Do you monitor your morning heart rate? If so, at what point do you modify your training because your heart rate is too high? For example, I usually have a heart rate of about 35-38 when I'm fully rested but sometimes it skyrockets to 45-47 after a bounding or interval session? In short, your training plan, no matter how well planned out, is at the mercy of how your body adapts to the stress loads you place on it. If you go over those stress loads without adequate recovery you break your body down instead of up and your body suffers. Do you rely on your morning heart rate or how you feel to determine if you're ready for another hard training session?

Matthew Rowe

St. Scholastica Skier (Duluth, MN)

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Matthew-

You're already a big step ahead of most skiers because you know your morning heart rate baseline. Furthermore, you clearly have a good concept of training theory and the stress & recovery cycle. I imagine there's a lot of people who are more like me: I start to feel kind of off and take my morning heart rate to see if it's elevated. Except I don't know what's elevated and what's not so it's not very informative.

I discussed your question with Troy Flanagan, USSA Director of Sport Science, and Justin Carlstrom, USSA Physiologist (two wickedly smart dudes). An elevated heart rate is a sign of too much stress and not enough recovery. Justin advised not necessarily jumping to the conclusion that if your AM HR is elevated it means that you need to back down the training a notch. Often an equally effective reaction would be to increase the quantity/quality of your recovery time which would allow you to maintain a good training load. (Of course this brings up the issue of priorities when you have to decide whether an hour nap in the afternoon or going to bed early is a better use of your time than, say, going to work, watching youtube videos, finishing that paper for Psych101, or practicing your keg stands.) Troy said that you can usually get away with one day of an elevated AM HR but once you had two consecutive days of ~10bpm above normal there was (according to one of his studies with women's soccer) about an 80% chance that you would get sick about two days later.

So if you think you know why your heart rate is elevated, in your case maybe because of hard intervals the day before and then spending the rest of the day in class instead of sitting on your couch, you can probably continue with your scheduled training plan. If it stays +5bpm two days in a row, you should consider cutting back on your training slightly or going out of your way to get better rest for a couple of days. If it's +10bpm two days in a row, it's time to bust out the zinc lozenges and zicam and get a head start on the upcoming soar throat and sniffles.

LAV

Labels: Ask LAV