PODCAST - i tracked my hrv for 120 days (here's what happened)
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host Johnny Ha, an ultra runner endurance athlete, and yes, a guy who's had an inhaler prescribed since birth. Despite doctors telling me I could never play soccer nor run a marathon, let alone a hundred K ultra. I prove them all wrong. This show is where I share everything I've learned from breathing techniques to mindset shifts to help you become the athlete and the person you truly want to be.
So if you're ready to achieve your goals, despite limitations, let's get started.
Ever since that I discovered that I have a hole in my heart. I have become obsessed with collecting data on my body, [00:01:00] especially data on my heart and my cardiovascular system, which is why for the last 120 days I have tracked my heart rate variability, also known as. HRV, and I'm gonna share with you my numbers and my biggest takeaways for you and your life and your body, and why you may want to consider tracking your HRV as well.
No matter if you have asthma, you have a hole in your heart. If you're an athlete or you're not an athlete, there are benefits of tracking your HV. So what is HRV also known as? Heart rate variability.
Well, basically HRV is how calm or stressed your body is on the inside. It is how much time is between each of your heartbeats? Yeah, there's your heart rate, which is how many beats you have in a minute, but how much time is in between each beat? And what is the variability? What is the [00:02:00] difference in timing between one beat and another beat, and another beat and another beat?
So if this is your heartbeats.
This is what we're tracking with HRV. What is the time on average and what is the variability of one versus the other? So why do we care how much time is in between beats? Well, what we're really looking for with heart rate variability or HRV is, is your body is chill mode or. Alert mode, and depending on if your body is in chill mode or alert mode, we can make decisions on how we wanna spend our energy and our time on a day-to-day basis.
Chill mode means that there's a lot of variability in your heart rate. [00:03:00] Yes, more variability. Is better. How do we know if we're in chill mode? Well, chill mode means we have high HRV and what is high HRV high HRV is when we're looking at calculating the distance in time between heartbeats. You want more variability.
The more variability in between beats, the higher your HRV. Which signals to your body that you're in, chill mode, you're relaxed, you're in your body, you're in rest and relax mode. On the other side of things is alert mode, and this is when you have low HRV, which means that your heartbeat is much more uniform.
The distance between beats is the same. [00:04:00] It could be one second for all of these versus 0.7, 5.8, 2.9 5.78. So the more variability you have, the chiller your body is, which means your body is ready to perform. When you're in alert mode, this means that you need to rest. It means your body needs more love.
Now you can track your HRVA couple different ways. I use an app called HRV for training, and I use this every single morning. First thing I do when I get up is I check my HRV. You can also wear smartwatches, smart rings, and really anything that is going to keep track of your heartbeat over a specific period of time.
But the best time to check your HRV is first thing in the morning. It'll give you a snapshot of really where your body is going into the day, and what you're gonna see when you start tracking your HRV is a couple different things. The first thing is you're gonna [00:05:00] see ms, which stands for milliseconds, also known as 1000th.
Of a second. This is what you actually measure. The time between beats by is milliseconds. The other thing you're gonna see is something that I really had a look up 'cause I really didn't understand what this was, is R-M-S-S-D. What this is, is it's a way to measure how much time changes between each heartbeat.
So it's the time that changes. So when you have more time, that changes between each heartbeat, you have higher HRV. So this is the time that changes between heartbeats.
I. Now I have a chart I want to go through. So if you have a reading of zero to 20 ms, this [00:06:00] means that you're very low recovery, you're really high stress. This is a high stress state, high stress. Low recovery. You need to rest if your HRV is this low. This is common in sedentary adults with chronic stress and illness.
Since I started tracking my HRV, I have never fallen into this range. The next range is 20. To 40 ms, and that's really important to know because depending on who you are, this is why you need to track your HRV over at least a few months, is you need to figure out what your baseline is, and you'll see based on what your baseline is, what a high HRV is for you, and what a low HRV is for you, and you can bring your numbers up.
So 20 to 40 ms. This isn't as stress, but it is below average recovery, below average. Recovery. This is common [00:07:00] in average adults low fitness levels. So this would be, you're not working out that much, but maybe you walk a couple times a week and that's it. So 20 to 40 ms. The next. Range is 40 to 60 ms. Now I actually have had a reading in the 40 to 60 MS range before.
I have not had anything below 40. The 40 to 60 is the typical healthy adult range, typical healthy adult range. So this is a good place to be. This is common in the general population. I guess with that being said, this isn't a bad place to be. You can be in a better place though. The next one, we get into the 60 to 80 ms.
This is typically when I have low readings. This is where they fall. I've had a couple fall below in the 40 to 60 range. I'm gonna tell you my exact readings per [00:08:00] month that I have seen over the past 120 days doing this, but 60 to 80 Ms. This is above average recovery. This is above average recovery. This is common in recreational active adults, so maybe three, four times a week.
You're working out, you're doing active things. You might see your reign somewhere in here. Then we get the 80. To one 20 ms. Now this is a bigger range. We've been having 20 MS ranges. This is a 40 MS range. This is strong recovery capacity. This is a really good place to be. And it gets even better. From there, we have one 20 to 180 ms.
This is another bigger range. This is high recovery. You are in a good spot. A really, you are in an elite spot here. And then we get to [00:09:00] 180 ms. Plus this is uncommon. But possible, I've had a fair amount of numbers here. They're not always here, but I do have a lot of numbers that fall in here, common and highly trained individuals.
Now that you know the ranges, it is important to look at your numbers as an individual. You are a unique person. You live a unique life. You interact with the world uniquely. Your numbers, your numbers can be a lot different from mine, but regardless, you gotta think about what is a low HRV number for you and what is a high HRV number for you?
And really, when you're tracking HRV, it's best to not just look at, okay, this is my HRV number for the day. You need other notes related to it, which is why I like using my HRV for training app because I write a bunch of other notes. I'm able to see, okay, on my low HRV days, I typically worked out real hard [00:10:00] the day before, or on my low HRV days.
I'm just more tired. Maybe I didn't sleep as well. The other thing to know, especially when I start showing you my results, is that super high HRV ratings could actually be very low HRV ratings, depending on how the app or whatever you're using to track your HRV is calculating it. So you gotta be careful.
Here's my overall. Overall 120 days. The low was. 52 ms. So my low fell into the third sector or the third group, which was 40 to 60 ms, which is a typical healthy adult range. So this is on the low end for me. Keeping in mind, I am an elite ultra runner that takes really good care of myself. So this is on the low end, on the high end, and this is what I'm saying, like the high end.
I think that this may be a [00:11:00] miscalculation, but here's what we got. 360 ms. Remember, the high end range was above 180. This is double 180. This was the high end, but this could just be a miss low reading. Especially because even like today I took my reading, I was in like the two high, two hundreds and I'm exhausted.
I played a lot of tennis this past week and I ran eight miles and I did a lot of socializing. I'm gonna go take a nap after I record this video 'cause I need it. So sometimes the high could actually be a low reading, but let's look month over month and why it's so important for you to do this and do it for a long period of time.
Why I did it for 120 days and I'm continuing to do it is month one.
My low was 73.29 and my high was 1 0 7 [00:12:00] 0.46. Now, as I go through this as well, the last that this changes the better. So really important to understand this. High variability is great. But when we're looking at the variability between day after day, you want your numbers to be closer. Closer is better. So when we look at the overall over 120 days, this is a lot of variability.
We look at month one. This is about 34 points, or I'm really in between the 60 to 80 range. And the 80 to one 20 range. So above average recovery and strong recovery capacity. But let's look at month two. 'cause this progressively got better. And it did because, and I teach this in my three pillars of healthy living, movement, tracking and accountability tracking.
When you track something, you make it important to you. When you track something, it becomes something you focus on. It becomes [00:13:00] something that you can actually make a change with. And this is what I saw happen, even if I didn't do this on purpose, when you look at month one to month two. Month two, when we look at the low end, the low end for month two went up a little bit, 73.63.
So we went up like 0.34 on the low end, but on the high end, I don't know if this is a good thing or not. But on the high end, we did have a 269.05 day, so that is actually a lot of variability, a lot of variability between the numbers. But my low end did go up. Let's look at month three. Month three, my low end rating.
Yeah, my low end rating stayed pretty consistent over the, over, over, over the [00:14:00] 120 days. We had 72.90, and then the high, this time we got our outlier, the 360. 360. And again, there's a lot of variability there. I just like that my low end is staying in the seventies, which is above average recovery. So on the my lowest days, I'm at above average recovery.
That is pretty, I'm pretty proud of that. Now, before I go to month four, I wanna share my averages. My average for my overall was 1 53. For month one, it was 87. Point nine two. For month two, my average went up a lot. 140.22. For month three, we went up even more. 1 48 0.31. And then we get to month four. Month [00:15:00] four, I had a pretty vast difference between my low and my high.
I had my lowest low, so we were at 52. Point two seven and then my high was all the way. It wasn't my highest, but we did go all the way up to three 40.08. My average went up to 1 63 0.69. That brings me to month five. Month five or low is the best that it's ever been. 95. Point seven two, and then my high was 3 41 0.84, and my average was 180 3 0.14, which we go back to.
The chart is uncommon, but [00:16:00] possible common in highly trained individuals with strong parasympathetic tone. Which means my nervous system is staying out of fight or flight. I am more recovered. I have more energy in my life. So why do our numbers matter? Well, on my low days, I rested equals rest or did less on my high days, I did more.
And on my high, high days, if I feel in my body that it probably should actually be a low number, then I rest. Like today, I did a two mile run this morning. I'm taking a nap this afternoon. I'm taking it easy the rest of the day. 'cause I do think that my high number is actually a loan number because it's way off the charts.
So this is why it's so important for you to keep track of your numbers and to take notes on how you feel depending on what your numbers are on a given day. [00:17:00] Remember to grab your three pillars of Healthy Living Guide. It is linked in the description below. If you're watching this on YouTube and in the show notes, if you're listening to this as a podcast, the three pillars are moving.
Tracking and accountability. You can also go to www.athletewithasthma.com/healthy-living-guide to get your free copy. I'll see you in the next episode.
Thanks for tuning in to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I hope today's episode inspired you to overcome any perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection. It is about progress. So I invite you to take a small step right now towards your goals, and if you found something helpful here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with others on a similar path.
Until next time, keep challenging yourself [00:18:00] and redefining what's possible.
