Reading your recovery: resting heart rate, heart rate variability and sleep
What counts is not the value of a single night but your weekly average compared with your own normal range. If your overnight resting heart rate is above it, your heart rate variability below it and your nights were short, that points to fatigue.
Resting heart rate at night
Your heart rate during sleep is the most reliable recovery signal your watch provides. After a late workout it rises by 2 to 7 beats per minute, after alcohol by up to 9, and if you have overdone it in recent days, it also sits a few beats above your normal value.
Heart rate variability
Heart rate variability describes how much the interval between two heartbeats varies. Single days fluctuate a lot; the weekly average is what tells you something. Fixed reference values don’t help, because the numbers differ greatly from person to person. Only your personal range counts: if your weekly average falls below it, that points to fatigue.
Sleep
Seven hours is considered the minimum for athletes. People who sleep six hours or less perform 7.6 percent worse on average, especially in the afternoon. Several short nights weigh more heavily than one, and people who regularly sleep less than seven hours catch colds more often.
How Pulsecho helps
Every morning, Pulsecho reads your overnight resting heart rate, heart rate variability and sleep from Apple Health and compares them with your own range over the past 60 days. Together with how you feel and your training, this becomes an assessment for the day, with the reasons behind it. If there are signs of fatigue, Pulsecho adjusts your plan and tells you why. You see every change right away and can undo it with a tap. Bigger changes only happen with your approval. Pulsecho never changes your plan without you knowing.
Try Pulsecho free for three days