For what it’s worth: diligently wore a Whoop strap for a year. HRV never correlated with workout quality, overtraining/undertraining, build/taper....

Thank you. That's generally been my experience. The research definitely points to HRV as a valuable metric (life and training), but it doesn't appear the Garmin 935 HRV measurement provides what's needed.

Any other suggestions from ST's definitely welcome!!

Joel Jamieson (8weeksout) had a Facebook live session on HRV recently. I was interested in HRV and this was part of the research. I still don't use it.

Anyway, he was very specific about measuring it at the same time each day, and in the same position (e.g. lying down in the morning) and then only paying attention to long term trends.

He found it hard to rate Whoop as he couldn't tell how/when it made the measurement.

Separately, can the Garmin measure the R-R interval accurately, or at least precisely, to the msec?

I have been using the HRV elite app, and so far like it. The thing I like is I know when I am taking the test. Alarm goes off, empty bladder lay back down and do test. So far it has done a pretty good job predicting performance.

Take a look at Mysasy - another HRV alternative that a couple of my friends use and they are very content with it. I saw they had 2 free promotions last year so I wanted to try it as well but since it's app based and my HRM Run2 doesn't connect to my phone I couldn't try it myself.

Thank you

Probably need to clarify here. If you are using the OHR on the 935 it will derive HRV from the pulse wave variation (PRV) which is little more than guesswork as the peak of the PRV is not clear. If you are using the strap to do a HRV stress test, which is a requirement, you are likely to get better accuracy as the strap is detecting the electrical signals.

The OHR will only give you HRV information when you are rested. Even then I would suggest that, like any optical sensor, it may not accurately reflect HRV measured from the electrical output of the heart.

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Trust me I’m a doctor!
Well, I have a PhD :-)

Agreed. Thanks. I do always use the chest strap for the HRV in the AM

A few years ago I used an Omegawave strap for detailed HRV analysis. I also found little to no correlation between how I felt, the quality of my workouts, and what the app suggested.

I keep a pretty close eye on Body Battery (proxy/measure of HRV Stress Score) on my fenix 6. I find it generally confirms what I'm feeling and its a good quantitative measure of for something thats normally qualitative ("I feel good/bad"). For instance, if I don't get a great sleep or am feeling under the weather and look at the Body Battery and its recharged to 80/100, then maybe I'll skip the VO2 max work in favour of an aerobic workout.

Back in August I came down with the flu and my Body Battery sat at 5/100 for just about the entire duration of the illness. Other days where I may have a bit too much fun the night before (read: I'm hungover), I'll recover to 40/100 after a pretty bad sleep.

On the flip side, generally through a big training block, if I'm healthy, and am sleeping and eating well, regardless of the workout intensity the Body Battery will recharge to 100 overnight.

Its not so much a measure of your recovery time, but your body's ability to adapt to varying stimuli.

I wrote a bit more about it on this fenix 6 FAQ on my blog here, and also found this piece from Harvard Health to be a good explanation.

But like someone else mentioned, what Garmin device are you using to measure HRV? Because I'd be interested in variations between the different generations of devices.

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Raf
http://www.shutuplegs.org