HRV & Alcohol

As promised last week in October By The Numbers, I’m diving into heart rate variability, or HRV, which is a way to measure training readiness.

HRV is a statistical measurement of changes in time between heartbeats. If your resting heart rate is 60 beats per minute, that doesn’t necessarily mean 1 beat per second. There’s a lot more variability, down to the milliseconds, and that’s what we’re talking about with HRV.

The more rested and recovered we are, the higher degrees of heart rate variability we’ll see. If our heart’s rhythm is less-variable, or more consistent, that’s a sign that we’re not feeling recovered or maybe need a rest day.

This technology is somewhat new. Just 15 years ago, you needed a chest strap and to lay still on the floor for about 10 minutes to get a reading. Pretty challenging to fit into everyday life unless you’re a pro athlete. Even my older Garmin watch that came out in 2018, you would need a chest strap and to lay still. More recently, the wrist-based heart rate sensors made leaps in accuracy and my new watch measures my HRV every single night while I’m sleeping.

I set up the watch and it took about 25 days to get a baseline reading to start working. Since then, my HRV has been balanced (meaning more variable, a little confusing, I know). Just when I was starting to question its effectiveness, I had a beer. Just one beer, and stayed up a little later than normal. The next day for the first time my HRV was unbalanced.

I’ve seen many reports of others experiencing the same thing, and I have finally lived through it.

Did I need another metric to tell me I was feeling groggy after a beer and less sleep than normal, no probably not - I felt it. However, I’m a fan of measuring and collecting this data and seeing how it all plays out over time.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain