Heart rate variability (HRV) has gained the attention of everyone from weekend warriors to elite level athletes. Most look into HRV to evaluate their training in order to best optimize their recovery and overall “readiness” to train and compete. While HRV is certainly not a new concept, it has only recently become a staple of competitive programs to monitor athletic performance.
HRV is the time interval between a heartbeat – measured by the variant between beat-to-beat intervals. If, for example, your heart beats 60 times every minute it does not necessarily mean that there will be a one second interval between each beat.