Heart rate variability, sport

Heart rate variability (HRV) is extensively used in the area of physical activity for the purpose of exercise load evaluation, overreaching and overtraining diagnostics or exercise versus recovery balance optimizing. High HRV is indicative of health and indicates good autonomic system adaptability, while low HRV indicates a poor health condition, an abnormal heart function or inadequate adaptability of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Resting, as well as post-exercise, HRV measurements are related to cardiorespiratory fitness and may also be predictive of changes in aerobic endurance capacity. Optimal recovery period duration searching, which would be precisely adequate to the exercise load, is an extremely challenging matter in sport training prescription. It is well known that this factor is highly inter-individually different. Day-to-day HRV monitoring represents a promising possibility to base this process on certain objective information concerning the athlete's acute readiness to perform.