How can I benefit from using heart rate variability?

In two words: train smarter. By listening closely to your heart using HRV, ithlete tells you when to train, how hard to train and when to rest. Once you are giving your body a training load it can cope with, your training effectiveness will improve, and you will not lose nearly as much time to over reaching related illness (such as coughs & colds) or unproductive sessions.

It's hard for anyone (even experienced competitors sometimes) to judge whether they are under or over doing their training. Whilst the first leads to disappointing performance, the second can result in increased sick days through colds, persistent fatigue or worst case, substantial periods of layoff from exercise.

The simplest way to start using HRV to guide your training is to take a measurement using the ithlete app every morning, then train as normal, according to your plans. If your reading drops significantly, take this as an early warning that you are overloading the system. A small drop is OK as long as you recover. Training is all about stress and recovery and a hard session will lower your number. But if it stays low even with rest you could be on the edge of trouble. Using ithlete daily to monitor training stress is the best thing you can do to make your training safe and effective.