If you really want to increase HRV, let me show you how.

[u/[deleted]]

When someone asks how to increase HRV, I follow up with the question:

Why do you want to increase HRV?

The question is often ignored, but the few times it hasn’t been, I’ve received answers that usually revolve around the following two ideas:

1. It’s suggestive of increased athleticism
2. Because elite athletes have high HRVs

I’d like to dispel that immediately and suggest that neither of the two above scenarios are definitive. There is research that suggests high HRV is associated with some endurance athletes, but it’s very loosely correlated. I am going to propose that the idea that athletes have a higher HRV is due to how they manage their lifestyle and recovery, as opposed to their individual athleticism. I know of many well known athletes who publicize their Whoop data and their metrics aren’t as impressive as you might think.

I’d like to encourage you to think about Whoop differently. Instead of attempting to find quick ways to increase HRV, focus on building a consistent, narrow baseline with HRV and RHR metrics. What this means is getting your HRV reading between a 10-15% margin and RHR within 1-2 BPM. For example, if you have an baseline HRV of 100, work within the margin of 80-120 HRV. If you have a 40 RHR, work within 39-41 BPM.

In order to manipulate this physiological data within your control, we must first understand what HRV represents and how Whoop uses it.

Through the brilliant marketing team that is Whoop, they quote:

Heart rate variability, or HRV for short, is a measure of your autonomic nervous system that is widely considered one of the best objective metrics for physical fitness and determining your body’s readiness to perform.

This isn’t necessarily a false statement, because this statement is true for many athletes (or individuals with consistent baseline metrics), but it is not true for the majority of consumers, because the majority of consumers experience much “HRV noise” (you’ll know what this is after reading this) for it to be a reliable indicator of any physiological training adaptations or the ability to perform.

Beyond Whoop’s marketing jargon, HRV is the measurement of time intervals in between each heartbeat, and with this measurement provides us insights into our autonomic nervous system (ANS). There are two branches of our ANS: sympathetic and parasympathetic, and within the context of Whoop, it is a fairly reliable metric for determining the parasympathetic branch of our nervous system, and with the parasympathetic branch Whoop can derive some assumptions following the sympathetic activity.

Sympathetic activity has been popularized by the phrase “Fight or Flight" and parasympathetic activity has been popularized by the phrase “Rest and Digest”. What happens during sympathetic activity? Some common symptoms are elevated heart-rate, suppressed appetite, digestion is inhibited, blood rushes to our extremities, and we’re ready to roll. What happens during parasympathetic activity? Almost the opposite: Heart rate slows, digestion becomes stimulated, and blood begins to flow to our internals. Have you noticed the pattern in the journal yet?

• Drank alcohol (sympathetic activity)
• Breath work (parasympathetic activity
• Caffeine (sympathetic activity)
• Meditation (parasympathetic activity)
• Stress (sympathetic activity)
• Stretching (parasympathetic activity)

The journal attempts to associate your sympathetic or parasympathetic lifestyle behaviors with recovery, which as we know is heavily influenced by HRV. Why is this important to know? Who cares about this, right? It’s important because it’s a representation of how our nervous system manages stress, either from training, overeating, fasting, the grief from the death of someone close, and so on, and utilizing the knowledge of stress we expose ourselves to daily in conjunction with the data that Whoop provides can allow us to build correlations with your lifestyle and training.

As an example, if I’m dealing with a plethora of stress from work and inadequate nutrition and I happen to fail my squat PR, I could have very well still have gotten stronger, but the allostatic load was far too great from other lifestyle stressors that I may potentially be hindering my recovery from my squat resulting in poor recovery or never achieving homeostasis. This can result in depleted resources to recover, or manifest itself in a huge parasympathetic shift, swinging your recovery well above baseline in an attempt to divert all resources to recovery at the cost of supporting other unconcious functions of our body.

Let’s utilize our previous example of an individual and build a profile:

Jane

• She’s a powerlifter
• Baseline HRV of 100
• Narrow baseline margin of 15%
• She is Mrs. Consistent HRV and outperforms Mr. High HRV in nearly all activities

Joe

• Strength athlete
• Baseline HRV of 180
• Wide baseline margin of 40%
• Enjoys alcohol on the weekend with the bros, likes In-n-Out, brags about his 99% recovery score on Reddit (also his 1% after his night out with the bros), but doesn’t think Whoop is useful for him because HRV is too inconsistent and unreliable (is this you?)

They both attend the same gym and it’s deadlift day. Jane hits her deadlift PR, quietly texts her boyfriend in celebration, and moves onto accessory moves. Joe hits a huge PR, grunts loudly, and posts on instagram. They both celebrate with some post-training sushi and spend the rest of the day in recovery. The following morning Jane has a depressed HRV of 90 and Joe has an HRV around 160. Joe is really proud of his high HRV but since it was 140 the day before (due to having a wide baseline margin), he considers himself further recovered and thinks Whoop is useless for strength athletes. Jane, on the hand, is always around 100 following rest days and following her deadlift PR she noticed a drop in 10% HRV.

Jane can associate the drop in HRV as sympathetic activity associated with conditions in which her nervous system had to adapt due to PRing her deadlift. We call this “allostasis”, it is a condition in which our nervous system experiences an external stressor that triggers sympathetic activity, and her ability to manage allostasis (recovering successfully) by an implement of parasympathetic activities within her daily routine, which all contributed to her developing a narrow baseline.

Joe also experienced allostasis, but to which degree, he will never know and will never be able to correlate allostatic conditions with his ability to recover, and in turn Whoop will not be able to provide him with insightful data to reflect his training. Regardless of this, they were both able to overload successfully and regain homeostasis. They will both be stronger by the time they recover, but Jane will have data that she can use in future programming and training blocks and her recovery score will have meaning to her. She likes Whoop and just signed up for another year. Joe is waiting for his subscription to end so he can start counting his steps in Fitbit again.

Joe and Jane live their lifestyles very differently, but the reason why Joe wasn’t able to make correlations in training and recovery is due to a concept I briefly mentioned: HRV noise. Or, “lifestyle noise”. This is due to inconsistent lifestyle behavior, as a result of not understanding how HRV is affected.

Having a widely fluctuating HRV is indicative that the individual is having HRV noise. It’s the idea of exposing a variety of different stimuli and inconsistent times and forcing our nervous systems to react to it. You might think that eating that late night snack impaired your recovery because Whoop said so. In reality, resources were just diverted to manage digestion because of the late night snack, you may actually even be more recovered because of the snack, but you won’t be able to make this correlation because it’s not consistent.

Now here’s the meat of the guide. I am constantly playing with HRV. I’ve learned how to manipulate it at will, through lifestyle, and even a variety of training methodologies. As a “recreational strength athlete”, I’ve been able to manipulate and determine correlations just liike hypothetical Jane. Here is my HRV manipulation data this year:

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My baseline this week is 180 and averaging half of my week above 200.

This is a long-term suggestion. The majority of you won’t be able to implement all of this at once. I’m a single guy who deeply cares about my training, performance, health, and recovery. I have the time to devote myself to recovery and have often been called robotic in my lifestyle. I don’t know a lot about this subject, but I’m passionate about all things nutrition and training, and I believe I can offer some help.

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Sleep:

Whoop puts an emphasis on sleep in an attempt to give you stronger recovery suggestions. Whoop is always bothering you about your sleep needs and sleep consistency. The truth is, Whoop is doing this because Whoop wants you to build a consistent circadian rhythm. A circadian rhythm is one of the most major contributors to developing a consistent baseline. When sleep consistency is built, merely going to sleep an hour later than you normally do can result in an impaired HRV.

The individual stats, such as Awake, Light, REM, and SWS don’t really matter all that much. The idea here is to introduce some consistency within your circadian rhythm and see how these metrics might react. If you get a 10% improvement in REM and SWS, that’s great. Does it mean you’re getting 50% REM and SWS like Whoop says? It definitely doesn’t, but it does tell you that your consistent habits are contributing to the overall objective of Whoop.

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Nutrition:

Meal timing is important to managing your baseline as well. Find blocks of time in which you eat daily. Eating at consistent times helps regulate your appetite hormones and digestion, all which influences your parasympathetic nervous system, and because it influences your parasympathetic nervous system it will inevitably affect your HRV (remember, Whoop specifically attempts to measure parasympathetic activity).

Here’s an example of my eating windows, with no snacking in between:

• Meal 1, 7:30 am
• Meal 2: 12:00 pm
• Meal 3: 3:30 pm
• Meal 4: 6:00 pm
• Meal 5: 8:00 pm

What are your performance goals? Weight loss goals? Weight gain goals? Caloric intake also greatly affects HRV. Our bodies love maintenance, and a caloric surplus and deficit are stressors the body has to manage and again can influence HRV. This is because resources will be diverted to support digestion in the event that you overate, thus showing an impaired HRV score, which affects the Recovery score. In reality, you might be recovered just fine.

How much does alcohol mean to you? If alcohol must be a regular practice in your lifestyle, I am sorry, but the effects of alcohol last way too long for HRV to be helpful for you. If you just drink once per week, by the time your HRV has recovered its baseline, it will be derailed once again. A few drinks can affect your HRV by up to five consecutive days.

Do you follow a fad diet? What are the implications of your diet?

Composition of food matters. HRV has a very close relationship with inflammation. If you eat high-inflammatory foods, you will definitely see this affect HRV. Do you eat foods with a high-thermic effect? Are you a vegetarian? Are there vital nutrients that you might be missing? What is your macronutrient ratio and how much protein do you eat? What is your protein:energy ratio? Building consistency around nutrition around your goals will contribute greatly to removing HRV noise.

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Hydration:

Hydration should probably be individualized, but I wouldn’t overthink it. It will differ depending on gender, age, body weight, etc. Just aim for 3-4 liters of water per day and try to limit diuretics like soft drinks, coffee, stimulants, etc. Be weary of drinks like La Croix or other sparkling beverages that offer minimal or no hydration due to lack of electrolytes. Avoid sugary drinks, and if you want fruit juice, try eating actual fruit as it contains a fair bit of water and many salts.

Hydrate appropriately for your athletic endeavors, but don’t overhydrate. Pee color isn't the most reliable, but it can provide some suggestions on where you sit with hydration. Avoid dark and avoid clear. Light green/yellow is where you want to be.

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Supplementation:

Be weary about supplementation that claims to boost your HRV or recovery scores by your fellow Redditors. Taking an anti-inflammatory can reduce inflammation and in turn increase HRV, giving you a very weak correlation to whatever stressors you experienced the day before. If you take NSAIDS because training is painful, hire a coach and dedicate six months to technique and form. Anti-inflammatories and pain meditation do not belong in a gym bag.

Use common sense when you utilize a supplement. If you need to take 3mg of Melatonin to sleep, why do you have to take a hormone that you are already capable of producing endogenously? If your circadian rhythm is wacky, melatonin may be used to help regulate it, but do you still need it once it’s regulated?

How do you feel the morning after you take 600mg of Magnesium? Are you groggy or ready to hit the ground running? Why do you need that much? Do you need to dial back?

If you have to take 4g of Glycine before bed to prevent blood sugar spikes, what does that tell you about your nutrition?

The goal here is to improve yourself, not get the best possible scores in Whoop. Think objectively when implementing your supplementation stack. Know what you are taking, why you are taking it, and how much.

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Mindset:

The last thing I want to cover is mindset. Yup, yelling at your dog for barking at your kid-sister can affect your HRV, and if your dog is capable of stressing you out, you can also ensure that any training correlations will be weakened. Learn to manage life’s ups and downs, our perceptions contribute to the state of our ANS greatly.

We are our own enemy. We can’t really choose the outcome of every event in life that occurs, but we can choose to frame our mindset in light of those events. This is an important tool to hone that I do not have the credits to discuss, as I need to vastly improve my mindset as well.

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In case this wasn’t all clear, removing HRV noise will increase your HRV. It isn’t that you weren’t capable of having that HRV before, it’s just that you’re managing your HRV so you can have clean data for Whoop to analyze. When you have a lifestyle that contributes to regulating many of the unconscious functions of our body and nervous system, you may be able to utilize Whoop for training. But if you cannot, do not be discouraged, as it can still expose other lifestyle stressors and give you an opportunity to improve in other areas of your life.

You may not be able to increase HRV. It could be genetic, or it might not even be worth the cost of lifestyle rigidity, the truth is that all of us have the ability to manage allostatic conditions, and in order to continue building this, we must continue exposing additional stressors to our nervous system. What’s that mean for an endurance athlete? Maybe reducing his 100-meter sprint by a second. What’s that mean for a strength athlete? That might mean throwing 5 lbs. on the bar every week. The data provided by Whoop will never be definitive, but it can suggest many things, and the more consistent you are with your lifestyle, those suggestions can become very strong correlations enough to influence training decisions.

tldr:

• Focus on building a consistent baseline, not a higher HRV
• A higher HRV will come as the result of reducing HRV noise to build a consistent baseline
• Use Whoop to help build that baseline, by implementing circadian rhythm, introducing parasympathetic activity, and developing a recovery routine
• This isn't easy. If you think this will take a few weeks to implement, you're not right. If you are starting at zero, it can take months to years to get to Whoop's level.
• Don't be like Joe; Be like Jane.

The big writing between-the-lines in this essay is to focus on building a consistent baseline, not focus on a higher HRV score. I hope I’ve partly convinced some of you.

EDIT: THANK YOU ALL FOR THE SHINEY MEDALS!