I'm tapering for a weekend race. this morning my rest hr was down. fair enough. my hrv was up quite a lot, fair enough. I only swam last night hardish session but not too much. I expected hrv to go up (get better). however my readiness now says low when I thought it would be high.

NB: I only took one reading this morning. but (half asleep) when finished it seemed to show one number and then change (not sure as I say I was half asleep)

"The rise to HRV=78.6 does seem to be adaptation. So the graph requires interpretation then: as the colour goes to red (because of a big change in HRV) but, in fact, in terms of readiness to train then I am good-to-train."

No, probably not.  The big uptick means you're unusually parasympathetic.  This suggests your body is heavily engaged with recuperation and rebuilding.  Fixing things, expanding things, growing tissue so that it'll be able to handle similar stresses in the future more easily.  All that takes energy.  Training also uses up energy.  So the more you train in that state the less your body can adapt.

:-) I knew you were going to say that.

the implication therefore then is that I normally train too hard and should rest more to allow that adaptation to happen more often rather than at the end of a 4-6 week cycle. (and yes I do have rest days in that cycle!).

another reason for us to look closely at HRV

@the5krunner

How do you manage your training blocks and training week??I'm pretty curious since i train in muay thai and i been trying to improve my aerobic fitness.

I always train and i haven't seen much improvement in my aerobic fitness so i decided to just try to maintain my strength and go for a 4 week volume loading block.(1 week introduction,2weeks loading,1 week restoration),but i think i screwed up the restoration phase by not training enough.My HRV was in the 75-80 before the block and by the end of the loading phase it was around 75-63 which made me think that i needed to rest alot during the restoration phase to allow recovery.