The Ultimate Guide to Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

In this series of posts, I’ll provide an overview of best practices for your Heart Rate Variability (HRV) measurements (part 1), and tips on how to analyze and interpret your data over the short and long term (response to acute stressors, longer-term trends, etc. — in part 2). I’ll include quite a few case studies so that you can clearly see how you can too make use of the data (in part 3). Finally, the last post will cover a few misconceptions (utility with respect to subjective scores, non-training related use, strength training, etc. — part 4).

HRV is nothing new, and fairly simple to use effectively, but poor standardization and methodological inconsistencies make it difficult sometimes for people to make good use of the technology or understand what is reported in the scientific literature. Hopefully, these posts will help, but please feel free to ask questions should you have any doubts.

You can find the other parts of this series at these links:

• Part 1: Measurement setup, best practices, and metrics
• Part 2: You measured, now what? (on interpreting your data)
• Part 3: Show me the data (case studies)
• Part 4: Common misconceptions (strength training, night data, etc.)