Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Fight Science Made Simple is for fighters and martial artists who want to train harder, recover faster, and stay on the mat for life.
Each week, we break down strength & conditioning, nutrition, recovery, and mindset into straightforward strategies you can actually use in training. Simple, practical, and backed by real fight science—so you can keep chasing your potential, performing at your peak, and becoming the fighter you’ve always wanted to be.
What is going on? Welcome to episode 17 of the Fight Science made simple podcast. I'm your host coach Adam Snyder. I'm a lifelong martial artist. I'm a performance and recovery coach, and I'm an active MMA fighter.I drop weekly episodes here on the Fight science made simple podcast. Like the title of podcast suggest we make fight science simple. I break down everything that you need off the mat to help you dominate on the mats, in the cage, in the rings. We're gonna talk about straining, conditioning, nutrition, recovery, mindset, everything that you need. We're bringing out a different topic every single week. So if you're new, welcome.If you're a repeat listener, welcome back. The best thing that you can do to support the podcast is to give the podcast a follow if you're digging what we're throwing down, and to share [...0.5s] anyone that you know that can benefit from the episodes of information that we're sharing.Whether it's friends, training partners, teammates, coaches, share it with them. The more ears that we can put this pod into, [...0.5s] just the more successful [...0.6s] people are gonna be in the sport, the better the sports gonna be, and the more fun it's gonna be for everybody. Um.So welcome. Today's episode is gonna be a really important one. Today we're talking about heart rate variability. Um, heart rate variability, [...0.8s] something that has been around for a while, but I would say really in the last five years or so, it's picked up even more popularity. I feel like every wearable has some kind of [...0.6s] measurement of heart rate variability, some way of using heart rate variability for data.But I think there's a lot of confusion about what heart rate variability even means, how to use heart rate variability, if you even should be using heart rate variability.So that's what I'm breaking down in today's episode. We're gonna talk about what [...0.6s] HRV is, why HRV is important, we're gonna talk about [...0.5s] what to actually use the HRV data for.We're gonna talk about how you can track heart rate variability. And we're gonna talk about how you can use heart rate variability and improve it through training sessions and through different recovery metrics.So without further ado, let's jump into it, the idea with these podcasts, they're short, sweet, but super valuable. So we're only gonna spend like 30, 40 minutes breaking it down.So let's jump into what heart rate variability is. So heart rate variability is a measurement of the time in between heartbeats. So [...0.6s] you all know you have a heartbeat, right? Your heart beating [...0.5s] resting heart rate is beats per minute. So how many times your heart beats in one minute at rest, but your heart [...0.7s] typically doesn't and shouldn't be at a consistent rate.So if your resting heart rate is 60 beats per minute, your heart probably isn't beating once every second. Maybe it beats half a second, then it beats a second, then it beats in a quarter of a second.There's a time variance between each heartbeat. The average time between heartbeats is called your heart rate variability.Okay, [...0.5s] heart rate variability is very important because it's a measurement of your autonomic nervous system. Your autonomic nervous system is the part of your nervous system that runs the show automatically subconsciously, without you even thinking about it.Everything from breathing to your heart beating, to your blood flowing to blinking, anything that doesn't require you to consciously think about doing a movement or an action, that's the job of your autonomic nervous system. Think automatic autonomic nervous system.There are [...0.8s] two parts of your automatic nervous, autonomic nervous system. There is the sympathetic nervous system. Think fight or flight or freeze. So when you're in a fight, when you're super stressed, when you're in an argument, when you're worried about something, when your stress levels are high, your pupils dilate, your heart increases, your temperature increases.This is your sympathetic nervous system, your fight or flight system. Then you have your parasympathetic nervous system. Think rest or digest when you're calm, when you're low stress, when you're low anxiety, when you don't have a lot of worries, when you're recovering.This is the job of the parasympathetic nervous system. Typically if you are in a more sympathetic fight or flight state, there is going to be less variance between heartbeats, which means your heart rate variability is going to be lower [...0.5s] when you have a higher signaling from your parasympathetic nervouses.So meaning you're either any rest or digest state, or you can quickly shift from a high stress fighter flight state to a low stress, rest and digest state. Then you're going to have a higher [...0.6s] heart rate variability. There's going to be more variance between your heartbeats.All right, this is [...0.5s] very important because it is a way of monitoring and telling if you are actually recovering from the training that you're doing or not.The best way that I like to think about HRV heart rate variability, it's kind of like your body's check engine light. You're driving, your check engine light comes on, you're like, oh shit, there might be something wrong here.There might not be, but there might be. And it's a sign as signal that you need to go get this thing checked out, run a diagnostic, make some change to your vehicle to make sure that it's running smoothly and your body works the same way.If you're training and training and training and you have a lower [...0.7s] HRV than normal, then this might be a sign, oh shit, something might be wrong here.I might be over training. I might be under recovering. And I may need to [...0.5s] make some changes to my training schedule or my recovery to make sure that I can consistently train while avoiding injury or avoiding burnout. Okay um, [...0.8s] so typically good rule of thumb is we want a higher HRV, a higher heart rate variability. But HRV is [...0.6s] fairly individualized. It's not like resting heart rate, right?Like resting heart rate, a normal average resting heart rate is 60 to 100 beats per minute if you're in the [...1.0s] mid 50s to high 40s and you're probably at a pretty elite or athletic resting heart rate. And that's pretty standard across the board.HRV is different. You know, sometimes you talk to people that have HRVs that average in the hundreds, sometimes you have people that average HRVs in the 80s or the 70s. It's not necessarily about getting the highest HRV that you can possibly have though.You know, maybe if you're, I would say sub 80, we may need to work on increasing your HRV, but we're more concerned about your individual HRV numbers compared to [...0.6s] HRV numbers to other people in your age bracket. Okay um, [...0.7s] there are a couple different tools that you can use to measure your HRV and your heart rate variability. There are things like, whoop, that's what I use. Wearing is another great option.Garmin Apple Watch. Pretty much any wearable on the market will measure your heart rate, heart rate variability.The keys with heart rate variability is that you typically wanna get a reading at the same time every single day. Typically morning is preferred. We wanna be consistent using the same device every single day at the same times every single day.What's cool about some of the more [...0.6s] modern wearables and trackers that automatically calculate your HRV for you when you sleep? It gives you your score and then compares it to your data and trends over time.Back in the day when I was in college, before [...0.5s] whoops and orderings and all these different wearables, we're out and [...0.5s] red, heart rate variability, there really weren't a lot of options.So I would wake up every morning and I would strap a polar heart rate monitor to my chest and I would manually log my HRV and track my trends. It was pretty tedious, um, and it took a lot of time. So very grateful that we have more ways of measuring and using HRV right now.But the thing about HRV and really any kind of recovery data and why this is so important is because it's just a tool and it's just a sign [...0.6s] of if we need to make changes to our training and our recovery or not.Most fighters, combat athletes, martial artists that I talk to don't really have any kind of system or [...0.7s] recovery data tracking in place.Most of them just go on feeling either I'm gonna train really hard as hard as I can every single day, no matter how I'm feeling, I'm just gonna push through the tiredness and the soreness and the fatigue because I have to get better, I have to outwork everyone, or they're gonna have days where fuck, I'm really beat up today. Should I train? Should I not train? Should I recover? Should I just push through it?And so if we're just basing our training intensity and recovery days off of feelings, what this creates is a lot of uncertainty. It creates a lot of doubt, it creates a lot of anxiety, it creates a lot of guest work.And more times than not, what fighters end up doing is just pushing through the fatigue when there are days that they should be recovering. And it could potentially lead to overtraining, injury and burnout.So it's beautiful, beautiful about using recovery data like heart rate variability [...0.7s] that it helps take the feelings and the emotions out of your recovery because the data doesn't lie.If you wake up in the morning and you feel trashed from training days before and you have a lower HRV than normal, then it's probably a good idea to reduce your training volume and intensity and prioritize recovery a little bit.On the other side of things, if you wake up in the morning and you're feeling trash, but your HRV is pretty high or normal, then that might be a good sign that you just have to suck it up and push through training a little bit.Now [...0.5s] it's important to understand that your heart rate variability and this data is not the end all be all, [...0.5s] like I've had clients in the past and this is something that I'm guilty of.A lot of people that will put too much reliance on the numbers and data and they will hyper fixate on what the number say, oh my, my HRV is low today, I shouldn't do anything. Oh, my HRV is high, okay, now I can train. And just like anything, the data that we use, [...0.8s] it's just a tool.And so when I coach our athletes and we make decisions to their training based on different recovery metrics like HRV, we [...0.7s] compile [...0.6s] multiple data points in order to make the smartest training and recovery decisions for each client.Will look at their heart rate variability, will look at their resting heart rate, will look at their sleep [...0.6s] duration and quality if they're using a wearable that gives them a readiness score, will look at the Recovery Readiness score, will also look at their subjective markers. How are you feeling that day?Do you feel like you can perform or do you feel like you need to rest a little bit? And then we'll also look at some level of performance factor. Are your strength numbers a little bit lower than normal? It's your reaction time a little bit slower.And we'll use all of this information together to make a decision about training. We're not just going based off of feelings. We're not just going based off of data.We're using it all together. And it takes a little bit of time to develop the skill of monitoring your recovery and doing it [...0.5s] appropriately.But having that data is the first step and it's, it's so important, like, [...0.8s] I always tell clients, like, if you're not supplementing with creatine, what are you doing? You're leaving a ton of performance on the table.It's a no brainer for athletes. And I would say the same thing goes for tracking your HRV. It's so simple to track your HRV now, and if you're not tracking and using your HRV to monitor your recovery, what are you doing? It's very affordable to do, and it's just another [...0.7s] level of data and insight that can help you make more [...1.2s] educated decisions about your training and recovery.Alright, so HRV very important. It's the time variance between your heartbeats. It tells us if you're in a fight or flight sympathetic state or a rest and digest parasympathetic state. The higher your HRV is, high HRV means more parasympathetic. Low HRV means more sympathetic, more fight or flight.Okay, now it's important. Like I said earlier, you don't wanna compare your HRV to others. You only wanna compare your HRV to your own numbers and your own trends. So a lot of the times, like, everybody has data now everybody for the most part has a wearable smoke. You probably have some way of tracking your HRV. [...1.6s]Most people though don't know how to use this data appropriately. And a lot of the times, the data just creates more confusion and more stress, and can do more harm than good. So when it comes to using your HRV, this is how I would use it with our clients and with myself.The first thing that I would do is rather than looking at your HRV trends on a day to day basis and making decisions based on outliers. Like let's say your HRV is consistently averaging 100 and maybe one day you wake up and it's 50 [...0.5s] or it's sixty.I wouldn't go and make complete change. So I have to take off training today. I have to change my entire training week. I had a low HRV debt. I wouldn't make decisions based on one day. Anything can happen. The body's a weird thing. It's not a perfect science.What I would do is base your decisions off of a seven to 14 day trend in data. So I would look at the last one to two weeks of your data. I would see what your HRV has averaged over the course of those days. And then I would see [...0.5s] how frequently you're off trend.If there's only one or two times that your HRV is a little bit lower than normal and you wake up that morning and you have another low HRV score, you probably don't have to make any changes to your training.You're probably good to go and train as planned now over the course of a one to two week timespan.If you have three, four, five, six days or more in a row that you're consistently trending down or you're having lower than normal heart rate variability numbers, then this is probably a strong indicator that you need to change your training intensity. Maybe you take a rest day, maybe you just have to have a lighter day.And you have to prioritize your recovery a little bit more in order to get your HIV a little bit higher so you can avoid injury [...0.8s] and you can avoid burnout.And this is really [...0.8s] the power of HRV. This is really where it takes the feeling and emotions out of it because if you're in a place where you're starting to flirt with under recovering or over training and you don't have a check engine light system like HRV, then you're just going based on feelings and guest work every single day.You might be waking up daily trashed and you're not sure if you should push the pace or not.And then even worse, [...0.5s] you're guessing, you decide, okay, I'm gonna recover today. And then you feel like a pussy because you're not pushing through the pain, because your opponents are working harder than you, because you're taking the easy way out.But when you have objective data that takes those emotions and feelings out of it, it allows you to take a recovery day and pull back [...0.5s] with more confidence and with a stronger mindset. It makes it a part of the plan.It actually fuels your confidence because, you know, you're working smarter than everybody else.While I'm feeling shitty today and my HRV has been trending downward consistently for the last five days, I'm gonna prioritize recovery today because I'm a professional, because I'm an intelligent athlete and I'm not just here to push through it. I'm not here for a short time. I'm here to do this for a long time.So that's the power of HRV. If you're in a place where you are [...0.6s] consistently [...1.2s] experiencing lower HRV or lower recovery days, there are a few things that you can do in order to boost your recovery back up. You can adjust the volume of your training.So either how long your training sessions are or how much work you're doing in your training sessions, you can [...1.4s] decrease the intensity of your training. So don't go as hard. If it's supposed to be a hard sparring day, maybe you just do some light padwork.If you're supposed to be hitting one rep max's in the weight room that day, maybe you just [...0.8s] do single raps at 70% of your one rap max, right? You cut your volume in your intensity or maybe you cut the frequency. Maybe you take out a training day and turn it into a rest or recovery day.And then when your HRV and your recovery shoots back up, you can resume the training as normal. You know, [...0.5s] there isn't the perfect plan [...0.6s] and the perfect situations don't arise. Every single day is different, and especially for combat athletes.There are so many variables that come into play with your stress levels between training, and work, and family, and all the different sessions that, that you need to do that. Every single day is gonna be a little bit different.So having a piece of data like HRV that monitors your stress levels to help you make more educated decisions on recovery is one of the most powerful things that you can do to be in the sport long term and to succeed in the sport long term.All right, so that's what HRV is. That's why HRV is important, and that's how you can use HRV to [...0.9s] start making more educated decisions about your training, and most importantly your recovery. So you can stay in the game longer while avoiding injury and burnout.The next thing that I wanna talk about is how you can actually improve your heart rate variability. Because like I said, if your HRV is lower, let's say your sub 70, sub 80 on your HRV score, then it might be a good idea to invest a little bit of time in increasing your HRV.Now [...0.8s] HRV is [...1.2s] very [...0.6s] dependent on lifestyle more than anything else, the things that are causing you stress. Reducing that stress is going to have the biggest impact on your HRV. So avoiding stressful situations, if it's something like work that you can't avoid, it causes you a lot of stress.Having strategies for bringing your stress down, some kind of relaxation PRA [...0.7s] practice like journaling or meditation or reading.Training and exercise is not a good stress management option option, option. Excuse me, I hear people say this all the time, like, oh, training is my stress management. Oh, I keep my stress low by working out. And it might [...1.1s] take you out of the mental situations that are causing you stress.But training by nature is stressful to the body. It puts you in a fight or flight state. Your body doesn't know the difference between stress from a hard day of work or stress from a hard training session. So exercising and training does not help with your stress. It increases your stress.All right, things that are going to decrease your stress are going to be things like journaling or meditation or reading.Making sure that you have a high sleep quality, a good amount of sleep, seven to eight hours, you're consistently sleeping. That's going to have a large impact on increasing your heart rate variability. Your nutrition is going to have a massive impact on your heart rate variability.Are you eating a gram of protein per body weight, per pound of body weight? Are you making sure that your foods are mostly whole nutrient dense foods, avoiding overly processed, overly calorie dense foods. Are you eating calories in alignment with your goals? [...2.0s] What about your hydration? Are you drinking enough water? [...1.1s] Are you replacing what you're sweating in training with electrolytes?These are all factors that come in to increasing your HRV, [...0.7s] so it's very important.The first thing that you wanna do if you wanna increase your HRV, you have to look at the [...0.6s] foundational components of your life and your stress management, [...0.6s] sleep, [...0.7s] nutrition, hydration, and then tools to manage stress.The next thing that you can do if those things are checked off, like, you just make tiny changes to those things, boom, you're gonna see probably a massive increase in your heart rate variability.The second thing is your training. Okay, take a look at the volume and the intensity of your training. If you are chronically over training, if you're going hard every single day, if you're training seven days a week with no rest day, if you're feeling beat up and burned out all the time, then it might be worth maybe reducing the frequency of your training.Like, if you're training seven days a week, how about we train six days a week, how about we train five days a week? Reduce your frequency. If you're going hard every single day, how about we modulate and undulate the intensity and volume a little bit? Let's have hard light and medium days.This way on your hard days you can push hard, on your medium days you can pull it back a little bit. On your light days you can recover [...0.9s] a good schedule. You could go hard medium light, hard medium light and then maybe have another medium day or maybe you have a rest day.You can do something like that. And this way you're still putting in consistent work. You're training six days a week, but you're not trashing your body. This could increase your heart rate variability. Um.Another thing that you can do to increase your heart rate variability, like if your, [...1.1s] if all of your foundational [...1.1s] life habits are in place, your sleep, your nutrition, your stress management, if you have a rest day, if you have an intelligently designed training schedule with hard light in medium days, then you might need to increase your aerobic work a little bit.If you're doing all those things and you're still struggling with HRV, you have a lower HRV, then [...0.5s] increasing your aerobic capacity, and we have an entire podcast on aerobic capacity could be a way to help your heart work more efficiently. And this could help increase your HRV.But honestly, [...0.5s] a better sign if you need to be investing more time into aerobic work would be [...0.6s] your resting heart rate [...0.7s] in combination with your HRV.Like if your HRV is trash, but you have a pretty decent resting heart rate, like, if your sub 60 beats per minute on your resting heart rate, then you probably don't need to do more aerobic work. Aerobic work probably isn't going to do that much in increasing your heart rate variability.You're probably gonna Wanna look at some of your other life factors or the intensity of your training.If you're doing everything that I talked about, you're sleeping good, you're eating good, you're hydrating, right, you're managing your stress with a consistent practice, you have proper volume and intensity and intensity management in your training, and your heart rate variability is low, and your resting heart rate is higher than 60, 60 or higher, then you might wanna introduce some more aerobic work into your training. That could help [...0.6s] increase your HRV, reduce [...0.6s] your resting heart rate. Uh, and then that's gonna help obviously with your conditioning as well. We talked about meditating. We talked about breath work.You can also incorporate some mobility [...0.6s] or cold exposure to help increase your heart rate variability.But these are kind of like the sprinkles on top of the ice cream cone. Like the foundation is going to be your sleep and nutrition, then the ice cream itself is gonna be your training intensity and volume, and the sprinkles on top are gonna be some of that outside stuff, the breath work, the mobility, all of that, which is really important.Okay, [...0.6s] that just a brief overview of heart rate variability. Some notes to leave you with. Don't obsess over your daily numbers. Um, [...0.6s] don't just skip sessions because your HRV is low. Don't just use HRV as an excuse to avoid the hard work. Um.Track HRV consistently. Take it seriously, but use it as a tool [...0.5s] in combination with everything else that comes into your training, your subjective feeling, your resting heart rate, your nutrition, your sleep conversations with your coaches.HRV is so powerful because it takes the guessing out of your training in your recovery. It removes unnecessary anxiety or stress. It helps you predict whether your body is at risk for injury or not and allows you to really truly trust in your preparation.Like I, I talk to a lot of fighters that are always [...1.3s] in the stressful anxiety state of uncertainty, in fear, in doubt. Am I doing enough? Am I being outworked? Am I doing the right things? I just have to keep working harder and harder and harder.And then on top of that, they do harder and harder and harder work and they don't see themselves getting better. And it makes the cycle just this repetitive cycle that could lead to injury and burnout or short lived, uh, career.And so tracking data like HRV removes so much of that guestwork and so much of that uncertainty. So you can train with more confidence, you can train with less injury, you can be in the sport for longer, and you can just get more joy out of what you're doing.Okay, [...0.6s] so that's it, that's my rundown of HRV. Like I said, it's just a brief breakdown of everything that you need to know about HRV, why it's important, how to use it, how to improve it. Um, remember, HRV is just [...0.6s] one piece of a [...0.7s] larger training system. It's a tool. And like any tool, you have to know when to use it and why use it.That was the point of this podcast, the main point of HRV. It's your check engine light. You use it as a tool to help you make changes to all the other variables that come into being a combat athlete.You're on mat training, you're off mat training, your nutrition, your sleep, your recovery, your stress management, all of these different factors come into play. And HRV is just a tool to help us understand and guide the system that we're creating here.That's why, like, our philosophy is called the Fight Science Operating System. Because it all is cool here, and it all comes together. It's the software that allows you to run your techniques and [...0.5s] perform at your highest when you step into the cage, when you step on the mats, when you step on the ring.So if you would like some help updating that software, putting together a full system for strength and conditioning, nutrition, recovery, mindset, d attracting like HRV, then I'd be grateful for the opportunity to see how we can help.You can shoot me a DM over Instagram. We can talk to see if our coaching is the right option for you. There are any episodes or topics that you wanna see, that you want me to cover. You can drop them in the comments below. And until next time, [...0.6s] I'll catch you later. PeacePeace