Data

For the past couple months, I’ve been tracking my resting heart rate (RHR). My watch takes a reading as soon as I wake up and charts it in a line graph so I can see any deviations day to day. While this is really nice, and I enjoy watching the number and seeing it move up and down, it doesn’t tell me anything I don’t know.

On nights that I get less than 6 and a half hours of sleep, slight increase. On nights I have more than two beers, slight increase, and much worse sleep quality FYI. If I’ve been training really hard without a day off, increase in RHR.

There are other signs of my RHR, my baseline increasing from the norm. Poor sleep quality, no desire to train or just needing to take a day or two off to let my body recover. The technology is nice to correlate, to figure out where I’m at and learn what a rising baseline feels like. After a while though, you can tell if those things are happening without the technology telling you.

If you’re a smart watch person, check that resting heart rate when you’re unsure if you should work out or skip the gym and take it easy. The key though, learn from the data, don’t rely on it.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach