health metrics you care about. This is important because the next big trend in bio-hacking is understanding the relationships between different metrics like your weight, your blood pressure, your blood glucose, the number of steps you take and your actual internal health and nervous system. SweetBeatLife integrates and correlates data from popular fitness platforms like MapMyFitness, Fitbit and Withings and integrates seamlessly with the extensive biometrics from the new HealthPatch sensor (which we talk about in the podcast).”

To listen to the podcast, click here!

Slides: HRV for Improved Sports Performance

In case you missed it, here is the HRV for Improved Sports Performance slideshow! Put together by our very own CEO and co-founder, Ronda Collier. Some of you have read the HRV Measurement Explanation slides and found them very useful. This is one step further in detail. We want our users to get the most out of their metrics!

Many of our support questions can be answered by simply browsing through these slides.

 

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Announcing Our New Partner in Intelligent Recovery – Restwise

We believe that sharing data between multiple devices and software providers is a vital key to understanding and creating meaningful feedback. Over the last few years, we have found several partners who feel the same way. Through collective design we have brought our users the most comprehensive view of their health and fitness.

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The partnership between Restwise and SweetWater Health offers athletes the world’s most accurate, comprehensive picture of global fatigue state outside of a laboratory. Users of SweetBeat and SweetBeatLife will be able to export their heart rate (pulse in Restwise) and heart rate variability to Restwise with ease.

What is Restwise?

Restwise design was driven by two principles: simplicity and accuracy.  The biggest challenge in recovery monitoring is getting athletes to adhere to the protocol, so the process needs to be fast and easy.  But it also needs to paint a reliable, global picture of recovery state. To achieve these goals, Restwise combines several bio-markers, each of which is easy to record and is clearly supported by sports science, into a single algorithm. Restwise takes less than a minute to complete, and it has been validated through work with UK Sport and through years of successful field use.

If you have a Restwise account and SweetBeat or SweetBeatLife, please follow these instructions to authorize the export:

  1. Login to your account on our website.
  2. Scroll down until you see the Restwise banner.
  3. Enter your Restwise account information and click “connect”.

IMPORTANT: After you finish a SweetBeat or SweetBeatLife session, it is important that you save the session as the pre-existing tag, “HRV”. This ensures that your latest heart rate and heart rate variability numbers export to Restwise.

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A message from Restwise to their users:

Heart Rate Variability in Restwise Your Enter Data page has a new field: HRV, which stands for heart rate variability. HRV is a relatively new recovery marker, but there is a rapidly growing body of evidence that it is a reliable indicator of central nervous system fatigue.

Why are we adding HRV now? There are two reasons.  First, you asked for it. When we initially designed Restwise we chose markers that give you the most accurate picture of your global fatigue state possible in the least amount of time.  Completing Restwise takes less than a minute, whereas getting a reliable HRV reading takes 3 – 4 minutes.  We simply did not want to require users to spend this much time. But enough of you have said you are willing to invest a few more minutes to get a more complete picture of your recovery state that we are now providing this option.

The second reason is that we have found a great partner, Sweetwater Health. They offer a simple, accurate, and affordable way to capture HRV. If you take HRV using the SweetBeat or SweetBeatLife iPhone apps, your HRV and pulse numbers will automatically load to Restwise, where you can chart HRV against your Restwise Total Recovery Score, Load, and other individual inputs.

What’s next? HRV does not yet affect the algorithm, but it will soon. We will also update our apps to capture and display HRV. Meanwhile, if you want to get a better understanding of HRV, listen to Ben Greenfield’s 20-minute Podcast featuring Sweetwater CEO Ronda Collier. 

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Don’t have a Restwise account?

We are working with Restwise to provide our users with a free trial using their intelligent recovery system. Check back soon for instructions on how to sign up!

Other partners in data-sharing:

  • Our newest application, SweetBeatLife, includes the ability to import data from Fitbit, MapMyFitness and Withings for correlation with the app’s metrics. To authorize these fitness devices to work with SweetBeatLife, please read over, “Starting Up With SweetBeatLife”.
  • Both SweetBeat and SweetBeatLife work with AchieveMint, the dashboard that earns you money. To authorize your AchieveMint account go to your app’s account settings and select AchieveMint login. You can create an AchieveMint account from there or enter your already existing AchieveMint email.BlueBirdieIcon                                                                     SweetBeatLife

The “Geek” Screen – Understanding the SweetBeatLife Metrics

Update: The HealthPatch is no longer available to consumers. We are disappointed by this news, but are continuing to search for consumer patch partners. This article has been edited to exclude the old HealthPatch metrics.

The new SweetBeatLife “stats” screen, more widely referred to as the “geek” screen, shows all the metrics used in the algorithm calculations. These are the metrics explained in order from top left to bottom right:

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Low Frequency (LF) – The low frequency metric shows the real-time power level of your sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system in raw form.

High Frequency (LF) – The high frequency metric shows the real-time power level of your parasympathetic (rest and recover) nervous system in raw form.

LF/HF – Stress is associated with a high LF with respect to HF, or a high LF/HF ratio. By selecting the settings wheel in the top right corner, you can choose your “Stress Sensitivity Level”.

TIP: If you find that your stress level is always in the blue or the red, then you most likely need to change your “Stress Sensitivity Level”. If you are always in the blue, this means you need to base your stress level on a smaller ratio (high sensitivity level). Challenge yourself by moving up a level or two. If you are in the red, then you might need a higher ratio (lower sensitivity level). A good indication that your stress management techniques have worked is when you need to change your sensitivity level to a higher sensitivity level.

Root Mean Square of Successive Differences (rMSSD) – In other words, the square root of the mean of the sum of the squares of the successive differences between adjacent RR Intervals. I swear that’s in English. I suggest checking out our library and reading our HRV Measurements slides (slide 15) to thoroughly understand the different domains. The important thing to remember is thatrMSSD is a time domain standard and is just one of the several parameters that measure heart rate variability.HRVtrainingss

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) – HRV is the variation in the time interval between one heartbeat and the next. If only it were that simple; read our HRV backgrounder to learn more. In SweetBeatLife, HRV is a real-time scaled version (between 1-100) of rMSSD and represents the state of the autonomic nervous system and its ability to respond/react and recover from internal and external stressors. These stressors include orthostatic (standing and sitting), environmental and psychological.

TIP: The HRV for Training function of SweetBeatLife uses a special algorithm to customize your reference line and manage your training.

Heart Rate – Heart rate is the speed of the heartbeat, more specifically in this case, it is a real-time measure of your beats per minute.

*Respiration – Breathing correctly is an important factor in stress management and HRV for training. This is why we include a breath pacer. There are many different theories on which kind of breathing is best for your health. We use a specific pace meant to balance your nervous system.

TIP: The breath pacer featured on the relax screen within SweetBeatLife is proven to help balance the autonomic nervous system.

RR – On an EKG the heart rate is measured using the R wave to R wave interval (RR Interval). The RR metric is shown in real-time and quite necessary for the measurement of HRV.

TIP: Only heart rate monitors that are Bluetooth low energy (BTLE) and record RR Intervals can be used with SweetBeatLife for accuracy purposes. Pulse oximeters (watches, finger sensors, etc.) measure heart rate by pulse detection, which is not accurate enough for HRV. Please visit our compatibility chart for help and visit our health sensors page to purchase one.

 

*Steps – Another metric that may be familiar to you if you have ever used a fitness tracker. Your steps can be imported and tracker through your other wearables: Fitbit & Withings.

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SweetBeatLife on iTunes!