Red Low HRV is often a precursor to getting sick for me. Also reflects a night of consuming a moderate amount of alcohol.
Orange usually reflects high volumes of training.
Oct 2nd I picked up a calf strain from running, either from colliding with a dog or inconsistent volume.
Oct 7th Cutting out running might expect higher, green values and it did rise significantly overnight avg to 81 but then falls from here.
Oct 9th it’s sunk to 45 overnight avg and basically stayed there.
So even after a good nights sleep last night, I’m still feeling a bit groggy. My RHR is about four beats up this week as well, and my average sleep score down about 5 points.
However I have no symptoms, bike and swim training seem unaffected.
There was been a fare amount of illness at work and at home, and I have used public transport more than usual, and lots of rumour around Covid
should I jump to this conclusion?
should I reduce my training (already reduced as above)?
You seem to have a pretty good read on your body and how these things track, so if I was you I’d be inclined to dial the intensity and volume back a bit, pay extra attention to recovery and sleep and wait for things to hopefully start trending upwards again. At least until you’re waking up not feeling groggy. Especially if you’re at end of season, winding things down, staying fit but not training for anything in particular. Guess if you have a goal event coming up that might incline you more to maintain training and hope your body is just fighting off something low level and can cope.
I do think these metrics are pretty personal. Only had new garmin watch for a few months and still getting to grips with sleep score, HRV and Body Battery which I didn’t have before. Definitely seems more art than science teasing out what’s going on and spotting the short vs long term trends!
I’ve sacked off the big swim I decided on yesterday, I was just trying to make up training hours for the week if I’m honest. Walking in place of running training already, I might do a recovery ride on the trainer later. Head to bed early.
I’ve no event now due to the calf, but I was hoping to get in high volume bike until December. Maybe I’ll just focus on sleep, diet and strength until spring.
Nil achievements this year. Training can be so frustrating as a hobby.
I’ve heard of worse ways to spend a winter! Hope both the metrics and how you feel improve.
FWIW I find this time of year to be excellent for trying to avoid too many hard or ambitious goals (like having a high volume bike goal as the days get shorter, darker, colder and wetter ) and go with feel a lot. Follow the rule “the workout I actually do is better than the theoretically better workout I didn’t do”. This is definitely not the time of year to be beating myself up for not doing a hard interval ride, so if what I feel like doing is a 20-30 minute easy run and then some stretching in front of the TV, that’s OK. The freshness and motivation to do more usually comes back pretty quickly.
This happened to me a year ago. Resting HR jumped almost 20 bpm and HRV tanked. Lasted weeks. Never figured out why. Never got “sick”. Wasn’t really training during it. After 3 weeks I just stopped wearing my Garmin because it was making me go crazy. A month or so later I was back to normal. So strange.
My Garmin HRV has been reading low lately also. Im Not sick but have been slightly injured for a few weeks. The weird thing is the first 2 weeks of injury my HRV was in the normal range. This past week has been low and saying I’m strained.
The old tale of listening to your body never hurts.
I had the same issue for the last couple of weeks but now it’s back to normal. I also had my status showing as strained. I think it could have been linked to the new update from Garmin.
I was wondering the same, staring in early August mine suddenly dropped almost 10 points off baseline and has been at that level since then. I have done bloodwork and stuff just as part of my annual, my resting HR is still where it normally is, but my HRV continues to be significantly lower than it was up until August. I’m part of Garmin beta so I wonder if I got whatever update earlier than some people getting it now but I have seen this same thing on Reddit too so it does make me wonder if it was some kind of systematic change.
At this point my baseline has adjusted down to where it’s now useful now but it is strange that it’s about 10 points lower than where it was for seemingly no reason. I don’t use the Garmin forums enough to know where you would look for the issue there but I have seen people on Reddit reporting similar so I thought it was interesting to see a few people here reporting seeing something similar within a small timeframe. Could just be mine has changed but I’ve looked for info about low HRV during previous periods where it fell low and came back up but this was the first time I saw lots of people all saying they were seeing the same thing where it stays low for no apparent reason.
I had this last September and October as well, where I saw my Garmin HRV drop by a few points. A lot of people made comments about software updates being the cause of it but I think it might just be a seasonal thing.
Maybe less of a question for @JoeX than one in general
If you’re using your RHR and/or HRV as primary or even secondary sources for training adjustments do they supersede your self perception on a given day?
If they don’t supersede your perception then when do they add value for your training and how?
I have tracked both of mine for years and currently rely primarily on my self perception. I occasionally adjust my schedule based on a dramatic RHR change, but never on HRV.
They don’t supersede how I feel but they help me to gain perspective on how I feel. E.g. If I wake up feeling groggy sometimes that’s just because I’ve had a really deep sleep, maybe off the back of an easy or rest day which also often makes me feel sluggish, and once I blow the cobwebs away I’ll have a great workout. Other times it’s because I’ve been overdoing it, didn’t sleep well, am coming down with a bug, etc and actually probably need an easier day or just to go back to sleep if that’s an option. The data help inform the perception.
Plus sometimes we just suck at listening to our bodies! e.g. I’ve had a pretty stressful week but there’s a big, hard group ride I really want to do at the weekend so I override what my body is telling me and go out and dig myself further into a hole. Having data points recommending I not do that may or may not stop me going on the ride, but might at least help make some better decisions like getting an early night on the Friday, hiding in the wind a bit more on the ride, having a nap and making better post-ride refuelling choices, etc.
Weird my hrv has dropped significantly the past few weeks but I figured it was because I broke some ribs (would make sense). It’s also way more consistent than it used to be (used to jump up or down a lot). But seems like maybe a trend on garmin users.
Fwiw, you could also be fighting an illness and not have symptoms. Or body could be a little more fatigued from the injury. But usually won’t trend your averages down. How do the day to day values look? I hate that 7d rolling average view.
) and go with feel a lot. Follow the rule “the workout I actually do is better than the theoretically better workout I didn’t do”. This is definitely not the time of year to be beating myself up for not doing a hard interval ride, so if what I feel like doing is a 20-30 minute easy run and then some stretching in front of the TV, that’s OK. The freshness and motivation to do more usually comes back pretty quickly.
