MonitoRIng Recovery

Fitness and recovery tracking has improved greatly over the past decade as technology evolves. Heart rate monitors and wearables are an easy way for athletes to track how their body is absorbing their training and make necessary modifications to their routines. Oura Ring and Whoop have led the way, making recovery monitoring more accessible to the general public. 

24-hour wearables can provide A LOT of information to athletes in the form of a daily fitness and recovery score. (for more information check out the linked products above) . While I would not put much stock in a fitness tracking score, recovery data can potentially help athletes flag overtraining issues, fatigue, and sickness before they derail a season. While these apps advertise a lot of advances bio-markers the two main factors in a recovery score are resting heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV). 

Resting heart rate = average and lowest heart rates recorded while sleeping. 

Hear rate variability (HRV) measures the time between heart beats and how they might fluctuate. Generally, if the time between your heart beats is very regular and consistent (think metronome) the more stress your body is under. When your body is under less stress the time between each heart beat will vary throughout the night. More variability = less stress 

Basic: Using a heart rate chest strap or a finger pulse oximeter first thing in the morning can provide a simple resting heart rate marker for any athletes. For a lot of developing athletes or non-professionals this is an easy and cheap place to start. Simply wake up, put on a HR monitor, record the lower HR. 

Advanced: 

Wearing a heart rate monitoring device during the entire night will give a better picture of stress and recovery. Most heart rate monitors (Polar, Suunto, Garmin) can be worn all night either on the wrist for basic data or chest trap included to provide more accurate HRV info. Most watches can be linked to their online apps or training apps like TrainingPeaks. 

All day monitoring: Oura Ring and Whoop are the most popular there are several options including Apple or cheaper knock offs. These wearables can measure heart rate and HRV throughout the entire day. 

It's important to remember, consistency and time is crucial when tracking recovery. A single day of data is just a snapshot of information and on its own does not provide helpful data but when compiled for a long period of time athletes and coaches can see trends.  I like to compare it to looking though a keyhole in a door. If you do it once you just get a glimpse of what’s happening on the other side of the door, but if you look though that key hole every morning for weeks, months, years, you can gain a much clearer, big-picture view of what’s going on behind the door and better understand your recovery trends. 

Once an athlete has complied a useful amount of baseline recovery data we can start to make decisions using this information. If you see an abnormal amount of overnight stress and a high resting heart rate it's easy to cut back the day's training recommendation, cut out intensity, or take an off day. This can help prevent sickness and the early signs of overtraining. 

If an athlete shows strong recovery markers they can add more training stimulus too. Adding more interval on-time for a single session or adding volume hours can be a way to capitalize on training when the body is ready to absorb it. 

Below is a guide to a morning recovery monitoring routine I used for almost 8 years. 

Once you wake up, get up and go to the bathroom if you need to then immediately come back put your heart rate monitor or pulse oximeter on and lay back down. If you don’t want to lay back down in your bed that fine, the floor works, or a couch in the living room. The important thing is that it’s consistent and there are no distractions. 

Wait a minute for you heart rate to stabilize and record what you see as your most consistent low heart rate reading. I always liked to use a pen and a small notepad by the side of my bed, but I’m sure folks could use their phones too. I would lean toward a pen and paper model because something about staring at your phone while performing a recovery tests seems counterproductive. 

Stand up and immediately do 30 knee bends, or bodyweight squats. Keep the range of motion consistent and try to go down to 90 degrees with the legs. 

Immediately lay back down and record what your max heart rate is. Then record what your heart rate is every 10 seconds for the next minute. (I used to just count in my head one-Mississippi two-Mississippi… you’d be surprised how accurate it is once you are familiar with the test )

The total test time should only take 3-4 minutes. If you are recording your data on a piece of paper/phone, every couple of days or at least once per week record that data into a bigger spreadsheet that incorporates training, sleep scale, altitude, and other info that is worth considering (see photo)   

I’ve done this test at several points in my career, sometimes for as long as 5 or 6 years straight and in my opinion it is one of the best ways to monitor recovery. I think it can as beneficial as a heart rate variability reading and is easy enough for anyone to do. 

Just performing the test during the season doesn’t do you much good. I recommend getting started early, preferably in the spring when the body is recovered, so you can establish some good baseline data. You will certainly begin to see some trends in your heart rate readings. For example, you might see a low resting heart rate at strange times maybe after a long over distance session or even after traveling though many time zones. What the orthostatic portion of the test will show however is that even with a low resting heart rate your numbers post knee bends might not look as good. A true sign of some residual fatigue. 

The best thing to do is get in a habit of performing the test every monrning so you can begin to learn how your heart rate responds to specific training and how to identify signs of fatigue.