waking heart rate

chill123

i've read that taking your heart rate every morning can be a good tool to:

- see your fitness progress as it hopefully reduces slowly as you get fitter
and
- helps you spot signs of overtraining or illness (indicated when it is higher than usual)

I took mine over a few days (with minimal cycling miles) and the results were:
56, 56, 54, 65. Interestingly enough the day before the 65 i did a 35 miler at a brisk pace.

A couple of questions:

1) if you do it what is your waking heart rate?

2) Would the 65 above indicate i need more recovery and should avoid riding long or hard that day?

3) what king of variance from the norm would be considered normal? i.e. would not indicate illness/overtraining

btw my maxHR is 191.

CrookedCucumber

A huge number of things can influence your waking heart rate, not least the amount of beer you slurped the night before. In my view, if you are going to measure this, you should look at averages smoothed out over, say, a week, rather than day-to-day variations. Just my two-penn'th, of course.

campagone

I try to take mine every morning using a blood pressure monitor, the type you put on your wrist, generally it tends to be around 48bpm, but I find it varies quite a lot and depends on how you wake up, for example if I wake up nice and gently it will be low but if the alarm wakes me up suddenly it will be well over 50bpm.

bahzob

Ditto above, started a blood pressure monitor at the beginning of the year to monitor waking HR. Generally tells me what I already know, it gets into 50s mornings after hard training days coming back down to 40s following rest/easy days.

cougie

I have done this in the past and without fail my Monday HR was elevated from a pretty tough 80 miler the day before.

ColinJ

When I was skinny and pretty fit, my resting HR was about 34 bpm. I put on weight and lost fitness. Eventually when I checked it again, I was pretty shocked to see that it had risen to 55 bpm. That may not sound much to most people, but it is a huge change from what it was before .

tartan_army

When people say waking heart rate, will that be different from resting heart rate?

I've tried taking it a few times so just left my HR strap and watch on overnight which then records the lowest overnight and can look at first thing on waking to see waking. Generally about 51-53 waking, lowest 39 overnight, highest 81...wonder what i'm dreaming about when my heart rate goes that high overnight!

robmanic1

Tartan, that's commonly known as "the Pendleton effect"

ColinJ

tartan_army wrote:

When people say waking heart rate, will that be different from resting heart rate?

I've tried taking it a few times so just left my HR strap and watch on overnight which then records the lowest overnight and can look at first thing on waking to see waking. Generally about 51-53 waking, lowest 39 overnight, highest 81...wonder what i'm dreaming about when my heart rate goes that high overnight!

If you had just been woken up by a loud alarm clock your Waking Heart Rate would be relatively high!

I took my RHR lying down in bed and relaxing. I found that I could lower it by about 5 bpm just by controlling my breathing and keeping absolutely still. Even sitting up in bed increased it by 5-10 bpm.

chill123

for th that are interested i've found quite a good and simple Heart Rate Monitor Training For Cyclists article.

On average my waking heart rate seems to be about 10bpm higher after a hard training day.

Alex_Simmons/RST

chill123 wrote:

i've read that taking your heart rate every morning can be a good tool to:

- see your fitness progress as it hopefully reduces slowly as you get fitter
and

It is true that with improved fitness (from a low fitness/sedentary state) comes an overall reducton in resting heart rate, up to a point.

chill123 wrote:

- helps you spot signs of overtraining or illness (indicated when it is higher than usual)

That's a myth AFAIC. I'd like to see the evidence to support these assertions. Overtaining can only be identified by a consistent drop in performance, not by a change in resting HR. As for illness, well maybe, or maybe not. Too many variables on the HR front.

chill123 wrote:

I took mine over a few days (with minimal cycling miles) and the results were:
56, 56, 54, 65. Interestingly enough the day before the 65 i did a 35 miler at a brisk pace.

A couple of questions:

1) if you do it what is your waking heart rate?

I don't anymore but when fit mine is typically 38-42 but can be somewhat higher depending on many things.

chill123 wrote:

2) Would the 65 above indicate i need more recovery and should avoid riding long or hard that day?

Not really. A higher waking heart rate is a normal response to hard training but doesn't mean that recovery is needed. Much better to let your legs and/or perceived exertion dictate when recovery is needed (i.e. it seems much harder for same speed/power).

chill123 wrote:

3) what king of variance from the norm would be considered normal? i.e. would not indicate illness/overtraining

I don't consider waking HR a good signal for these things at all. Actual performance on the bike is the only indicator that matters.

SkyBlueKangaroo

An additional test you can monitor is your delta heart rate.

When you wake, lie still for a few minutes and read your heart rate - your resting heart rate (a).

Stand up, slowly, by your bed. You will see your heart rate rise and peak. Stand still for a minute, your heart rate will come down then plateau. Now note your heart rate again(b).

Your delta heart rate is the difference (a - b).

If the difference is high, say more than 20 beats per minute, then it is a sign your body is stressed or feeling low, or over-trained - a day to take it easy, recover, or rest. A good figure indicating you are fit and ready for more training would be a difference of about 5 - 10 beats per minute.

Alex_Simmons/RST

SkyBlueKangaroo wrote:

An additional test you can monitor is your delta heart rate.

When you wake, lie still for a few minutes and read your heart rate - your resting heart rate (a).

Stand up, slowly, by your bed. You will see your heart rate rise and peak. Stand still for a minute, your heart rate will come down then plateau. Now note your heart rate again(b).

Your delta heart rate is the difference (a - b).

If the difference is high, say more than 20 beats per minute, then it is a sign your body is stressed or feeling low, or over-trained - a day to take it easy, recover, or rest. A good figure indicating you are fit and ready for more training would be a difference of about 5 - 10 beats per minute.

Can someone enlighten me with some evidence that this is indeed a useful indicator of such a phenomenon?

Overtraining is really, really hard to do. If you are overtrained, it can take weeks, months or more to recover. If you are a little too tired to train well, are healthy and need a day or two off, that's more likely to be just a bit of training fatigue, and is a normal reaction to an increase in training load that is perhaps a bit much for you (or may have been planned).

SkyBlueKangaroo

So if the training load is too much for you, isn't it a sensible approach to take notice of how your body is reacting, and ease off a little? Maybe I'm wrong.

Alex_Simmons/RST

SkyBlueKangaroo wrote:

So if the training load is too much for you, isn't it a sensible approach to take notice of how your body is reacting, and ease off a little? Maybe I'm wrong.

Yes, but don't rely on RHR since so many other factors may influence that. I'd rather let the legs tell me.

Are you talking about easing off due to an inability to put out the power or just feeling it is harder to put out the power (but you can still generate the power). They are quite different things.

SkyBlueKangaroo

If my legs didn't feel up to it, then its a no-brainer - rest/recovery ride. I'm just saying there are other indicators that your body has not quite recovered from a previous hard session, and (on occasion) another day to adapt would be more beneficial than another intense training session.

I'm not a qualified coach, but this works for me.

Old Tuggo

I agree with RST. I took my RHR for many years and although it did reduce in the racing season, when I had overtrained it was not elevated and the difference between laying down and standing up was never more than 6 bpm. For me a low RHR (38) is sign that I am fit but when I feel completely tired out it does not vary.