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Following on from the other thread about exercise and ageing, I've been finding that at 51 I have to be a lot more considerate of recovery. Is there any way of properly assessing recovery that doesn't involve heart monitoring with expensive watches/apps that I can't afford?
Is there any way of properly assessing recovery that doesn’t involve heart monitoring with expensive watches/apps that I can’t afford?
Will I be able to stand up this evening without giving myself crippling cramp in the process..
Heard about this company on the Real Science of Sport podcast this morning. Has some way of measuring heart rate variability (decent physiological indicator of stress) using your phone's camera.
I use an app called ithlete to measure HRV. It's not insanely expensive and requires a smartphone and a HR monitor. Works pretty well for me, though isn't infallible in that occasionally HRV does stuff you don't intuitively expect, but it's a good guide ime. The basic app is four quid, the Pro version is £30 or around £2.50 a month. Takes around 60 secs to measure just after you get up every morning.
Otherwise you can get a rough guide by measuring resting HR every morning and being wary of sudden jumps or even gradual rises and combine that with a subjective take on how you feel and what you've been doing. I guess it depends what you mean by 'properly assessing recovery' and 'expensive watches/apps'.
How expensive is unaffordable?
Garmin instincts are typically <£60 2nd hand on ebay and will tell you your resting HR etc. If resting HR is higher than normal then you're fatigued.
It does depend on your goals though, do you need to optimize recovery between training sessions throughout the week/month, or do you just need to validate that the Monday night pub ride is hard work after riding Sunday as well (but isn't likely to actually change your plans).
There are a few metrics than can be used to measure recovery. Heart rate is one, HRV is another. Garmin watches take these and other factors in to consideration to give a few metrics on how recovered and ready for a workout you are. They will also tell you what intensity of exercise will be most beneficial.
My primary reason for buying one was to recognize the difference between feeling lazy and feeling fatigued 😅
Yeah Garmin's are pretty good, mine is the basic type which measures stress, heart rate, sleep etc and it's generally pretty good apart from when going from 1-2hrs a day, every day, to a sudden 8-10hr day - the recovery will show as 60hrs or something stupid. Quite often I'll be doing a similar ride the next day, and the next day...
The newer Garmin's have HRV tracking which they use for recovery and training readiness.
Heading to 49 yo here. I'm finding my Garmin incredibly useful in preventing me from smashing myself ill/rundown. It's more beneficial for that than the fitness metrics side of things.
Sorry for the silence, been at work. Sounds like Garmin is the way to go. I was mainly wondering because we have a CrossFitter at work and whilst he had some good ideas on recovery I didn't fancy his £600 watch and £60 / month subscription. It's mainly as the00 says, trying to weed out the lazy versus fatigued times. Thanks all.
I've been using a fairly basic Forerunner 55... once you've had a few weeks to get a baseline the sleeping pulse is a pretty good measure of where you're at.