A couple of things sparked this post. The first was a Strava friend who, according to the comments on his activity yesterday, appears to be modifying his workouts based on his HRV (heart rate variability). The other was a news story this morning about counting your daily protein grams; apparently the newest trend in France. It just made me wonder how deep we are supposed go.

Here’s how deep I need to go. This the first sentence of an explanatory article on HRV that I got from Google: “To understand what HRV is, we first need to talk about the vagus nerve.” In other words, “you’re going to be sorry you searched for this”. But here’s a definition for you from the Cleveland Clinic, if you really need to know:

“Heart rate variability is where the amount of time between your heartbeats fluctuates slightly. Even though these fluctuations are undetectable except with specialized devices, they can still indicate current or future health problems, including heart conditions and mental health issues like anxiety and depression.”

The thing is, we can actually have those specialized devices now and can track HRV with our smart watches or even a ring on your finger. And, of course, there are training implications that go along with your HRV and it is one of the trendy things to track these days. And this is where I stopped because I just couldn’t get past the vagus nerve.