Morning Heartrate Tests
Taking morning heartrates just after you awake in the morning and comparing against a baseline of your average values over the training year is an age-old training tool for measuring fatigue and stress on the body. For many skiers, an AM heartrate that jumps significantly tends to indicate a body that is "on the edge". When an athlete sees an elevated AM heartrate over several days, they then should know that throwing hard efforts at such a body (i.e. intervals, long distance, or lots of any type of training/racing) can easily push them over the edge. The result: sickness, prolonged fatigue, poor performances, even injury.
However, on a practical level simply recording AM heartrates isn't always as simple as getting a value and writing it down.
One easily understood problem is that it can be a hassle to put on an actual heartrate monitor just after you get up in the morning...especially just so you can get a quick value. Clothing, roomates/spouses, getting a good connection all pose a problem, plus the sheer effort of getting the monitor on sometimes can raise the heartrate.
You can easily enough simply get a value off the wrist or neck, but not everyone has the patience or functions well enough after waking to count HR for a minute.
Then there is the simple problem of the "Type A" personality that is immediately formulating (or forced to confront) their daily schedule a few seconds after waking. A parent with young children, for example, often has their morning pre-programmed as "crisis control from the get-go" so a morning heartrate test isn't going to be something they can always manage.
Even with all these obstacles, athletes that can manage to find a realistic way to get average numbers for AM heartrate do indeed have just one more way to evaluate their absorption of training as well as general lifestyle stress levels.
The biggest keys to success with this training tool are:
#1.) Whatever method you use (heart monitor, neck/wrist pulse, or combination techniques like that below)...stick with the same routine as much as possible. If you prefer to take the HR after getting up and relieving yourself in the morning, stick with that pattern. If you prefer to lie still for 1-2 minutes after waking, stick with that pattern. Whatever works such that you'll do it pretty much the same way every morning.
#2.) Find a simple way to record the value and make sure that record is handy every morning. For some skiers, a training log by the bed is the ticket. For others, simply having a notepad with a pencil is best to record on the log later. Again...whatever will work for you.
Twin Cities (USA) skier Ken Salzberg sent this in to AXCS several years ago. We aren't sure of the original source but it is very similar to baseline AM heart rate tests used by several national programs over the past couple decades.
The test is as follows:
- Take your resting heart rate (best taken before getting up from bed, but in any case, be consistent about how you do it), write it down, or remember it.
- Stand up and do 30 seconds of moderate exercise (knee bends, for
instance), and record (or remember) your heart rate.
- Sit down and relax for 1 minute, and record your heart rate again.
- Add up the 3 rates.
- Subtract 200, divide by 10, and record the number.
- Example: Resting: 50 + Exercise: 80 + Recover: 60
Total: 190-200= -10/10=-1
- Keep a record of the number.
You can use a spread sheet program to create a running weekly/monthly/annual average to look at. The actual numeric value (which will be somewhere between +3 and -3, usually) doesn't matter very much, except if you like to brag to friends about your low resting heart rate.
The most important part of this: If the number goes up significantly (over, say .5) after a hard day or days, you haven't recovered from the hard effort. You should rest, or have any easy day, no matter what your schedule says. If the number stays up after a rest day, you are probably ill, and should continue to rest, or only do easy work. Simple rule of thumb: Don't do hard intensity or large amounts of volume unless your morning number is where it ought to be (+ just a little, or below yesterdays)
