Doctor Marco Altini's Guide to HRV Training | Heart Rate Variability
Heart Rate Variability Training with Doctor Marco Altini | How to Exercise Using HRV

Heart rate variability is a noninvasive electrocardiographic method that can measure your body’s adaption to stress and exercise. HRV is simply a measure of the variation in time between each heartbeat. This variation is controlled by a primitive part of the nervous system called the autonomic nervous system (ANS).

HRV can identify these variations and imbalances. For example, if a person’s system is in a fight-or-flight mode, the variation between subsequent heartbeats is low. On the other hand, if one is relaxed, the variation between beats is high. In other words, the healthier the ANS, the faster you can switch gears, showing more resilience and flexibility. Over the past few decades, research has shown a relationship between low HRV and worsening depression or anxiety. A low HRV is even associated with an increased risk of death and cardiovascular disease.

Research has shown a strong correlation between low HRV values and increased risk for diabetes, coronary disease, depression, and anxiety. Low HRV scores are also associated with impaired regulatory and homeostatic ANS functions that reduce the body’s ability to cope with internal and external stressors. Higher HRV scores correlate with increased human peak performance, fitness levels, and improved rest and recovery.

Recovery is more complicated than an isolated measurement, and looking at daily HRV values does not indicate your level of recovery or how well you handle stress. In addition, it is difficult to determine how you respond to stress and adaptation just by looking at individual HRV values. So, it is important to establish baseline HRV values over a minimum of one week to understand your body’s response to stress and other stimuli.

The gold standard is to analyze a long strip of an electrocardiogram, the test we frequently do in the medical office where we attach wires to the chest. But Doctor Marco Altini has developed a clinically validated app called HRV4Training in the Apple and Android app store, where you can use your phone/iPad camera to measure your heart rate variability.

Doctor Yogendra
- Board-certified Physician Anesthesiologist and Medical Researcher