Endurance: Heart Rate Variability: Everything You Need to Know

Host Brad Kearns gives you a comprehensive education into the breakthrough technology of Heart Rate Variability, one of the most valuable biofeedback data available today. Measuring HRVgives you a direct window in the functional state of your autonomic nervous system, so you can accurately observe your stress levels, recovery rate and readiness to train, and make better decisions to balance stress and rest in daily life. 

HRV values are revealed by an EKG test in hospital or laboratory, but recent technology innovation enables you to track HRV in real time using the BradBeat HRV iPhone app, which has been custom designed to Brad’s specs to make it easy to use for athletes and anyone else interested in monitoring stress/rest balance. The BradBeat HRV, and other mobile HRV apps, pair with a wireless chest transmitter to reveal realtime data on your iPhone. HRV measures the beat to beat intervals in your heart rate. Greater variation indicates a harmonious balance between sympathetic (fight or flight) function and parasympathetic (rest and digest) nervous system function, and delivers a higher HRV score on the 1-100 HRV scale. A metronomic beat with minimal variation in beat to beat intervals indicates you are stressed, overtrained, or have poor cardiovascular health, resulting in a low HRV score. 

This show gets a little technical as you learn about the nuances of the additional readings of low frequency and high frequency autonomic nervous system function, but you will come away with an excellent understanding of the benefits of HRV and how to use them to your maximum advantage to make better decisions and learn to gain more control over your stress response.