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The Relaxed Running podcast is a behind the scenes conversation with the best athletes, coaches and professionals in the world of distance running. From training, hydration and nutrition to racing and recovering, we learn from the best in the world.
Relaxed conversations which are packed with actionable takeaways to help you take your running performance up a notch. Save yourself years of guess work and learn from the people who are doing it at the highest level.
Tyson (00:00.274)
There we are, sweet, there we go, now we're good. Marco, mate, it's good, I was just saying to you before I hit record that I'm glad that you were good enough to come back and make time for this show, because last time when we were supposed to do it, one of the blessings, I guess, of online podcasts is you can meet with people anywhere in the world.
But one of the problems is I'm constantly trying to navigate different time zones. And our first attempt was a fail by me. I think I missed it by about four or five hours. And so I'm glad you made the time to come back on. But I'm really excited for the episode. I'm so excited to have the chance to sit down and speak with you because obviously I've heard so much about your work. I've heard so much about the research and the study that you're doing. And
I'm excited because I feel as though the conversation around what you're doing is starting to become a lot more mainstream in the sense that I think a couple of years ago, people were very familiar with heart rate and the impact that heart rate has on, um, performance and what it says about recovery. But the whole conversation around heart rate variability for so many people is still a relatively new concept. So at the risk of getting you to repeat something that you've probably gone over.
more than anyone on the subject. I thought we could lay the foundation for what it is we're actually speaking about when we talk about heart rate variability.
Marco Altini (01:27.078)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, as you said, it's becoming more common that people can track these parameters. And yeah, I don't mind repeating myself. I think it's, you know, one of the most important aspects now is really that we understand what we are tracking and what it can do, or what it cannot do. Most importantly, maybe without, you know, the marketing and noise, it can be tricky sometimes. So more than glad, you know, to be here and have the opportunity to speak about these things and hopefully we can help.
a few people making sense of the data that they collect. So what is heart rate variability? Heart rate variability is technically the variation between consecutive heartbeats. So when the heart beats, it does not beat constantly. There is always a little variation between consecutive beats. Even if our heart rate is 60 beats per minute, we do not have.
one beat exactly every second. There is always some variation and when we quantify this variation over a certain period of time, a minute or a couple of minutes, then we determine our heart rate variability. And that is interesting because this variation is not random, but it's actually due to how the autonomic nervous system modulates heart rhythm and that in turn
is happening often in response to stress. So heart rate variability becomes an indirect way to measure non-invasively and at this point very easily how stress is impacting the autonomic nervous system, which then will modulate heart rhythm. So we cannot measure stress, this sort of abstract entity. We cannot even measure the autonomic nervous system actually non-invasively. So...
indirectly we can look at how heart rate and heart rate variability are changing when we face stressors and that's why this type of data can be useful. It's just an indirect way to capture our stress response and see how we are doing basically in your response to various training or non-training related stressors.
Tyson (03:44.398)
Yeah, we live in such interesting times because I think for as long as I can remember, one of the giveaways that my sympathetic nervous system might be under a little bit of stress, or, you know, feel free to correct me. I don't know if I'm getting my sympathetic and parasympathetic muddled up, but one of the ways that I know my body is under stress is if I have a couple of rough nights of sleep, one of the physiological things I'll notice is I get very sinacy.
very quickly. And I thought it's disappointing for me that I have to get to a point with my health, that I have to wait for my sinuses to start going like this before I realize, oh, something's up here. And I was trying to deal with this or get my head around the benefits of something like heart rate variability. And I thought, well, on a personal level for me, perhaps a little more insight into what this data is actually telling me about my current situation, my current ability to...
handle the load or the stress or a combination of those two things is perhaps you're able to pull things back a little bit for a small period of time before you start getting any of these negative effects on your health. And it's an interesting time because I think obviously the access that we have to data, the access that we have to technology and our ability to be able to combine these things so neatly, obviously.
makes our opportunity to perform at a higher level, perhaps a little more reasonable. But I was just curious to hear your thoughts on, I mean, the use of data over the use of just following how you feel. Because it's something that I constantly struggle with, whether it's with Garmin or with TrainingPeaks and all the data that you have access to, but still being able to stay in tune with what it is that my body is actually telling me.
without just getting so obsessed with numbers that I'll lose track of, okay, how am I actually feeling?
Marco Altini (05:45.406)
Yeah, I think that's one of the most important points, especially, well, I wouldn't say just with recovery and HRV and resting physiology, but even if you think about some of the tools you mentioned and other wearables that indeed give you all sorts of different scores related at this point to sleep or even to stress during the day, all sorts of things that...
can impact us psychologically to the point that it can lead to, yeah, even to issues that were not there before, right? Like orthosomia, right? When it's a new world, basically it has been defined as people that get too hooked up into optimizing their sleep numbers, tracking numbers, sleep quality as derived from where it was not.
their perceived sleep quality to the point that their sleep worsens. Right. So these are, these are, um, issues that we need to consider. I think, um, let's try to break it down a bit. So first, if we look at the problems we had until a few years ago, before the wearables, let's say this was still present because you could track.
just the physiology of resting heart rate during the night or in the morning or resting heart rate variability. And you could look at this number and that could also impact you negatively. So there we need to think about what we are doing. I think one of the important points is doing things like what we are doing now. So the educational component of it, because if we understand what we are tracking and what it means, and we use a tool that can interpret that data correctly, and I clarify that in a second what that means.
Typically, it's much easier not to worry. For example, when we track our resting physiology, the vast majority of the time, almost every day, the result of this tracking should be that everything is normal. Like this, if we just look at our physiology in relation to our normal range, so how our physiology has changed in the past and what is today, on the vast majority of the cases of the days, everything should just be normal.
Marco Altini (08:05.694)
Now the tools typically over interpret this kind of small variations because, you know, for engagement for all sorts of things, because it's a device that, you know, you pay for, and maybe you don't pay a subscription. So I think there's a process there that tries to keep the user, you know, playing with this thing, but if we actually just focus on the physiology, typically the result should be quite boring. It should be paid so normal, just, you know, continue with what you have planned. In fact.
The device can only say that, continue with what you plan, because it cannot derive a plan for you based on the physiology. There is no context to do that. So when you use these tools, you should first work with a coach, or if you're a self-coach, you still have your plan. And then you look at the tool and the data, and you might make some small adjustments. That's really all there is. It's not about every day making up things for you, because we simply do not have.
the context based on the physiology, the physiology can change in response to all sorts of things. So if we understand that most days things are just normal, then I think we get less into that sort of psychological pattern maybe in which we start worrying even before seeing the numbers or we see the numbers and we think that we have to change all sorts of things, but that is not really the case. Even if it is.
An important day, maybe we have a race or, you know, some very stressful event at work, depending on, you know, what's our profession and things like that. And we have a suppression in HRV that would be a sign of increased stress. That is not negative percent, right? There is no evidence that the suppression means that you cannot perform. It simply means that your body is a bit more sympathetic. The parasympathetic system is a bit, maybe a bit more suppressed.
So there is more stress, but that could be positive. It could be that you're ready to execute, so to speak, on that day. So if we understand these things, I think we start to get less concerned. So changes should be minimal outside of our normal range. And when things are a bit off on a key day, that can be totally fine. So we need, I think, to understand these aspects when we look at the physiology and...
Marco Altini (10:26.826)
I think we were getting there until the wearables arrived and then it became a bit messy, to be politically correct. So many of these devices now create all sorts of scores. For example, readiness scores and sleep scores and recovery scores. And I think one thing to understand well that is not probably discussed much is that these
are not just your physiology, right? So they put together a number of things. And basically they are made up numbers for which there is no reference, right? So that is also tricky for there is no way to validate a sensor to be able to estimate your recovery or readiness because there is no reference for that. And then by combining your physiology and your behavior, this course...
make assumptions on what your behavior means in terms of your recovery. An example is you sleep a bit less and then you have a lower score and people figure this out quite quickly and then they start becoming obsessed. Maybe I need to stay in bed more and then they stay in bed longer for the device to track more sleep but then they're not sleeping well, they're sleeping poorly and they're thinking about these things and then basically the combination of the behavior.
and the physiology is not really the ideal way, I think, to use these tools. Because what we want to do is really to just look at how our physiology is changing. And then behavior is key to contextualize the changes. But if we put everything together in a score, we basically create made up numbers that make assumptions on recovery based on behavior and those assumptions don't.
necessarily apply to us. If I sleep a bit less, I could be perfectly fine in the morning, but I will always be penalized by the score because the score assumes less sleep means less recovery, more activity means less recovery. That is not typically the case. So I think the best thing we can do actually is to try to look at the physiology and the data which the wearable does provide and sort of be a bit skeptical or take it more as a toy in terms of that.
Marco Altini (12:52.382)
the scores that we got on top of that. I think at that point, we can start to be less impacted negatively and psychologically. I just want to add one thing because I said all of this, but the thing I wanted to say at the beginning was that the reason to use the data is never, in my opinion, to replace our subjective view. But using the data can, I think,
improve the way we use subjective feeling. We can become more aware, can reach the whole experience of, you know, trying to understand how we respond to training and with other stressors. I think that is why it is useful and we should look at it if that's something that interests us. It's a bit like starting to use heart rate during exercise. You know, as a recreational runner, many years ago I started running. I thought I was running easy and doing my workouts.
But then, you know, my easy running was actually always moderate. So I was always cooked. You know, I could not, you know, increase volume. My hard sessions were not so hard, you know, all the typical problems. Then I look at data and the data does behave. You're working so hard actually when you go easy. And then I start, you know, to train at much slower pace, slower heart rate. Over the years, I developed that sense of awareness of what's hard, what is not hard.
Tyson (13:55.57)
Yeah.
Marco Altini (14:19.218)
Now I can go out without heart rate and it's fine. I don't need that. But it was key for this self-awareness process, let's say to learn to use feel in better ways. And I think the same can happen with resting physiology and morning data. We look at this data and then we can learn a bit, hey, this is how we respond to different stressors and things like that. But I think it is key that we look at the data, the physiology, not the made up scores. So that is why.
Um, yeah, I, I went, you know, the long way to get here, trying to explain a bit the differences because I think it can be quite tricky these days with all these numbers that were pushed. Um, and then maybe the actual physiology is hidden somewhere in the apps.
Tyson (15:05.566)
Yeah, man. It's such a good point. In fact, as you were speaking, I was thinking about my own experience, starting to use heart rate monitors for my own training, because I fell into the same trap for many years. I retired from competitive running in 2014. And I would say that 99% of my training was guided by feelings. And I would say that 99% of my training was also, um, probably, probably fueled by emotion in the sense that.
If I ran a particular time for a particular course last week, then I wanted to run slightly faster no matter what that meant or the consequences for it were this week. And so perhaps over the last maybe 12 months in particular, I've started to really delve into, you know, under the inspiration of Gordo Byrne, who I'm not sure you know, but I've seen follows your work quite closely. I've started to pay a lot more attention to the zones that I'm actually in when I'm out there running.
And like you, man, and like so many of us, I think the one, uh, just blatantly obvious thing is so often we're running at a level that perhaps for that session we shouldn't be, but I want to rewind to, to something else you said there. Cause it was really interesting. Um, the gamification of so many of the apps is something that I hadn't really thought about, like for sure it does make it entertaining. You can spend forever looking at, uh, whatever score, whatever heart rate, whatever it is that you want to see.
but it doesn't necessarily give you any context to what it means to your own performance. And I mean, there are so many different things that you can look at. And this is where for me, I can get a little overwhelmed whether it's TSS score or heart rate or heart rate variability or whatever. I go, oh my gosh, like where do I actually have to pay attention? Have you got any scaffold as to what it is that you actually pay attention to? And some of the things that you think are perhaps
too focused on that might not mean as much as we give them credit to mean or give them credit for.
Marco Altini (17:07.954)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So if we look at resting physiology and for resting physiology, I mean, everything that is tracked in a known context in the same way every day while you are at rest, far from stressors. And that can mean typically two cases, either you measure first thing in the morning or during the night with a wearable.
So when we think about these devices, so for morning measurements, this is quite easy because normally you take a measurement of your resting physiology. So what you are measuring is resting heart rate and heart rate variability. In the night, the sensor...
measures also, in fact, just those two things. Typically, 99% of the sensors will measure just resting heart rate and HRV, but then it will estimate all sorts of other things, your sleep stages, your sleep time, um, sleep quality, all sorts of things. So the first distinction I think we have to make is, okay, let's look at what is actually measured with the sensor that you have. And then we already made the
set of variables extremely small because everything else is basically made up or estimated. So the only things that are measured are resting heart rate, resting heart rate variability, and sometimes temperature. That is it. Everything else is derived from this and movement maybe. So I would look at those because those are the things that, you know, your device includes sensors that can measure this and can be validated to show that it can measure those things accurately.
against what is used in clinical practice and ECG, right? So the electrical activity on the heart with electrodes and everything, so you can compare. And most of them work quite well at this point in the night or in the morning. So the data, you can trust it, as long as you look at the physiology for the major brands, they work quite well. Or you use a nap with an external sensor or even with the phone camera like we have in ours. And also that is validated, morning snapshot of your physiology, and that is fine.
Marco Altini (19:19.21)
So I would start looking at those things and to simplify even further. You would, I would say at the beginning, you don't even maybe have to go into heart rate variability, just start paying attention at your resting heart rate. That is a simple, simpler, let's say maybe signal that captures also your stress response and then parasympathetic nervous system, the one in charge of your rest and recovery.
that we discussed before modulates your heart rhythm, it will do it in a way that you can capture as a reduced resting heart rate, typically when parasympathetic activity is higher and increased heart rate variability. So the resting heart rate itself already includes part of this information, and it is much easier to get it right when you measure.
In fact, you can even just measure it, you know, with your fingers. You don't need a sensor if you want to write. Um, it is easier not to get that data noisy, confounded by artifacts and those sorts of things. So failure variability is really about this precise timing between consecutive bits and those differences. And sometimes the most, uh, basic things can mess up the data. Maybe we just move around a bit. Or.
We swallow saliva and that is something that you do without even thinking. And it will double your HRV if you measure in that minute. It's just the bit to bit changes are so prone to issues that either you, you know, you know what you're doing or you know, you read your best practices and you take a good measurement, or sometimes it's just easier to, if you are maybe confused by the values you see and.
don't have a routine to do this correctly in the morning and are trusting that coming from a sensor that might be at a fact when things like that. Before you start worrying about HIV, I would say just have a look at resting cartridge. Does that make sense with respect to your behavior and things you're doing? For example, was a very stressful day yesterday or two days ago, do you see a slight increase in your resting cartridge? That is a sign that your body is slightly more stressed. Or you started exercising maybe three months ago.
Marco Altini (21:38.602)
and now you are keeping it up and you're improving your fitness. Your cardiorespiratory fitness is getting better. Your resting heart rate over a long period of time should go a bit lower. So should reduce as you get fitter. If instead your resting heart rate is much reduced today with respect to yesterday, it does not mean that you got very fit in one day. Obviously fitness changes are very slow, but it could be that you're fatigued.
I think that is interesting because it's a bit, it is interesting, but also it shows that the whole thing is quite nuanced. It's not as simple as, you know, higher heart rate is worse, right? That is why I try to stress this idea of the normal range and to use apps and tools that show you that. So that when you take measurements, if my heart rate today is 50, and my normal range is 48, 52, then today I know that everything is normal. If it is 49 or 48.
I also know that everything is normal. So it is okay that there are variations, but then if it is today, quite suppressed or quite high outside of my normal range, then I know maybe something is a bit off. It doesn't mean that I have to change my plans entirely. I just pay attention. Maybe for a couple of months, I just look at the data and the patterns. I don't make any change. I just learn from that. How my body is doing. Is it just a one day thing and tomorrow I'm back to normal. That maybe I don't worry about it at all. I never make a change. But if.
Maybe my heart rate remains elevated for two days and I don't feel so well. Then maybe I learn something from it and the next day I can make a change. So I would start that way. Simplest parameter resting heart rate. Try to see how it changes with respect to your normal range, both acutely, meaning right after a strong stressor and chronically, so over a period of weeks and months, see how things change there, learn from patterns and maybe then try to make some small adjustments to take it from there.
Tyson (23:39.138)
Yeah. So the thing that I'm really fascinated by, and I wonder how many people have this question, is the heart rate is what of growing up, I'm sure we look as though we're around about the same age, like growing up, I remember everything to do with exercise was very focused on heart rate. Hey, how fast is your heart beating in the break? How hard have you gone? What stress are you under? Okay.
The heart rate variability, the space between the heartbeats or the rhythm between the beats for lack of a better expression or lack of a better description, what is it that we're learning from the variability as opposed to the actual heartbeat? Is there something within the heartbeat or in the space in the heartbeat that we're getting information that the actual heartbeat doesn't provide? I hope that question made sense.
Marco Altini (24:27.43)
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question indeed, because we just talked about, you know, HRV and then I just said that heart rate is actually pretty much the same thing. So what is HRV that is not in heart rate, right? And I think the way I see it, based also on some of the data we collected and studies we've done, HRV is just a bit more sensitive to stressors. So that means that the way parasympathetic activity modulates heart rhythm is that heart
becomes slower, but the parasympathetic system is basically influencing heart rhythm, mostly during phases of the breathing cycle that are, for example, typically during the XA, the parasympathetic system is stronger. So the fact that this influence is not the same when you breathe in and when you breathe out means that when you have a few minutes of data and you compute...
the average heart rate, these differences are averaged out because it's just the average of that time window. But with the variability, you capture better how during the exhale the beats become wider and during the inhale become shorter. So this modulation is captured better mathematically by heart rate variability. And practically, when you look at, for example, how does your resting physiology change?
in response to workouts of different intensity. We can see that for heart rate, you will have changes that are in percentage smaller than the changes in heart rate variability. So if my heart rate changes by one, 2% and my HRV changes by five, 10%, then HRV becomes more sensitive to the stress rate and basically it's just easier to see the change there.
So it could be that in resting heart rate, I don't see changes for periods of weeks, even in response to mild stressors. Obviously if we are sick, if we drink way too much, like those strong stressors, they will show up in both signals. But maybe if I'm just training harder, it's a training block that is more volume, more intensity. I am well trained, I'm handling that well, but.
Marco Altini (26:47.938)
I'm still trying to push my limit and things like that. Maybe in a resting country, I don't see any of that. HRV might show me, hey, now we have suppression this day and suppression this other day. You know that maybe you don't want to go over that. So keep things a bit more in balance. It's just a bit of a more sensitive marker of stress. And as such, it can provide us with insightful information that maybe sometimes is not in a resting country.
Tyson (27:18.726)
Sure. It sounds like a fascination with heart rate is the gateway drug into heart rate variability. And so much more. Is there anything in reference to elite athletes that really stand out when it comes to heart rate variability? Obviously, we know that some of the best athletes in the world, traditionally, classically have a lower resting heart rate. Like I know there's plenty to say that the fitter you are, the slower your heart's going to beat when you're at rest.
Marco Altini (27:25.981)
possible
Tyson (27:48.794)
Are there any fairly similar variables that stand out with elite endurance athletes when it comes to the actual variability?
Marco Altini (27:57.566)
I think there is maybe a misconception that people have sometimes, and it's great to clarify. As you say, heart rate tends to reduce with increased fitness. We see that very well at the population level. If we look at unfit individuals against elite athletes, enormous differences in resting heart rate could be a half or less, even a third sometimes of what you have in sedentary individuals. For heart rate variability, people sometimes expect the same.
So, you know, your heart rate variability is high, you must be so fit. That is not really the case. So in my experience, it is not, heart rate variability is not a strong predictor of cardiorespiratory fitness. So in the past, during my studies, I've also worked on basically estimating VO2 max, so cardiorespiratory fitness level from data collected outside of a maximal test, so, you know, arresting physiology and your physiology as you.
move around or exercise in the activities of the day, living things like that. Things that you have now in some wearables, right? So you have wearables that give you a VO2 max estimate coming from data that is not a maximum test. And when looking at the predictors, so the parameters that could get you this VO2 max estimate in the most accurate way, TP-HRV was not one of those. Why resting heart rate was useful because indeed the reasoning is stronger. So I think.
For HRV, maybe there is a stronger genetic component. You know, there's sometimes our absolute value is there somewhere, and that is not really representative of much. And that's why I think the most useful way is always to look at relative changes over time with respect to the stresses that we face, our behavior and things like that, more than the absolute value. So you could have elite athletes that have the same values and untrained individuals.
And yeah, and that would be perfectly normal. And in fact, some years ago, we published a paper looking at a lot of data, both in terms of resting heart rate and HRV for people that would train very different amounts. So for example, sanitary individuals, people that would train once or twice per week until people that would train every day. And we broke this down across different age groups. So you could see the relationship between.
Tyson (29:56.048)
Yeah.
Marco Altini (30:22.278)
physical activity level and resting physiology was much stronger for resting heart rate at any age. So if you were 20 or if you are 50 and you exercise every day, your heart rate is the same. It's very low, there is no relationship with age and it's just linked to how much you move. Basically, and if you are inactive, your resting heart rate will be high when you're 20 or when you're 50 or 60. It is the same. For HRV, we have a strong...
link with age, so it reduces as we get older, but a weaker link with physical activity level, to the point that the categories are almost a complete overlap. So from the HRV, you can never tell this person is very fit or this person is unfit typically.
Tyson (31:12.462)
Yeah, but you can tell fairly closely how old the person might be. Like if you just had the heart rate variability, um, on average, is that what you were saying? You can, you can more closely identify if this is an, oh, sorry. You're saying the opposite.
Marco Altini (31:21.946)
No, not really. So what you say that I spread with you from what I said, that is meaning that there is indeed that struggling, but still the categories, the overlap is so large, even in that context, that we cannot really do that. So you can only see that there is a link, and HIV is lower as you age, but you have...
Again, people that are 30 or 20 might have the same HIV of people that are older, that are maybe 50 or 60. It is very unlikely that if you're 50 or 60, your HIV is very high, that we can say. But again, just given a value, we cannot say, okay, this HIV is the HIV of a 60-year-old or a 30-year-old. There is just a very large overlap between categories of people.
Tyson (31:55.897)
I am.
Marco Altini (32:17.71)
for any categories, age, physical activity, et cetera. That makes it, I think, very difficult to use absolute values of HRV for something practical. That is why I always say, okay, let's look at relative changes. The absolute value is not so informative. That's why I think it's not such a great diagnostic tool. Like if you use it and you take a measurement, I don't think you learn anything about yourself.
I think you need to take those measurements every day and see how they respond to stress and then we learn something.
Tyson (32:50.698)
Yeah. What was it that got you going in this particular direction? Because I imagine when you started the research, it seemed like it was even more of a rare field to have delved into. Like, I'm not a hundred percent sure when the study of HRV became a bigger thing in your area, but I mean, it's a really fascinating, I'm just curious to find out what it was that made you pivot from so many of the traditional tests or measurements for fitness or health or performance towards HRV.
Marco Altini (32:54.926)
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.
Marco Altini (33:00.284)
Yeah.
Marco Altini (33:21.118)
Yeah, well, it was by chance completely. So as a background, I've actually first started studying computer science and engineering. So I was like, let's say a technical person or not physiologist. And then during my studies, I went so originally I'm from Italy and then I went abroad because I wanted to study abroad and do things differently about 15 years ago. And ended up in this R&D
the Netherlands where they were developing the first prototypes of wearables. So sensors that you place on the body to measure brain activity and heart activity. And as an engineer, I wasn't really excited about, you know, building websites or computer networks or things like that. And I thought, wow, you can measure things from the body. They're so interesting. And then that changed completely for me. I really got excited about what we could get.
with the signals and look at those. And there's some colleagues that were looking at stress. So they were looking at the activity of muscles, around the neck area or shoulders and where you can maybe tense up as you get stressed in the office. And they were looking at cardiac activity, so HRV, because the research was there for 50 years already. It's just the technology was not there to really do these things in practical way.
ways that is not just, you know, go to the lab and take a measurements and come six months later and take another one, which of course is of no use given our understanding of these things today. So yeah, the technology was just maturing at the right time. I was fortunate to meet people that were working with these kind of things. And then I got really interested and having a background in, you know, coding and computer science. It was also the times of, you know, the first iPhones and the first phones that you could program.
And so I thought, okay, I like to build things and now I can build things that actually measure things from the body and we can try to learn how this works. And maybe I was also, you know, overworked and stressed out. So I thought, okay, stress is really interesting and, you know, picked up and doing sports and those sorts of things. And yeah, it's been, I think the fact that we still 15 years later, we're still, you
Tyson (35:31.378)
Hehehehe
Marco Altini (35:41.526)
talking about these things, not so sure about, you know, what an absolute value means or how the data should change in response to different stressors, I think, says a lot about how much there is to learn from the signals our body is sending us in some ways. And, yeah, it's still interesting, I think, after so far, so long, and we will see how that evolves in the future.
Tyson (36:08.418)
Yeah, it's, uh, it's been wild, as I said, just to see that progress of even things like the Garmin watches and its connectivity or connectivity with things like Strava, um, apps like TrainingPeaks, which is what I coach my athletes through. The, the access or the, the transformation of technology in regards to performance, particularly like with my interest area of distance running has blown my mind, but it always, it always scares me slash intrigues me.
Marco Altini (36:15.169)
Yeah.
Tyson (36:34.426)
what's going on behind the scenes. And I mean, I know you've, you've got quite a lot to do with the aura ring. Um, and that is, that's one piece of technology, which as a guy who is interested, but not involved in that scene just blows my mind. The fact that you can pick up so much data from such a simple appearing tool is, is mind blowing, but in the next 10 years, like, do you think, is this just going to look completely different?
The things that we're measuring, the things that we're wearing, the things that we're using to measure, monitor, track performance, fast-forwarding a couple of years or 10 years maybe.
Marco Altini (37:11.866)
Yes, as you say, I think the technology improvements have been mind blowing. The link is, you know, I'm an advisor for Aura, so just for disclosure, but, you know, something so small, able to measure what it measures in terms of just as in cafe and our availability and temperature is, you know, unthinkable 10 years ago, 15 years ago when we started doing these things and the prototypes we had, you know.
People could just not possibly wear those. It was just for research and to do studies. There were enormous sensors. So that the minimization and the technology has been really great. I think we went through that stage, and now we got really good at measuring a few things and making all sort of really nice sensors. Maybe in the last year or two, we got a bit lost there. So meaning that now we are still measuring the same things that we were measuring 10 years ago.
but you are making up a lot of things, the things we discussed before on this course. And so that I'm less a fan of, right? So now with trying to monitor stress continuously, I don't think that is the way to go. I don't think it is how the body works. I think, you know, measuring at rest at certain times, far from stressors gives us some insights. Measuring all the time is very noisy, very tightly coupled to all sorts of things that we do that are irrelevant. I think we...
we really can get them into those sort of dysfunctional behaviors by being obsessed with data that is not really helpful in terms of making some meaningful adjustments in our lives. So there's a line there somewhere that maybe we crossed. But I think in the future, thanks also to the proliferation of all these variables and all the studies that these companies are doing, as well as the people using them, we will start to...
understand a bit better also how these things change in response to maybe different interventions for different types of people. These are things we don't really know from the literature because we could not study them longitudinally every day for a long period of time in many people with different characteristics. So I think we will get better at understanding, you know, if I do this or that, how do I respond? Is that good? Is that not good? How does it change my health? How does it change my performance? So in terms of
Marco Altini (39:35.754)
the actionability and the way we can impact the data. Also how that relates to the outcomes. So health and performance, because people sometimes obsess on the metric because they can track that. So maybe they wanna optimize HRV, but what does that mean? And does that even impact what really matters, which is your health and performance? Because maybe it doesn't, or maybe it does. I don't think we know these things. So...
I think the technology in the next years will allow us to answer some of those questions and maybe some new sensors will be able to measure things that are not just our resting physiology, heart rate and HAP, but maybe we saw that with glucose monitors already, right? They are not really non-invasive, right? Even the ones that use interstitial tissue for the measurement are, you know, they have a small needle that you have to...
place. But still, it's not as the traditional methods to sample blood. So it is a way to capture data that can be insightful for different applications. And maybe in the future we can look at hormones change in response to, you know, different stressors and things because
that is another aspect of stress and heart rate variability. Like we look at this again, because it's easy, non-invasive and we can do it anytime. But there are other responses in the body that are not captured by these tools and might be interesting to see as well. Similarly, during exercise, we might, you know, be able to look at lactate and other aspects also, non-invasively, the way we do with glucose monitors today. So those kinds of things, I think.
are being worked on. I just hope that we don't get carried away too much into the world of estimates from optical signals, meaning that you just have lights flashing everywhere and hope that those are somewhat linked to the actual signal you're interested in. But we actually get to measure these things in a way or the other that is a bit more accurate because otherwise you can get...
Marco Altini (41:55.798)
can get a bit tricky if we start to rely on signals that are not so accurate as it happens in some cases today.
Tyson (42:04.286)
Yeah, I'm always fascinated by the emotional states that athletes find themselves in as well. And I mean, perhaps I should have mentioned this before when we were speaking about the information without context is sometimes unhelpful. But an example that often comes to mind is I had a friend, I've got a friend who lives in Belgium now actually, and he is, he was a very good 3000, so that he ran 343 for 1500, he 803 for 3K, that Kale Simons is his name.
And he was fantastic at running angry before a race. I often laughed at him because he was, he's a, what do you call it? He's a bit of an extra, a bit of an eccentric in the complimentary sense of the word, and he would often get himself hyped up and angry and furious. And you could just tell he was in a bad mood and in that state, he would go out and he would run incredible performances. Whereas myself, I, I could never do that. I often laugh with my wife.
Because if I ever had a big fight with her or an argument before a training session and I went to training angry, I was the complete opposite. I was an emotional wreck. My emotions took over my performance always dropped. And I find that fascinating. Like perhaps that's a whole other podcast conversation, but the way certain emotions impact an athlete's performance would be something that I'd be really interested to, to learn more about. I'm not sure if that's a field of study or an interest that you've paid much attention to.
Marco Altini (43:32.33)
Yeah, no, it's not something I've investigated outside of the relation between how the data you look at impacts that basically mental state, which we discussed briefly a bit before. And I think also it's really key. If I think about the data I see every time on race day from wearables is always, hey, today just take a deep breath.
stay home and you know, it's not a day for breaking any records and things like that. I'm like, wow, fortunately I understand where this comes from because it's just that I didn't sleep much and I ate more carbs. So my heart rate was elevated and all these kinds of things. But you know, if you read that and you don't know where it comes from, it can mess with you. So yeah, all aspects that need to be considered carefully before we embark into the journey of...
derailing our performance with the elements.
Tyson (44:30.93)
Yeah, I follow you on Strava and it appears that so many of the places that you're running seem to be fairly good stress reduces. I think for anyone interested who's on Strava, make sure you jump on and follow Marco because some of the, I don't know if you were back in Italy recently, I can't remember where I saw the photos, but it being running through some of the most beautiful terrain I've ever seen. So it's made my stress levels go up knowing that I have to run.
Marco Altini (44:40.109)
Thanks for watching!
Marco Altini (44:46.529)
AM.
Tyson (44:54.018)
on the rail trail that I do each and every day. But is that a focus point for you? It seems as though some of your big long runs are strategically planned around beautiful nature.
Marco Altini (44:59.724)
I'm...
Marco Altini (45:07.218)
Yeah, yeah, man, it's not a joke. It's for real. We moved here a couple of months ago, just thinking about this kind of thing. Really like try to stay in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Italy and go out and be on the trail and mentally be in the right place for training and for work. And don't get always overwhelmed by all sorts of things like we did maybe over the past 15 years, living in big cities and things like that.
I think we still like some interruptions of this with city energy, but at the same time, I don't know if we are getting wiser or just older, but it is pretty around here.
Tyson (45:55.078)
Yeah, sure is man. Hey, just before I let you go, where I'll make sure I tag the, or link the HRV for training website in the description to this episode. But for people who wanna find out more about you or follow along, where can they find you?
Marco Altini (46:12.226)
I would say mostly these days on Substack, maybe I've write quite a bit about these topics. That would be probably first name, last name, Substack. So marc or Twitter X there also. I try to basically cover the same things. So work related things, I would say those platforms. Yeah, always feel free to ask if you have questions, doubts about things we discussed today. And I can try to help.
Yeah, and that's it. The HRV for Training website, as you mentioned, that's part of the tools that we built. That's all.
Tyson (46:50.182)
Yeah, awesome man. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I've really been looking forward to this chat and I'm excited. I was excited to hear from you and I'm excited to delve in a little bit more. I'm relatively new to the whole conversation myself around HRV, but I mean, you've really piqued my interest, which I knew you would. So thank you very much.
Marco Altini (47:12.895)
Thank you for having me.
Tyson (47:15.282)
Awesome. I'll cut that off there, man. Dude, that was, that was a great chat. Thank you, brother. I really appreciate it.