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Plain-language posts on heart rate variability. Some are for anyone who wants to understand their own body. Others are for the people who help them: doctors and other health professionals, health coaches, and fitness instructors.
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Why everyone should understand their own HRV
Heart rate variability (HRV) is one of the few signals that lets you watch your body respond to how you live, night by night. Reading it well takes some background knowledge, and with it you can make sense of any app's score. It also means knowing what HRV cannot tell you.
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HRV for doctors and health professionals: what your patients' wearables are telling them
Most wearables report RMSSD from a pulse sensor during sleep, and Apple Health stores SDNN from samples the watch takes on its own. Neither is the 24-hour Holter SDNN behind the risk studies. The number is a personal trend, best read against the patient's own baseline and never as a test.
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HRV for health coaches: using it in conversations about stress, sleep and recovery
HRV works best in coaching as a conversation starter about sleep, stress and recovery. Read a client's 7-day average against their own baseline, use the size of known effects to keep a low day in proportion, and refer to a clinician when symptoms or unexplained changes appear.
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HRV for fitness instructors and trainers: what to track and what to ignore
Track a client's HRV as a 7-day average against their own usual range, and read it next to resting heart rate and how they feel. Ignore single mornings, comparisons between people and the exact number on a readiness score. In trials, HRV-guided plans did at least as well as fixed plans, with small gains at most.
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