Forum posts to 'Getting the most from ithlete'

Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

moderator — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 12:55:20 +0000

This is a good question, and one that I have taken a little time to research before responding.

I have looked back at studies performed in Japan (Nakagawa 1998) and the UK (VanDeWalle 2007). Both concluded a strong circadian influence on HRV parameters, and especially the indicators of parasympathetic (rest & recovery) autonomic nervous system activity that ithlete uses. It seems also that the endogenous (inherent) influence of this circadian rhythm is stronger than that of the sleep-wake state.

From these studies, and my own experience, it is therefore clear that the best consistency should be obtained when you perform the measure at the same time of day, assuming that your circadian rhythm is well established (ie you are not working alternating shift patterns, or suffering jetlag in a different timezone).

But what about waking at 10:30 AM as you say? There should be a reason for this - often because your body is tired and needs extra recovery. In that case, why would you set an alarm at 7:30 AM just to measure your HRV - it won't reflect the value that would be reached after sufficient rest & recovery. So in that case, if you needed the sleep, then the measure performed shortly after you awake late will tell you how recovered you are, so this is a valid reading.

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

slegros — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 22:43:30 +0000

Which is better for consistency assuming you follow the other guidelines of staying away from caffeinated beverages etc.?

A) Taking the reading at the same time every day? I.E. 7:30 AM

B) Taking the reading at the same point in your daily routine? I.E. 15 mins after waking, regardless of what time you wake up?

For example if you sleep really late and do a reading at 10:30 AM can you compare that to a previous day's reading taken at 7:00 AM even though both were taken 15min after waking? Or is it better to try to take it at the same time daily as much as possible?

Thanks!

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

slegros — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:03:24 +0000

I've been using ithlete for about a week now, and have to say I concur with the moderators original post about getting consistent readings. I find that as the moderator suggests the first reading is usually accurate. What I have found is that if I doubt the first reading and start thinking about it the score drops, then once I have relaxed fully and go back to take the reading again, lo and behold its nearly identical to my first reading.... What I have found works well is to put on the HR strap immediately after waking and just let myself come to a bit and take the measurement about 5 min or so after waking up. Having the HR strap on for the 5 min seems to help contact(even when the contacts are moistened) and helps to give a solid first reading. FWIW....

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Breathing tip

moderator — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 11:55:55 +0000

For anyone who has trouble getting relaxed before or during their daily measurement, I found a breathing tip that I'd like to share:

Breathe through the heart. Imagine that the air is passing under your breast bone into your lungs, drawn in by your diaphragm. Exhale by letting go.

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

moderator — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 14:36:49 +0000

Hi Hugo,
Thanks for your detailed post - I think it gives enough detail to figure out what's going wrong.
Firstly, since you suspected a technical problem with the belt at one point I suggest you run through the checks at FAQ Troubleshooting.

Secondly, we need to find a position that will allow you to get consistent readings (both of resting HR as well as HRV. Since you said you had better consistency laying down, I suggest you go back to this position, but with a twist - just sit up in bed with an extra pillow behind your upper body. That will place just a little load to get your HR up a few beats.

Thirdly, and this can be the most difficult, is mental state. Personally, I allow myself to wake up naturally (rather than by alarm clock that provides an unwelcome shock to the system), roll out of bed to an upright position, put on my chest strap, and do the measure right away. I focus on breathing in time with the lungs and deliberately keeping my mind clear. I understand your point about being able to breathe slower, so just breathe through your nose and don't fill or empty your lungs completely and see if that helps you to follow the animation. The breathing rate is very important for consistency, as explained in the following quote from Dr Liz Miller, a former neurosurgeon, psychologist & author who is also an ithlete user:

The emphasis is getting people to breathe right, which maximises HRV because breathing profoundly affects HRV -

Heart Rate Variation is largely due to the changes that occur during breathing - breathe in - Heart Rate goes up - breathe out - Heart Rate goes down. These changes are healthy, normal and partly relate to the mechanics and partly to the autonomic (sympathetic and parasympathetic) nervous system. The greater the changes between breathing in and breathing out, the healthier and fitter your heart and lungs and autonomic system.

In other words heart rate variability measures the amount your heart rate changes from moment to moment. Most of this difference is due to breathing patterns.

Any change in mental state, even if you are an Indian meditation guru will change your pattern of breathing - the two are inextricably linked! Anxiety produces shallow fast breathing, calm produces slow deeper breathing.

The slower and more consistently you breathe, the greater your HRV at any moment, up to a maximum that relates to your own personal fitness and gives you an ithlete number

Inconsistent breathing, even slight, profoundly affects HRV. Although most people learn sublimally that to get their best reading, they need to follow the animation on the screen, and breathe in a slow and measured fashion, it is possible to mess with your HRV by fractionally altering your breathing. This will happen if you are anxious, tired or otherwise stressed.

From a user point of view - HRV needs to be a peaceful ritual. You sit and relax for a couple of minutes, watch the graphic on the screen and then when you are feeling calm, join in breathing with it and then when you are happy your breathing is nicely synchronised, switch on the device and measure your HRV

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

hugobeyond — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:53:09 +0000

Hello
there appears to be more to measuring than first meets the eye, as I have now discovered from taking readings for a few weeks. Typically when measured first thing in the morning on waking my HR is around 50 bpm. I started taking HRV readings with ithlete lying down on waking, and was getting readings in the low 80s. Then I read the leaflet more carefully which suggested taking readings standing, which I did on waking, but my body seems to get a bit of a shock at this point, plus maybe some technical fault with my HRM belt, as I was getting very erratic readings so ithlete was telling me that I needed to retake them, or when it worked my HR was in the low 60s and HRV under 70. So then I decided to wait till I had got up and had a drink of water etc, and then sat down to do it, getting slightly more consistent readings. However, my breathing when relaxing tends to be slower than the screen prompts, so I haven't been following these, which I now see I should be doing. Sometimes I sit down, take a reading and it seems really low, so I redo and it improves a fair bit from one minute to the next, so concerned I am not using it properly. For example, three days ago, my reading at 7.40 am was 81.6/54.2. Then on the next day, having had the day off, it was 66.8/61.8 (8.52 am)? that was a surprise. So I took another day off, and this morning it was 68.2/60.3 at 7.35am, and I have a red flag for the day/week/month! My training load has been lower than usual this week and the week before because of Xmas and an achilles injury so not much running, just swimming, some turbo sessions and a few gym sessions. My heart rate seems to vary much more as well, than when I did it on waking lying in bed; it can vary nearly 10 beats from one day to the next, and even more for the HRV; is this right?
Obviously I want to trust the data to make it an effective tool for judging training load, so I need to get this measuring down to an accurate and reliable level
I'll keep reading the forum for more useful info, thanks for the tips
Hugo

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

moderator — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:14:25 +0000

Thanks for the feedback - it's really important that we improve understandability of the instructions. I will try to answer your points below:

1. The key point here is that your breathing should follow the lung animation on screen - that will greatly increase day to day repeatability of HRV, which is a very sensitive measure.
If you count the breathing cycles, you will find seven during the measurement time.
2. The normal measurement position for athletes should be standing, but if your heart rate is above 55 sitting, and you prefer to do the measure in that position (eg you find it more relaxing), then that should be fine.
3. I do want to add the ability to record data, including training load in a future release.

We will be sure to make the in-app instruction text clearer in the next release.

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

tqnis — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 08:41:13 +0000

hello!

I have been using Ithlete for couple of weeks. I had some confusion, but now as I read the forum I have clearer understanding (I think). I have couple of suggestions:
It seems that you should add to the short guide in the app (that is what I was reading first).
1.the need to use 7 breathing cycles (as right now there is just note to breath slowly)
2. using lying/siting/standing as to get HR around 55-65? my own heart rate jumps from below 50 to almost 90 if i stand up. so i now need to try sitting. this has been my problem since beginning of using ithlete, as I got very different numbers lying/sitting/standing- so i used standing as first (as recommended) but also recorded sitting one form myself... now i understand that i have to use sitting as first....
3. one suggestion to app- maybe you can add "comment" field to saving hrv result. in case i save more than one and want to know later, i can just read the comment. just add "save with comment" button or similar...

Do i understand right that while measuring you need to use position what gets around 60 beats AND do 7 breathing cycles?

thanks

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

moderator — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 15:24:08 +0000

Hi Darren

Your high HRV scores and low resting HR indicate that you're a fit guy, so I would definitely recommend you to do the test standing up if you can.
Remember it's not the absolute score that's important for detecting the impact of fatigue and recovery, it's the changes from one day to the next and the average trend line (the solid blue line on the chart).

Similarly, the exact time of the test is not important - what matters is that it's a convenient moment in your morning routine when you feel relaxed and that you can repeat every day and stick to. The time you suggest sounds perfect for those reasons.
Regarding the amber traffic light you had today - looks like you recovered pretty well after the short fast run, back to an HRV over 90. Therefore the score you got today after the 4hr run of 87.1 indicates a first day of significant fatigue, which will give you an amber - ie you should not do a very long or intense training session, but you don't have to take a complete rest day. If your score is low tomorrow, then you will get a red, indicating that the fatigue has started to become cumulative, and that your body needs more time to recover.
On this last point, I'm just finishing a free booklet on training with HRV that will be downloadable from this site, and that will give tips on both interpreting your results and speeding up recovery.

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Re: Breathing with the lungs

moderator — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 14:54:13 +0000

Hi Steven (Sashen)

What's really important is consistency - research has shown multiple times that the reliability of HRV measurements is much improved when a 'paced breathing protocol' as it's known, is used. It does not really matter if you don't fully exhale and inhale during the time the animation takes - just breathe as deeply as you can without forcing breath in and out. Even if it isn't the maximum your lungs can do, the breathing rate is still quite slow, and should feel relaxing in practice.

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

Darren — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 07:40:17 +0000

Hi. I've read the reply on standing up to take the measurement but am still a bit confused. Should I be getting into a position where the score comes out highest (which for me is sitting) or should I be standing to give lower reading? I have been sitting which gives a higher score and lower HR. Also I have found that if I do it first thing before getting up it is not my best score - I don't drink caffeine but do get up have a drink of water and move around a little (maybe bit of stretching) and use the loo. After that seems to give highest score on HRV. My readings for this week are

HRV HR
90.5 42
90.1 45.4
90.2 44.1
87.7 44.5
91.6 47.5
87.1 43.9

The first one below 90 was after doing short fast run the day before. The last one (today's) is after a 4 hour run yesterday. I was hoping for a red but came out amber.

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

sashen — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:08:26 +0000

Here's what may sound like an odd question:

The display says "breathe deeply."

Well, should I be taking deep breaths or taking normal-ish breaths timed to the display?

FWIW, I have to speed up my breathing in order to match the display.

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

steves — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 10:03:45 +0000

Simon, thanks very much for the guidance. Yes, I have been standing up whilst recording, however I hadn't been breathing in time to the on-screen lungs; I have changed that practice now.

I can see that this tool is going to be tremendously useful in the coming months, particularly as the season closes and I enter the winter training period. I am amazed at the level of guidance it promises to give, particularly as I tend to run myself into the ground with regards to energy expenditure and am sensitive to external stressors which affect my training.

Have you considered using Twitter as a means of communication to clients and prospective clients? There is a very healthy cycling (Tri and running, too) community using Twitter, which could considerably increase Ithlete's profile. I would advise against using it for pure advertising, but it can be a very useful 'open' forum. Just a thought.

Steve

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

moderator — Fri, 28 May 2010 12:57:08 +0000

Hi Steve

First thing to check is that you are doing the measurement standing up, as explained further up this thread.
Secondly, with respect to the breathing pattern, the reason we can get away with such a short measurement time compared to the 5mins or more when HRV is used in hospitals and research is that ithlete uses paced breathing to stimulate your nervous system in a consistent way. So you can do the measure with eyes half closed, but you do need to be keeping time with the inhale / exhale cycles of the lungs.
The Valid RR Int indicator shows that a particular heart beat interval is not in the usual range and can be triggered for a couple of reasons:
1. Poor contact between the chest strap and your skin - just make sure the strap is tight enough and the contacts are moistened
2. Everyone's heart naturally produces extra beats from time to time, and in fact athletes often more so than sedentary people. These need to be excluded from the HRV calculation, and the Valid RR Int indicator turns red to show that. It's OK for the indicator to go red a few times during the measurement, and it won't affect the result.

Hope that helps & feel free to email me directly at ithlete.support@myithlete.com with any specific follow up.

Simon

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

steves — Tue, 25 May 2010 13:21:28 +0000

Hi, I've been using Ithlete for a week or so now and am starting to get some benefit from it. One question I have is around the recording itself. I've been doing this mostly with eyes closed, but noticed this morning that the 'Valid RR Int' indicator was occassionally red. What doe this mean? I've also noticed that on two occassions the recording has automatically re-started. Is there a reason for this?

Thanks
Steve

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

moderator — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:00:52 +0000

Hi Ninemins

I'll try to explain that point more:

Experienced athletes tend to have low resting heart rates (anything below 60bpm lying down is known as bradycardia, and many athletes are even lower than that).
The heart rate variability test used by ithlete measures the changes in your heart rate when you breathe in (speeds up ) and out (slows down).
Researchers have found that if your resting HR is very low lying down (45 bpm or less) then the gap between heart beats reaches a maximum value when you breathe out, and saturates or hits the end stops as it were! No problem medically, but it limits the range of measurement and you might miss some changes & further improvements in your daily value.
When you stand up, your nervous system adjusts your heart rate upwards about 10 bpm or so (depends on your height, build etc), and you see the full range of HRV when you breathe.
Researchers also found a slightly better ability to detect overtraining from HRV in the standing position.
So we recommend doing the measurement standing up, but if your resting HR when you are well recovered is in the mid 50s or higher and you are more comfortable doing the test lying down, then I don't see why that should not be OK. Some recent research studies have done morning HRV tests lying down on moderately fit recreational athletes and had good results.

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

ninemins — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:35:08 +0000

5. You can't compare readings made in different positions ie lying / sitting / standing. The latter is best for athletes, since they tend to have large amounts of heart rate variability (HRV) which can saturate when sitting & especially lying down.

Hi can you elaborate on the item above.

Are you saying athletes should do the resting HRM standing?

What do you mean by "saturate" (when sitting & especially lying down.)

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

moderator — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:11:37 +0000

Hi Bob

Thanks for the feedback & the posting.

It usually takes a week or more to get used to the measurement, breathing pattern & fitting into your daily routine.
What I do myself is to trust the first reading, unless you have some real reason to doubt its accuracy, in which case wait a few mins & repeat.
Heart rate variability is a sensitive measure for sure, and anxiety about a real or possible low reading can affect the reading itself!

If you are still unsure in a week or so, do send a screenshot to ithlete.support@myithlete.com and I will happily look at your numbers.

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Re: Tips on performing the daily measurement

Bob — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:14:21 +0000

Hi,

I have only recently got myself the ithlete monitor and am having a bit of a problem regarding the taking of readings in the morning.

I have been taking the reading first thing as recommended, but have noticed that if I take two or three, there tends to be quite a discrepancy between them. My problem is that I do not know whether I ought to go for the best (?) and delete the others, or just take the first one. There can be quite a difference, from red-lining to high white line. What do I do.

Thanks - I like it though, and the trend suggests that I am doing ok.

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Tips on performing the daily measurement

moderator — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:43:27 +0000

I've been using ithlete during development since March this year, and have had friends using it since June. We've learned a few tips on taking the daily measurement that I'd like to share:

1. Keeping you iPhone / iPod touch and a chest strap by your bed means you can do your measurement before the day gets going. It's good to go to the loo first if you need to, since feeling the need to use the lavatory will very likely lower your reading (it's a form of mental stress after all!).

2. Try not to think about work / chores / anything else stressful during the measurement - being half asleep actually helps assess your underlying level of physical recovery.

3. You should find breathing along with the expanding lungs relaxing in of itself - in fact there is much to be said of using breathing exercises to control tension, so you may want to use the animation as a de-stressor without even saving the reading at the end.

4. You can't compare readings made at different times of day - our bodies have daily rhythms that naturally lead to fluctuations. Caffeine, alcohol and of course training all have substantial effects on your reading. First thing in the morning is really the best time.

Please feel free to share your own experiences or tips in this thread!

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