The Do-It-Yourself Guide To Using Heart Rate Variability Testing to Track Your Nervous System Health
Ben Greenfield Life
Ben Greenfield
4.6 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 21 June 2013
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
In this BenGreenfieldFitness Phone App insider interview with Ronda Collier, the mastermind behind the SweetBeat heart rate variability testing phone app, we delve into how to use heart rate variability to track your nervous system...
...and even though I've definitely covered heart rate variability (HRV) in previous podcast episodes and articles on this website, this interview gets into some of the more advanced stuff, and the really practical ways to get the most out of your HRV testing so that you can truly know the exact status and health of your nervous system.
If you find yourself confused by some of the terms and science behind HRV training, or you want to really maximize your ability to track recovery and your nervous system, then this episode is for you.
Topics that Ronda and I discuss include:
-What is a heart rate variability power frequency graph?
-What is a low frequency domain, what is a high frequency domain, and how do these relate to the health and function of your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system?
-How to know if your body is rested and recovered, and how to know if you have been exposed to too much lifestyle, emotional or exercise stress.
-The ins and outs of using the online dashboard at the BeatHealthy website to track your HRV, share information with a coach and interpret your charts and stress trends.
-And much more!
You'll need the free BenGreenfieldFitness phone app to access this interview. During the discussion, we reference using heart rate cohesion training from the Heart Math Institute, and also the breathing techniques in the book Body, Mind & Sport Book by John Douillard.
We also reference Ronda's analysis of my own nervous system damage, which I report in this blog post on back-to-back triathlons.
For SweetBeat HRV monitoring you need: SweetBeat phone app, chest strap, and Wahoo ant+ adapter
OR...
If you have a wireless HR monitor like the Polar H7 all you need is the SweetBeat phone app, without any special adapter.
Finally, if you want more resources on HRV testing, check out my podcast episode“What Is Best Way To Track Your Heart Rate Variability” and my article “Everything You Need To Know About Heart Rate Variability Testing”.
Questions, comments or feedback on this "The Do-It-Yourself Guide To Using Heart Rate Variability Testing to Track Your Nervous System Health"? Leave your thoughts on the shownotes to this episode.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness.com podcast. |
| 0:07.1 | We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice |
| 0:13.0 | from the top fitness experts in the nation. |
| 0:15.9 | So whether you're an Iron Man triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, |
| 0:20.7 | get ready for non-runner of the mill cutting edge content from Ben Greenfield Fitness.com. |
| 0:30.0 | Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield and I'm here once again with someone who's been on the |
| 0:43.2 | podcast before you guys got a lot of awesome information from her last time she was on |
| 0:49.2 | on this thing called heart rate variability testing. |
| 0:53.3 | Her name is Rhonda Collier and she's with Sweetwater Help, which is the developer of the |
| 0:59.0 | SweetBeat Heart Rate Variability Application, which is one of the applications that I personally |
| 1:06.7 | use to continuously monitor my stress levels and the health of my nervous system and my heart |
| 1:13.4 | rate variability. |
| 1:14.7 | And of course since Rhonda's been on before in the show notes for this particular podcast, |
| 1:20.0 | I'll put a link to the other interview that we did. |
| 1:23.7 | If you're listening in and you need to play catch up, if you have no clue what heart rate |
| 1:27.6 | variability is and this is a head scratcher for you, you know, the whole idea behind HRV, |
| 1:34.0 | go back and listen to that podcast episode because we're not going to rehash that stuff. |
| 1:38.2 | It's already out there to go back and listen to it, but today we're going to delve into some of |
| 1:44.0 | kind of the, you know, almost like, almost like heart rate variability 201. |
| 1:48.4 | We're going to delve into some of the back end stuff that you can have access to when you're |
| 1:53.6 | using this app or when you're tracking your heart rate variability stuff that goes above and |
| 1:58.5 | beyond just kind of that, you know, zero to 100 score that you can get when you're measuring your, |
... |
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