What is OpenID?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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