Training Prescription Guided by Heart-Rate Variability in Cycling

Abstract

Daily training prescription based on HRV could result in a better performance enhancement than a traditional periodization in well-trained cyclists.

Heart Rate Variability: An Old Metric with New Meaning in the Era of Using mHealth technologies for Health and Exercise Training Guidance. Part Two: Prognosis and Training

“…A study from 2018 split 17 well-trained cyclists into two groups. 59 Group one followed a training plan guided by morning resting HRV (HRV-G, n=9), whereas group 2 followed a more traditional approach (TRAD, n=8). Following a similar design to Kiviniemi, on days when the 7-day rolling average of RMSSD fell outside the predetermined individual smallest range, the HRV-G training group would carry out low intensity training or rest rather than moderate-intensity training or HIT.…”

HRV-Guided Training for Professional Endurance Athletes: A Protocol for a Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial

“…To detect an intervention-related effect in professional athletes, other studies with similar protocols [24,31] compared athletes from two clubs or associations. Similarly, our sample will comprise athletes from two sport institutions in Almería (Spain): the C.D.…”

“…Given that the SNS is responsible for changes in heart rate (HR) due to stress, and that the HR is one of the first parameters used to control the body's functional capacity [18], HRV analysis has been established as a useful method for assessing the heart's ability to adapt to both endogenous and exogenous loads [19], and can be used for the individual assessment of responses to training loads. Indeed, in recent years, HRV has been used to analyze these imbalances between SNS and PNS in athletes [20] and to evaluate different aspects related to training [21] such as exercise intensity and duration [22], recovery and overtraining [23], training load [24] or psychophysiological profiles [25].…”

“…In recent years, experimental studies have been carried out evaluating HRV-guided training in endurance athletes. These studies have been conducted both on elite athletes in sports such as cycling [24] and skiing [10], and with amateur endurance athletes [28][29][30][31]. One should take into account the scarcity of studies that have been published to date, especially on elite-level endurance athletes, as well as the absence of a common protocol to follow in this type of research.…”

Heart rate variability offers additional applications in heat‐stressed individuals

“…With regard to the potential for the integration of HRV from a preventative standpoint, the assessment cardiac autonomic function on a regular basis might be effective in guiding recovery practices after exercise in the heat or even allow for a scheduled activity in the heat to be altered when cardiac autonomic dysfunction exists. Indeed, HRV has been used successfully to guide training prescription (Javaloyes, Sarabia, Lamberts, & Moya‐Ramon, ), although the effect of combined thermoregulatory and physical strain on cardiac autonomic control is worthy of investigation. To our knowledge, no research has isolated the effect of thermoregulatory strain on cardiac autonomic nervous system control.…”