ithlete faqs
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Heart rate variability, or HRV for short, describes the way your heart beat varies - both at rest, and during exercise. Contrary to popular belief, the healthy heart does not beat like a metronome, but is constantly changing the time between beats in a rhythmic way. These changes are driven by the nervous system, constantly trying to find the most efficient way for the body to operate. The fact that the nervous system makes itself visible through HRV makes the heart a wonderful barometer of how hard your body is trying to preserve its equilibrium.
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Top amateur and professional athletes from sports such as running, football, cycling and rowing use heart rate variability to help assess their training load & readiness for matches and competition. HRV analysis is used extensively in sports science research to assess the body's adaptation to training by becoming fitter.
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Taking your morning pulse is a classic check for signs that your body is under stress & needs recovery, and is probably performed by at least 50% of experienced runners & other athletes. A morning pulse rate a few beats per minute higher than normal is a sign to go easy. The trouble is that there are mutliple factors able to influence your heart rate and it is not that easy to perform the test accurately or to track when changes become significant enough to take action.
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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.
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To get started, you need an iPhone or iPod touch 2nd generation (the 8GB iPod touch is a real bargain if you don't already have one). You need the ithlete ECG receiver, which is included in the price, and will be sent to you following registration on the website. You will also need a regular analogue (5kHz) heart rate monitor chest strap, of the kind that many athletes already have in current use or lying around in a drawer
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For an in depth review papers that explain concepts such as periodisation, training volume, thresholds, overload, overtraining and recovery that will help you reach peak performance, see the links below
