👋 Hey. Welcome to issue #59 of The Everyday Athlete Newsletter.
Here are my 3 favourite ideas, learns and resources to help you improve your performance this week (3.5 min read):
💜 WTF is HRV?
Your heart doesn’t beat in the exact same rhythm.
(it’s hard to notice because it’s a matter of milliseconds)
But it actually varies.
So if your heart rate is 60 beats per minute, it doesn’t actually beat once per second. Could be 0.96, 1.03, 1.05, 0.99…
The average difference between each beat is known as your heart rate variability (HRV).
It’s dictated by our nervous system.
The heart has a little dude on each shoulder.
- The parasympathetic system tells the heart rate to slow down
- The sympathetic system tells it to speed up
And it’s this tug of war that creates the variation.
See if we’re in balance the heart hears both systems. It reacts to each. It’s responsive. It’s healthy.
If we’re out of balance, usually our sympathetic system is dominant. We might be stressed, fatigued, sick.
And the parasympathetic gets drowned out. So the heart mostly hears the sympathetic “speed up” signal. Which means there’s less variance in our heart rate.
So a high HRV is what we’re after 👍
It’s a really good indicator of stress and general health.
So if your wearable tracks HRV have a look at how it’s trending.
If you wanna see how you sit for your age, here's data from Whoop (keep in mind the people who use Whoop will tend to be fitter and healthier than average – so a good yardstick for the everyday athlete):
But it's highly individual. Genetics play a big part in your HRV. So I’d be more interested in tracking your trends than comparing you to other people.
If it’s trending down over a couple days, it might be a sign you need to back off training a little, hone in on sleep and chill out.
And zooming out to a 3-month view can tell you if you’re training and lifestyle are helping move you in the right direction.
How to improve HRV?
Nail the basics – eat, sleep and train well.
Get the recovery matching balance right.
Start pulling out the physiological sigh more often.
Watch it fly.
💪 The 3 power drivers
The law of irradiation says:
“A muscle working hard recruits the neighbouring muscles, and if they are already part of the action, it amplifies their strength. The neural impulses emitted by the contracting muscle reach other muscles and ‘turn them on’ as an electric current starts a motor.”
And so strengthening the 🍑 glutes, 🫄 core and 🖐 grip helps boost overall power in nearly every human movement.
They're the body's 3 main power drivers.
Turn them on. They amplify everything.
🏃 Best time of day to train
I just googled “best time to train”.
I wouldn't recommend it.
Because you’ll find some of the world’s biggest media outlets giving some of the world’s most confusing advice.
Morning for fat burn.
Evenings for fitness.
Mornings for sleep.
Evenings for sleep (as long as it’s not high intensity).
Evenings to de-stress.
Mornings for mood.
Mornings to lower blood pressure.
But evenings for blokes who wanna do the same.
wtf…
Fortunately, a recent meta-analysis looked at all the research (over 14,000 studies) to determine the best time of day to train:
“The current state of research provides evidence neither for nor against a specific time of the day being more beneficial.”
But they did find a relationship between training and testing times. Which means there’s benefit to training at the same time your competition will be on.
But that’s probably more relevant for elite and pro athletes.
Everyday athlete? Do what you want. What you like. Whatever suits your schedule best.
✌️
That's it!
Have a great weekend 🤙
Matt
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The Everyday Athlete Newsletter is not a licensed health service and is not a substitute for professional health advice, treatment or assessment. The information given in this email is general in nature, written for a specific audience. If you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional.
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