heart rate variability – Page 2

Begone, Valerian! A Half Marathon Works Better!

Today’s HRV analysis score is better than yesterday’s, despite having rowed a half marathon yesterday.

If any of you have been reading every word of these blog posts you will know that I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping. I’ve had many middle-of-the-night periods of being wide-awake insomnia.

But more important: if any of you have been reading every word of my blog posts: How do you manage to do that? I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that this blog is exceedingly boring and I totally agree. There’s no plot, etc. Just a daily splattering of bits mostly about what indoor rowing was done. To read every word of these blog posts would be an exceptional, amazing task.

Anyway… with regard to the SLEEP issues, I was somewhat amazed to have had a “perfect” night’s sleep. Deep, restful and only interrupted very briefly once, for a call of nature. Below you can see a chart of last night’s sleep. It’s actually a chart of heart rate and activity levels (movement detected by Apple Watch) during last night’s sleep. But you can see from the chart that there was only one brief interruption between 1 and 2 AM. The recent doses of Valerian to help with sleep did nothing, compared to positive after-effect of rowing the half-marathon.

This was the best night’s sleep in a long time. Do I have to row a half-marathon, to get a good night’s sleep?

Today’s workout consisted of a 30 minute online session, 2K warm down and 126 Calories burned on the SkiErg.

The 30 minute online session was recorded and uploaded to YouTube and it can be found at this link: Indoor rowing 30 minutes online 04192019

Finish screen view for today’s 30 minute online session.

Report for today’s 30 minute online rowing session.

Graphs for today’s 30 minute online rowing session.

Data for today’s 126 Calorie SkiErg workout.

Happy rowing to you!

A HM To Get Things Humming

Today’s EliteHRV readiness score was adequate for a half marathon.

Today’s main and only workout was a half marathon rowed online with two other guys. My approach was to row easy at an average pace of about 2:20 except for 8 intervals of 30 strokes each, which were done at a pace of about 2:00.

RowPro graphs for today’s half marathon.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s half marathon.

Happy rowing to you!

A Mostly Lazy 30 Minutes

Though today’s heart rate variability Readiness was a green light for any effort level, I mostly took it easy when doing other than intervals.

Today’s workout was 30 minutes rowing and 125 Calories on SkiErg.

The rowing session was done online with 3 other guys who were located an average of thousands of miles away. (Two were in Europe and one was less than 200 miles away in the US).

The SkiErg session was done with intervals.

Finish screen for today’s 30 minute rowing session.

Report for today’s 30 minute rowing session.

Graphs for today’s 30 minute rowing session.

Happy rowing to you!

Valerian Skewed HRV?

I was skeptical of this morning’s Readiness score by EliteHRV app.

I don’t know for certain why the Readiness score and resulting “advice” from EliteHRV app’s heart rate variability analysis was so poor this morning but I suspected Valerian. The reason I suspected it is because last night I took a dose of Valerian before bed and again in the middle of the night, to aid sleep.

The Valerian made me feel very relaxed or tired. I don’t know if it influenced my heart rate to slow down, but I did notice that heart rate dropped as low as 44 BPM during the morning. (See screen shot below)

I was surprised to see the Apple Watch display heart rate as low as 44 during the day when I was awake and moving around. Was this an aftereffect of the Valerian?

Other than feeling exorbitantly relaxed (I know… “exorbitant’ isn’t an appropriate adjective here, but I’m using sloppy poetic license and will use it anyway)… I felt okay.

So I ignored the recommendation of EliteHRV and rowed the way I normally would. And “skied” the way I normally would, on the SkiErg after rowing.

Speaking of rowing and skiing, those were today’s workouts in that order: 10K of rowing with intervals every 1K, followed by 10 minute rowing warm down, followed by 124 Calories of alternating 10 calorie intervals on the SkiErg.

Finish screen for today’s 10K rowing session. Did I mention that it was done online, in the good company of another rower who was a few thousand miles away on the East Coast of USA?

Some data and a chart for today’s 124 Calorie SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

Change In Effort Leads Heart Rate

There won’t be a workout today, because I’ll be following the recommendation of today’s “Readiness” score as calculated by the EliteHRV app’s analysis of my heart rate variability.

I think EliteHRV may be mistaken, but will go along with the recommendation anyway, because there are plenty of other things to do.

Before signing off from writing in this blog today, I will note that today’s title is in reference to the clear graphical demonstration when you look at a graph of heart rate and effort level vs time, as you can see in the chart below. Notice that heart rate starts climbing after each interval begins and heart rate continues to climb for quite a while after each interval ends.

I just think that is interesting. The effect is more pronounced when the intervals are at higher effort levels.

If this chart looks familiar, it might be because you read yesterday’s blog post and saw it posted there, as a part of the screenshot view of data for yesterday’s SkiErg session.

Happy rowing to you!

Inspired By Dr. Ormsbee

Today’s EliteHRV heart rate variability Morning Readiness analysis was a green light for any effort level.

Yesterday evening my better half and I watched some episodes of a course on diet and exercise by Dr. Michael Ormsbee. It is a very much in-depth course, on the college level. I would have to watch the episodes again and take a few pages of notes if I were to be tested on it. But the purpose of watching it wasn’t to become experts. The purpose was to expose ourselves to some teaching on the subject which is based on research studies and the evidence gathered by those.

One thing Dr. Ormsbee mentioned that I already knew was enough to both remind and re-motivate me to resume rowing again today. I can’t quote it exactly from memory, but the sense of it was something I already knew: the single most helpful thing a person can do for the sake of good health and avoiding diseases is to workout.

Today’s workout was a 10K online interval rowing session in the company of a few others, followed by 10 minutes of warm down rowing. The warm down rowing was also online in the company of others. After the rowing I topped it off with a series of six 10-Calorie intervals within a single 116 Calorie SkiErg session.

RowPro report for today’s 10K online session.

Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K.

Concept 2 online logbook data display for today’s 116 Calorie SkiErg interval session.

Happy rowing to you!

Today And Yesterday, Succinctly

There was no rowing or other workout either yesterday or today. But I’ve been in contact with another guy who uses RowPro and likes to row online in scheduled sessions as part of his motivation/incentive to do frequent rowing and I may soon resume rowing online if we can get mutually agreeable, scheduled online sessions arranged.

And now for the topic of tracking heart rate variability: My EliteHRV “Morning Readiness” scores for today and yesterday:

Today’s (April 5, 2019) EliteHRV analysis.

Yesterday’s (April 4, 2019) EliteHRV analysis.

Happy rowing to you!

Perhaps Tomorrow?

Hopefully, tomorrow’s EliteHRV app Morning Readiness reading will be in the green, like today’s was.

Insomnia last night, slept in late today. Again.

Didn’t do any rowing or other workout today. Again.

But on the positive side, I felt very rested after getting out of bed today!

Scheduled a half marathon for early tomorrow morning. I wonder if that will come to pass?

Happy rowing to you!

Interference of a Different Sort

This morning’s Red Light meant STOP- don’t do a workout.

Yesterday, the problem was insomnia. Today, the problem was the extremely low “Morning Readiness” reading from the EliteHRV app when it measured heart rate variability. So I didn’t row today.

The EliteHRV app counted 43 “artifacts” and even though it supposedly corrected for them, the result was still a very poor reading.

The problem causing the extremely poor reading was probably due to a bout of irregular heartbeat as you can see displayed in the EliteHRV graph above.

This is a much better reading. It was taken a lot later in the day, after a nap and after heartbeat had returned to normal.

I deleted that EliteHRV reading, had breakfast, skipped having any coffee and took some aspirin. Then I took a long nap. After the nap, I took another reading with EliteHRV and this time it was a good score. But it was too late in the day to do any rowing.

Happy rowing to you!