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Welcome to Strength Renewed, the podcast that celebrates new beginnings for women 40 and beyond. This is your go-to space for empowering conversations about building resilience, strength, and confidence—inside and out.
Discover how to fuel your body with good nutrition, train smart, and cultivate a strong mindset to thrive in midlife and beyond. Whether you're navigating hormonal changes, starting (or restarting) your fitness journey, or simply striving to feel your best, Strength Renewed offers expert advice, real-life stories, and actionable strategies to help you live a vibrant, powerful life.
It's never too late to redefine your strength.
00:20
This is fun time for Jess and Nikki. Hi, Max. Hi, it's so hilarious, Jess. You were like, you're in a singlet and I've got like some sort of like polar fleece body warmer on. actually thought of it because I'm like, I'm stuck to our podcast in a bikini and you're going to be in a... In a snow suit. In a snow suit. I think about this all the time. Like, I'm going to turn the fan off, but I'm literally in like a tank top and shorts and I'm hot.
00:47
And yes, the ice in my water has already melted, but it's not excruciating. It is a true night like this that I wish we were podcasting in my backyard together because it's like total Mickey, Mickey and just whether it's like perfect for you because it's not too hot. It's not too cold. Yeah. So nice. And Auckland's a lot like that summer. Now we just did winter and it's fine because it is winter. You know, like we I was running with my friend, Nikki, this morning and we were like, well, we're in the depths of it.
01:16
right now, literally as well. it's, it's what is it? The, it's the 10th of July here. So we're almost smack bang in the middle of calendar winter. So we've got to expect some inclement weather, right? It is what it is. And then just lean into that and go, cool. It's just cozy. is, you know, it's slow cooked meats. It's a heat pump on it's cups of tea, things like that. What was the second, what was the thing you just said? I was like, when you, when you talk, Miggie to me, what, what,
01:43
Pompom? What was the thing? No, no, I cup of tea. What did you say? I said slow cooked meats. Yes. The pump on. heat pump. Pompom. Pompom hats, maybe. Actually, we've got two of them at home. Oh my God. I was like, that is so cute. What the heck is that? But I want to eat it. It's called pompoms. Yeah, no, no, heat pump. Heat pump juice.
02:09
So, and in fact, it's not true winter here. People listening to this down south will be like, come on, Willaden, you come from Dunedin. You've softened over the 20 years. Because this is nothing compared to what people experience down in my hometown in Dunedin. It's super cold. Yeah. And similarly to you, you'll be the same as us. Oh yeah, for sure. Pretty temperament. Yeah. I think about that often because where we...
02:39
are in the US is really very, very, very nice, you know, in terms of like overall. So and I really only lived here. You know, I've lived all around like in neighboring areas, but I haven't gone anywhere where the weather is, you know, extreme. You know, the most part. So I'm I'm always appreciative. I feel like we open up with weather.
03:04
Like every day, I'm like, I I got to hear your goal or warm, but I do. think that has a lot to do with it's another thing people can just add to their overall mood and wellness. You can think about your exercise, your supplements, your nutrition that day. And I do think the weather does affect your energy levels. And I do think it affects you. So I think it's something that we tend to kind of ignore, you know, push away. But I do think it's like a big deal. And and so speaking to that, it's kind of funny, like
03:34
you know, what you and I have been thinking about or hearing more about. So I'll make the jump from weather and mood to perceived exertions and just how we measure perceived exertion. But what seems to be coming up in conversations quite a bit is something called heart rate variability, otherwise known as HRV. Yeah. And so I've
03:58
I understand it again as a way to measure your heartbeats, otherwise known as a way to measure your exertion. You were saying, you your industry, you know, everybody in exercise physiology is talking about it, but why is it coming up in like conversations with like, you know, just sort of regular people? Like, why do we actually, well, all of sudden, like, it's like creatine, you know Really? Yeah. Everywhere we go, it's like, ah!
04:25
You know, it's constantly in conversation. So I just thought that maybe we'd have a quick discussion about it, why we care about it, maybe exactly what it is. Yeah, great, Jess, because in fact, it came up in conversation twice this week. And to your point and to the point I made to you before we jumped on is that this really was the domain of exercise physiologists and scientists like 10 years ago. got a friend of mine did his PhD looking at heart rate variability. It was very new at the time. was that was that might have been
04:54
just 10 years ago now actually. So, and now it is because of our wearables and our watches and the ability and the apps that now track it, that track your HRV, it's moved from that performance and the readiness to train and perform and the recovery for an athlete to actually just your everyday person as well. So HRV refers to the variation in time between successive heartbeats. So,
05:23
Well, your average heart rate might sit at 60 beats per minute or 50 beats per minute. It doesn't beat once every second as you would expect it to. It's not this sort of very... Rhythmic heart beat. Yeah, there's a natural variation. And the HRV is in fact the variation between those heartbeats and it reflects how adaptable and responsive your nervous system is to the stresses in your life.
05:53
So, and in fact, I podcasted with Marco Altini, who a couple of podcasts and the original one that I chatted to him about was about his app, HRV for training. And he's got another one for health as well. And just making it accessible, making the concept of HRV accessible to athletes and health conscious people by allowing them to monitor that physiological state. So the nervous system.
06:22
with their smartphone, albeit of course, the people I'm talking to and about have it on their Garmin watches, on their Apple watches, on their Aura rings, on their whoops and things like that. the conversation of readiness and adaptability and resilience takes on this, is less about how we're feeling today listening to our own internal cues and letting the data sort of do the reading for us, which of course has its...
06:49
pros and its cons. Okay, so that's, just again, I'm going to try to absolutely simplify that. Cause I do understand it's like another way to measure your response to stress, essentially. exactly. So again, just say you're just, we'll call it just your average athletic health conscious person. Why would I even need to know about, let's say I've got the, know, I got it on my wearable. I'm really wanting to pay attention.
07:19
would it benefit me? where, you know, what am I, why would I need it? So, I mean, this is, I guess it's, that's a subjective question, a subjective question, Justin, that you get an objective number or answer. So you absolutely get the watch tells you whether your HRV is, you know, how it's tracking in terms of
07:47
readiness and recovery and things like that, albeit it's using things like sleep, using your heart rate. Obviously it's using your heart rate, heart rate variability. it's, but people, is thing with tracking, Jess, is people are much more likely to outsource their internal information and how they feel they outsource it to their watch. So they might look at something or they might look at their work and say, my HRV, you know, isn't looking so good today. So.
08:17
I think that I'm going to take it easy on training because of that. So they won't necessarily, so they'll do one of two things.
08:29
use it as gospel, which isn't always a good idea because it's never, it's always sort of when you use any sort of tracking devices gospel, you're outsourcing how you feel or you'll ignore it and you'll just like track on anyway. But there is some utility in it. Like if you look at, I've seen people, can't recall whether there are actual studies on this, but I do know that devices like the Aura Ring and the Whoop have at least released white papers, which
08:59
are research studies which haven't been published and might not be peer reviewed, but they sort of exist and they explain their study showing that if you have a lower HRV and it's consistently lower, that you can actually predict illness. that is what I'm getting at. Okay. So, because again, it's like people aren't going to do half of, they're going to entertain maybe a little bit of what you said, but really they just want to know.
09:26
You know, this is another metric to measure my response to stress. But if the metric is low, then say what you just said again, it's marker towards something about illness. I forgot exactly what you just said. It can be. Yeah. It can be a marker. of illness or overtraining or burnout or something like that. Okay. And if it's higher? Then it's good. Often it's good. Like it's showing that you're adaptive and responsive and ready to go.
09:54
Albeit, it's interesting because I was chatting to Dan this week, Dan Plews, was the guy I saying who's doing his PhD, who had done his PhD on it, because I'd have someone contact me and said, my HRV is super high. It's not usually. And it was after a protein only day. So they had a fasting day. And normally that kind of stress, I would have assumed, would actually tank your HRV and not improve it. But in fact, the caloric restriction Dan said would
10:23
do the opposite, it would actually increase it, is a bit of an anomaly. So you can't take what HIV says for gospel. So I think like anything, you look for trends rather than necessarily that sort of day-to-day changes. So look for trends and day-to-day changes. then if we're talking about maybe the three major ways to sort of track your responses to stress,
10:52
You have HRV as one, then you have RPE as another one. So that's a rate of perceived exertion. Can you quickly talk about that a little bit? That's a little bit less like that really just has to honestly do with how you're feeling, right? Like your breath and your I mean, those are kind of the ways you measure them. Is there like an app for that to scale? I mean, I use a scale and I literally use a scale like based upon my effort.
11:20
And literally I'll be like, you know, one through 10 or whatever it is or something. it is. It is. There is, I think there is one through 10, there's six through 20 or something. It might be called the Borg scale. Yeah. And I'm sure that there is an app that you track it on. But to your point Jess, like how do you feel? Like, and in fact, a lot of, because of a lot of the trackables, the tracking devices and the wearables, a lot of coaches and even exercise physiologists are coming back to all of this is all very well and good.
11:49
how do you feel because too many people are outsourcing to the tracking device and not actually tuning into how their body's truly responding to your point. mean, totally. And I was just trying to think, is there, so, so we've got two, is there a third? I suppose it would be maybe resting heart rate. Okay, fine. I don't want any more than three anyways. I think we're going to be too overwhelmed. So we're going to go with these three, resting heart rate and talk about that.
12:18
Yeah, so resting heart rate increases when you're overtrained or you might be sick or you're just not recovering that well. so, and of course it's easy enough to measure your heart rate when you're lying in bed. This is like just before you get out of bed and you just measure it. about that. Yeah, yeah. So it's, you know, it's super easy to track. And of course, again, your wearable probably tracks your resting heart rate and does.
12:44
The extent to which your watch does it truthfully, and this is the thing with using your watch for tracking almost anything is that there's a lot less, I think there's a lot less validity in that compared to say wearing a heart rate strap or an aura ring. Or an aura even, yeah. So, okay, so those are the three ways, okay, just so you can, again, people.
13:09
It's okay if you don't remember any of them, but I think people are just trying to get more into the science of tracking their body's response to stress so that they can have a better clinical understanding of themselves. And I think that's great. If you were to track it on a wearable, what would be your top three wearable tracking devices? I mean, I don't...
13:39
I would use an aura ring actually, if I was going to use anything. That's good. mean, I've heard a lot of people are, do you wear one? No. I don't either. So, but they, but people like them. the aura ring, um, Apple watch. Oh, yeah. Yep. Um, but again, the watch is prone to being not as, as not potentially as accurate. Um, and of course the whoop people use the whoop and love the whoop as well. They do. Okay. Yeah. That's good. I, um, I have one.
14:09
a friend and client that I can think of right away. And it's kind of funny because she'll say, sort of have a, sometimes healthy, sometimes dysfunctional relationship with the aura ring because she'll wake up and it's, you know, it's blasting all this information at you. And so again, I always, you know, for our audience, I really want people to
14:33
take these things in digestible pieces of information and take one little piece that feels like helpful to you in your day-to-day life. I do not wanna continue to inundate you. I think we already have too much information. You don't even need half that information. But since it's coming up in conversation, these metrics, heart rate, variability, and resting heart rate, and rate of perceived exertion are just ways to, again, look.
15:00
at how your body is responding. And then the wearable devices will help you track that. But they're not perfect. They're going to shoot out and sometimes you're going to have something and it's going to affect it. you know, I don't, I'm not a hundred percent sure the answer like, really want to wear an aura and I'm kind of living and dying, by this, by, by the data.
15:21
I don't know what to say sometimes, you know, I'm like, take it off. It's the same with anything. take a break from it, right? Yeah. I think it's but people get nervous. They get really nervous. Why do get nervous? Because it's now, because they rely on it for them to like, like, what's my HRV doing? Like, how did I sleep? Like, what's my, you know, what are my steps? And I love steps. love taking my steps. I appreciate that. And then part of me doesn't want to get an aura because I think,
15:52
I have all of this data, but I'm probably not going to do anything with it. So why would I bother? Like my watch does almost everything that we're talking about, not the RPE, that's something sort of internal, but I'm not going to wear my watch to bed so it can tell me how well I slept. And therefore, because I'm not wearing it to bed, it's not going to give me a good, I can't measure my HRV. you know, there's certain things which...
16:18
are super important for people to track and others are super interesting, but they're only important if you actually do something with the data. a lot people do. I would love to know that. OK, so really fast. If you were to say to people, and I have my phone so that what would be like the most important things to track and what are like, oh, that's cool, but it doesn't really matter if you know it or you don't know what would those two, what would those things be? Steps. Absolutely. Track your steps. Yeah. Yeah. And this is
16:46
For anyone who is interested in body composition, think. good, good, good, good. Yeah. Track your training sessions that you do them and track your food and tracking your food could just be a journal. doesn't have to be on an app. Right. Okay. Yeah. Those are the things to track. What? And so perfect. So steps, training, food. Yeah. And the things that are like cool, but you don't necessarily need to track them would be.
17:16
sleep, HRV, heart rate, like, you're resting heart rate, and you can, but I mean, these are things which, you know, tracking your sleep, it tells us it's certainly improved. I know that Aura and The Whoop have both improved their ability to tell you about how much sleep you've had, but they can't necessarily tell you sleep stage, and I'm pretty sure that they try to do that. Yeah.
17:44
And you go to bed like, you know how often you wake up, you know how rested you are. And that's the most important thing. How rested are you? It's necessarily what your ring is telling you that you, you know, track. So I think I think it is super interesting from a psychology standpoint, how much weight we put into the analytics on a wearable device. You know what I mean? And how
18:11
Like not enough not so we don't put any on how you feeling today mix Where's your energy? Did you eat that and did you feel good after you ate it? Like how did that training session work for you? Like it's just unbelievable to me sometimes how That doesn't seem to transfer and I am NOT hating not we're talking about it today you guys on this podcast because it's clearly comes up But I want you all to go great
18:40
I have a little bit better understanding of HRV, know, and the heartbeats and my response to stress and the same thing with RPE and same thing with resting heart rate. So, but I also would, I think it's also a conversation to have with yourself with why you put so much emphasis on those points. Although what I would, what I think we should finish up with is that it is like, it's still helpful and can be really useful because the other use case.
19:08
we were talking about alcohol this week in my groups and people noticed that HRV totally tanks with alcohol. And in fact, if that's a driver to get you to drink a little less and consider your alcohol consumption, then that is 100 % a good thing as well. I don't think that, like, I think that they all have their place. You just don't want to outsource everything to, you know.
19:31
You don't, well, one, you don't have to feel like you have to spend a lot of money on an expensive wearable. two, don't just don't outsource everything to it, but use, you know, for, it does have its purposes, but for the everyday person, it's, you know, if you're measuring that stuff, then actually make some note of it. I'm sort of being hypocritical saying, don't pay too much attention, but pay a little bit of attention. mean, like anything, it's gray. Well, I was, you actually just kind of circled back, what are the,
20:01
again, I like to have one or two reasons why it's why it's really important to pay attention to it. So you you just said alcohol. And so that can affect your heart rate variability. Because why? Because it just it tanks your sleep typically. Yeah. And so it's good to have maybe something that can just show you the discrepancy between a heavy night of or moderate night of drinking versus a night of not drinking. And you can at least
20:29
have the data points to see the difference. And maybe, maybe for all of you all, maybe sometimes that's what you need to see. Maybe you have to see that for you to kind of make the connection in your brain that I'm gonna perform a little bit better knowing these data points that I'm just looking at. Of course you feel it, but sometimes you just might have to see it. Maybe it of just goes back to like what motivates you or what kind of learner you are. I don't know, right? It's just like another way to kind of speak to that maybe. Yeah, yeah, 100 % agree.
21:00
Anything else that besides alcohol that could really sway the HRV one way or the other? You said illness. I guess if you... menstrual cycle. Okay. Also we know that as women. Injury could potentially. Injury, sure. Okay. think there are just lot of stress, obviously, like huge, yeah, stress. Overtraining, undertraining, heaps of things. Heaps of things affect your HRV. Okay.
21:30
But we just mostly just you're going to feel it, right? You're going to feel it. So so just listening to your body. Yeah. Is the less expensive version of this. Yeah. And and albeit I'm sure that if I had an easy if I did get an aura ring, I'd probably be all over it, you know. Sure. And I think probably I because I don't have an a comfortable way to measure my HIV. I just it's just one less thing I think about, I suppose. So.
21:59
measure your steps or track your steps, track your food and track your training. Those things are probably the, if you feel like you need some data points, those would be the ones to maybe track regularly for overall, know, health goals. but then, but then there are so many others, right? Cause you could also keep an eye, you could also track how you feel. Like do you feel refreshed when you wake up with your sleep or stress? could, you could track how, you know, how stressed you feel on a one to 10 basis. Like there are so many things that you could track.
22:29
But yes, from a body composition perspective, they'd be top three and those other things would affect a lot of the other, you know, the stressors and the other things. I hope that answers everybody's questions about. I don't think so. think it's probably just. You're going to come back and you're going to have more questions, but that's okay, because we'll be here to answer them. But just understand that heart rate variability is just another metric to measure your body's response to stress, really simply put.
22:56
Like that's the simplest way to talk about it. it's that we have these things that used to be in the like the land of the like exercise physiologists. And now we actually have a little bit of access that the common person, normal person can have a little bit of accessibility to this. And that makes me happy. Yeah. And I would say if anyone is interested and they're not yet sort of explored, then check out and I'll pop it in the show notes. Marco Altini's sub stack. He gives a stack of really great advice.
23:25
and explanations for HRV and its utility as well because there is a lot of utility for it. So yeah, I'll put that in the show notes. Yes, all of this is necessary and can be very helpful as long as you're just not getting washed away with too much information. Just take what you need and be consistent with what you need. Exactly. If it allows you to be consistent and helps you better understand your body then...
23:55
Good. Yeah. Amazing. What are you grateful for? I am grateful for the lovely weekend that I just had in Melbourne with Habseter. Your birthday weekend. We left June as Jessica's birthday month and we entered into July as Yes. Amazing. How about you, Deuce? Happy birthday month. I'm grateful that you were born. I'm happy to be celebrating you all month long, because I will.
24:23
I'm always grateful to have a better understanding of health and how we can help people with health because it's just so broad. But I think when we have more control over it, opens up our universes. So I'm super grateful for that and this weather. This bikini I'm in right now. That's lovely. I'll see you all soon. Take care. Bye.