70 MEN’S FITNESS OCTOBER 2019
a World Cup alpine ski racer. Indeed, research shows poor sleep
can lead to decreased energy, concentration, speed and accuracy
during exercise and, when it comes to health, increased risk of
heart disease, diabetes, obesity and depression. “Whether you’re
a professional or recreational athlete, if you don’t sleep well and
recover, it’s very difficult to maintain any kind of hard training
regimen,” Hoffman adds.
Your HRV reveals whether you’ve had a bad night’s sleep and,
if so, figures from the previous day can indicate what may have
affected it. “From there, [you can] look at things to help improve
sleep,” says Hoffman. “Alcohol, for example, is a talking point.
When you have several drinks in the evening, almost without
exception, sleep is far worse.” Culinary decisions can send you
into a negative cycle, too. “If you’re not eating enough, or eating
poor-quality food, this increases your stress level during the day,
which affects sleep quality in a negative way,” states Hoffman.
Meal times can also affect athletic recovery, reveals Jai Geyer,
Ryding’s ski coach. For his athletes during a World Cup Tour,
he requests “an earlier dinner, [to] allow the winding down
process to start earlier, improving sleep.”Knowledge is power
In addition to helping us understand how nutrition impacts
sleep, HRV analysis provides a view into the
relationship between the functionality of our
workouts and recovery. For example, you
may discover those after-work gym sessions
are having a less-than-desired-effect on your
already overloaded body. “If you do HIIT later
in the evening, it will usually have a dramatic
impact on sleep that night,” Hoffman reveals.
While exercising later in the day sometimes
can’t be avoided, Hoffman says: “You need to
understand you have to take it easy the next
day and get optimum sleep the following night.”
As your fitness level increases, so does your
body’s requirement for restorative sleep. It’s
vital, therefore, to increase your knowledge
and take action. “If we’re interested in what
we’re ‘doing’, we should also be interested in
monitoring what we’re not doing,” says Geyer.THINK OF A STRESSFUL
SITUATION: A TOUGH
WORK MEETING, YOUR
EVENING COMMUTE
or just getting the kids to bed on time might spring to mind.
But the reality is there’s no end to the amount of scenarios
capable of increasing physical and mental stress on our
bodies: from high-intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions
to cooking for a dinner party, or simply feeling run-down.
And when it comes to maintaining an effective training
regimen, understanding how these stressors impact your
body’s requirements for recovery is essential. But how do
we know what daily factors cause us the most stress and,
importantly, if we are effectively recovering from them?
Say hello to heart rate variability (HRV) – the measure of
variation in milliseconds between each successive heartbeat.
While acknowledgement of this natural occurrence is far
from new, those outside the medical community are only
recently becoming aware that, by analysing how a person’s
HRV fluctuates throughout the day, we can garner a wealth of
information with regards to their training, fitness and health.
“When you have good HRV, it means your body and heart are
able to respond to different demands,” explains Tiina Hoffman,
exercise physiologist at performance analytics company Firstbeat
(firstbeat.com). Your HRV is a reflection of how quickly your body
reacts to a stimulus: a high figure is considered good; a low figure
is less desirable. Professional athletes are able to recover faster
and better, as their heart rate returns to resting quicker; whereas
the heart rate of a less fit person stays more
regular, indicating continued stress. You can
thank (or blame) your parents for some of
yours: “Around 30 percent of a person’s HRV
is genetically determined,” says Hoffman. But
the remaining 70 percent is impacted by a
host of external factors – all of which can have
bigger repercussions than you might expect.
Rest test
One of the key elements HRV highlights is the
vital role sleep and recovery play in achieving
and maintaining good performance. “The
most important, and often most overlooked,
area for athletic progression is recovery –
and sleep quality is key,” states Dave Ryding,
Firstbeat Bodyguard 2’s device monitors stress
and recovery over a 24-hour period.