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How is HRV readiness related to strength and or quality of workout?

I have been using BioForce for a few months now and since then I have been taking what it tells me into great consideration when doing my daily loads.


 To set this up I will give a quick break down of things. I have set up my program to squat and bench on Monday and Friday and dead lift on Wednesday. I am only doing the three lifts just to try and ramp up my strength in these area's. I will give you an idea of how hard I SHOULD BE working by telling you my strength in those lifts. Three months ago I tested my strength in these lifts. squats I hit 455 for 3 reps of ass to grass, 515 for 4 reps with deads and 325 for 3 reps with bench. 


I just finished a 4 week volume phase, but low intensity where I did 6 work sets and each week I added an additional rep to each work set on Mondays for squats, Wednesdays for deads and Fridays for bench. The extra bench work I did on Monday was 6 works sets for 2 reps each and I did the same for my squats on Fridays. Keep in mind I used a static weight for each lift, each day for all for weeks. I was basically looking to grease the groove and work on some solid technique with some decent weight. I used 325 for squats, 365 for deads and 225 for bench. It looked like this below.


Week 1


Mon: Squat - 6x3x325

        Bench - 6x2x225

Wed: Deads - 6x3x365

Fri - Squats - 6x2x325

       Bench - 6x3x225


Week 2


Mon: Squat - 6x4x325

        Bench - 6x2x225

Wed: Deads - 6x4x365

Fri - Squats - 6x2x325

       Bench - 6x4x225


Week 3


Mon: Squat - 6x5x325

        Bench - 6x2x225

Wed: Deads - 6x5x365

Fri - Squats - 6x2x325

       Bench - 6x5x225


Week 4


Mon: Squat - 6x6x325

        Bench - 6x2x225

Wed: Deads - 6x6x365

Fri - Squats - 6x2x325

       Bench - 6x6x225


If you look at my reps you can see that it only changed by 1 each week. By any means I shouldn't be working all that hard in doing those 4 weeks. 


 I felt I was getting weaker by that 4th week, but I was still able to complete the 6 sets for 6 reps on all lifts. Today I started to ramp the weight up and the sets down. I struggled with getting 5 sets for 5 reps with 345 on squats. I am confused by this since I was a readiness level of 9 or 10 and green. I had the weekend off with good sleep and relaxation, so no extra stress. 


I was taking the fact that if I was always green and a high readiness level I should be able to handle the work load since my body is seemingly under low stress and recovering well from my workouts. On the days I was a readiness level of 10 I would actually throw in a few extra sets of assistance work, such as a couple sets of lunges, Dips, close grip bench, pull ups and or stiff leg deads. 


I guess my question is, shouldn't I be seeing a correlation between getting weaker and changes in my HRV going amber/red and my readiness dropping?


I know that was a whole lot, but I thought all the extra in details might help field most questions someone might have about what I am doing.

I am not aware of any studies that link HRV to strength directly but I do not follow all of the research in this area either so it could exist.  However, what you described appears to be accumulated fatigue.  You may want to change your cycles, e.g., three weeks of increasing volume followed by the fourth week as a deload.  This is what HRV monitoring showed me...I had to change my training cycle because at week three I was getting beat down.  Also you may want to assess your recovery protocol to see if it needs to be adjusted.  Just my thoughts.

I didn't mean to come across as saying that my HRV is directly linked to my strength. What I meant to imply was that I was, in my opinion, seeing the affects of accumulated fatigue, like you said, but this wasn't being reflected in my daily HRV scores and or readiness level. One of my first indications, uneducated at that, when fatigue starts to set in is the speed of the bar. I may still be able to hit the number of reps I was suppose to, but it is done at a lot slower pace and I will struggle through each rep much more. This was exactly the case, but I was surprised each morning that I was seemingly good to go as according to what BioForce was telling me. I really don't get it. At this point it seems I have to drastically workout much harder in order for me to see the dip into amber.....or I'm just much better at recovering then I think I am. Either way way I am hoping to get this figured out so I don't feel my money was wasted on BioForce. 


In my perfect world I was going to start using BioForce and adjust my training according to what my HRV and readiness indicated. I was thinking I could steadily add volume and or intensity slowly until I started to see trends in dipping into amber and a lower readiness level and then tweak things until I recover from it. This is how I thought things would go, but so far it seems I am not getting any results like this and it seems more beneficial to just listen to my body rather than what BioForce is telling me. Simple put, how can I possible be always green and a high readiness level of 9 or 10, especially since I have been steadily ramping up volume and intensity!? 

On a side not I am extremely active outside of the gym. I do mixed martial arts training for myself at least 3 times a week for 1 to 2 hours. I also coach mixed martial arts 3 to 4 days out of the week. On top of all this I am a very out doors person and I am always on the beach, hiking or playing some kind of sport on spar time! I live in San Diego so I can literally do this kind of activity all year around. This is why I am so perplexed that on top of all this and the fact that I have been ramping up my training, more then usual, I can't seem to get below a score of 9 or 10 light a green light! 


All this being said I reach amber on saturday and red today, which is Sunday and those are my two days off. It's important to mention that I literally traveled all day, starting my day at 6:30 am and then when I reached my destination at 12:30 am. As you might think I was really hungry and tired after being on a plane all day and dealing with tons of delays. To top that all off I had to wake up at 5:30 am to go to work the next day, or I should say the same day, after traveling all day and night. This was also having to adjust, or try to, east coast time from west coast time. I am finally off of a very long day at work and I literally just took my test a few minutes before typing these responses (because I was rushing in the morning), so I am sure all of that had a lot to do with why I popped amber and then red today.


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