I'd be curious to hear more about HRV. I don't know much about it, but lately I've been impressed with HRV4training -- a simple daily calculation using only my phone, then a list of questions about RPE and duration of exercise, muscle soreness, sleep quality, life stress... I don't know if HRV is valuable or not, but for a day-to-day "recovery check" I like this approach.

Maybe I don't need HRV at all. Is there a good standalone phone app for tracking session RPE, etc?

Here is a basic summary

https://www.scienceforsport.com/...ate-variability-hrv/

HRV appears to correlate with recovery status...

Resting HRV does not appear to reliably reflect overreaching...

HRV-guided training appears to induce greater performance gains than pre-planned training programmes.

Okay, now my head is starting to hurt.

Is the point here that HRV works on a daily basis, but not longer term? That seems to be what HRV4training goes for: based on HRV and subjective assessments of the day before (sleep, training, energy level, etc) it says "take it easy today," or "knock yourself out."

I watch my HR over time while increasing load. However, I have noticed a trend with myself when it comes to increasing load over the season. For example, when I start doing quality run sessions after building run mileage, the first couple weeks of hard running leaves me sore, tired, and with a higher average HR. Over time though, my ability to recover quicker, less or no soreness, and seeing lower HR numbers during the day and during workouts tells me that I am getting fitter. After a set period of time, I usually start to be able to finish workouts strong, do workouts faster, do more reps, all while recovering faster. I will push these limits until I notice that my recovery time goes back the other direction to longer durations. This tells me that I have hit some sort of ceiling with that type of stimulus so I will take some time to rest, retest, and often change stimulus. Not sure how scientific this is, but it helps me see when I have "peaked" or gained about as much fitness as I am going to gain from that type of training, and also helps me not to overreach too much and dig a hole too deep to where I am overtrained. But, again, this is just me.

My question, as a triathlete, is how to balance all of this, trying to peak in all 3 disciplines around the same time. All of us come from different backgrounds so I know there are tons of different answers; however, it still has been something I don't feel like I've ever mastered.

I've been using HRV, and had a similar experience a couple of weeks ago. Woke up feeling a little queasy, decided not to swim, proceeded to vomit uncontrollably for the next 18 hours - not sure if it was bad food or some sort of virus. My HRV that morning was also the lowest I had ever seen, and also about 50% of my worst reading ever. This discussion prompted my to look back at my HR data (from a Garmin with an optical reader, so perhaps not the most reliable ever). Nothing about my HR that morning would have given me any indication that something was off. So I definitely see a place for HRV that is not covered by HR, especially since I am also bad about subjectively gauging my RPE and recovery.

from the article,
"HRV has been shown to be a predictor of illness in elite athletes, but its ability to predict injury is yet to be validated in humans."

Hath not a human hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as an elite athlete is ? If you prick us, do we not bleed ?

To me that article seems to have way too much irrelevant detail obscuring the real questions.

A better overview is at Outside,
https://www.outsideonline.com/...ke-me-better-athlete

I suspect the articles that show HRV is not a useful indicator of training state, are based on HRV apps with proprietary algorithms analyzing the data and producing a simple 'score'. Using your own raw data and tracking it over time to build a baseline, is going to be more difficult but more likely to be useful.

Start here for research showing HRV considered useful,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11039645

In general, to Slowman's original question - my take is that anyone promoting a single metric or score to measure peak fitness/overtraining is guaranteed to be wrong at some level, and most often misleadingly wrong. They are also probably trying to sell you something..

There is a study on testing hr and HRV. I don't have it handy but the jest was with endurance athletes, resting hr for recovery can be misleading as its generally low all the time. That being said, I believe the purpose of the study was to push HRV but I have noticed same. That being said when I had a burnout my resting hr was 15-20 bpm higher and didn't need HRV :)

I agree totally with the global assessment. That applies across the board.

Can you explain the bold sentence a tad more, explaining the "original version"?

If I use Friel's recommendation to keep TSB above -30, my ATL/CTL ratio stays pretty well clear of 1.5 and as fitness increases, I'm lucky to see that ratio exceed 1.25. I've been using my personal knowledge of what I know I can handle combined with keeping ATL/CTL under 1.5, but sense that's so easy to do, I've taken the conservative approach of keeping TSB -30 or higher, and planning race day TSB of 25.

Minimizing blasting me for asking stupid questions (I have phd finals to turn in this week, so I greatly appreciate the ability to lean on your knowledge vs spending hours upon hours self-educating), can you provide some feedback on planning future training using TSS values? I'm using TSS values based on past workouts, a bike powermeter, Stryd run powermeter, and using an estimated swim TSS.

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Andy: since I don't think anyone has yet answered this, can you either provide or point us to a definition of "overtraining" that you are in agreement with? I'm curious because I feel like people use the word differently, and also because I think it might lead to an answer to Slowman's original question. (And then thirdly because I feel like I flirt with overtraining sometimes.)

and combining your question with the question in my post immediately before yours, it would be great if Andy could share what number he'd suggest using to avoid "overtraining" when planning training.

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wovebike.com | Wove on instagram

Just a comment on your question that I don't think overtraining can be defined in terms of TSS or TSB or ATL/CTL. It's a physical state that you fall into from long intensive bouts of training, possibly coupled with stress and/or lack of sufficient recovery, and sometimes even sickness.

appreciated. though, you asked Coggan for his definition, then you provide a definition. Seeing how Dan was asking for a metric for gauging overtraining, it's probably still valid to use a ratio or number to indicate that the stress your intending to put your body through or have put your body through is leading to "overtraining". My question still stands

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wovebike.com | Wove on instagram

I'm still not sure there's a number that can be applied generally. We vary so much in our ability to adapt to stress. I know some people who can beat the hell out of themselves week after week. I can't.

This is why I think the longitudinal approach to personal data is helpful. When you have an established baseline of your own data, and you dig yourself into a hole, you can look back and, see, "Ah -10,000 TSB when my mood started to deteriorate and my HRV started to decrease. -10,000. Don't do that."

OK - 10,000, thanks! finally, a number

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wovebike.com | Wove on instagram

I only knew I overtrained in hindsight because I was half-delusional thinking I could push through, but this was back when there were only SRMs and powertap was just coming onto the scene, so I had no power data.

My hr just tanked, though. It wouldn't come up for hardly anything. I just couldn't go hard enough anymore. I put on like 8 lbs very quickly, I didn't sleep well for a long time, I started getting dropped on every little incline and I just generally didn't like anything.

It took months and months to come out of it.

I've only done that once, and have no objective data, but there were multiple physiological and lifestyle factors that I ignored until too late. Not something I ever plan on repeating.

Peak fitness, even with all of the new data, I feel I can really only identify by simply recovering for multiple day workouts. The ctl/tsb and all of those metrics never capture it. But when I'm there I can go out and ride hard or race and then come back the next day as if I didn't do anything. That feeling and ability to recover overnight has only come along with my best fitness for certain time periods.

So my metrics are all "feel", essentially.