Understanding HRV. The Key Metric For A High Performer ??

Executives and Entrepreneurs face challenges and high demands in their roles everyday and most people simply do not understand.

These demands place a incredibly high stress load on their bodies resulting in, not only a decrease in overall performance but also potentially chronic disease & life expectancy.?

Fortunately, a solution exists to counterbalance the effects of job stress Executives and Entrepreneurs face.?

The solution is heart-rate variability (HRV).

Experts, researchers, and doctors in the performance world are calling heart-rate variability the best overall biometric.?

HRV training can help high-performers monitor their health, better manage their stress response, and achieve sustainable peak performance.

What Is HRV?

HRV simply put is the variation in time intervals between consecutive heart beats averaged over time.

HRV is linked to your?autonomic nervous system (ANS)?and the balance between the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches.

Your ANS is responsible for your bodies reaction to daily stressors and regulates some of your body’s most important systems, including heart rate, respiration, and digestion.

The greater the magnitude of your heart rate fluctuations or changes between beats, the more sensitive and capable the physiological reflexes are that help to control your autonomic nervous system.

As a rule of thumb:

• High HRV is associated with rest-and-digest, general fitness, good recovery and better stress management.

Low HRV is associated with fight-or-flight, high stress levels, illness, overtraining and anxiety. (A Low HRV is correlated with nine of the 10 leading causes of death in the U.S)

Although, there are some situations where a low HRV is necessary and even desirable. For instance during strenuous exercise, a low HRV is a reflection of your fight-or-flight system appropriately dominating to get your heart rate up for activity.

What are the benefits of improving HRV??

• Improved Focus
• Improved Immune Function
• Increased Stress Resilience
• Improved Physical & Cognitive Performance
• Improved Recovery
• Optimised Sleep

How to improve HRV?

Improving HRV depends on your current health and fitness status.?It is important that you have an accurate device to measure HRV (Oura Rings, Apple Watched, Whoop)

The most common starting point is learning deep nasal breathing. Optimal breathing rate to promote your parasympathetic nervous system is about 6 breaths per minute. So breathing in for 5 seconds through your nose and exhaling for 5 seconds through your nose. A good routine would be to complete five minutes in the morning when you first wake up, five minutes during the afternoon, and 10 minutes right before going to sleep.

Another important way to improve HRV is getting adequate amount of restorative sleep a night (7 hours). Sleep is a force multiplier, meaning it has a disproportionately positive impact on HRV and performance.

Next, learning to reframe how you perceive stress or negative events can be hugely impactful. You can't stop stress happening in your life, a work email and tight deadline an argument at home etc. But the way your respond to these daily micro stressors will have a massive impact on your HRV and overall quality and longevity of life.

Finally, improving fitness levels with a daily movement plan, when combined with good nutrition, proper hydration, breath-work, and gratitude, all lead to HRV improvement.?The good news is you can improve your HRV by establishing new health habits over time.

Dr. Chris Spearman

PS. If you want to delegate optimising your health, performance and cognitive function drop me a DM with the word 'Performance' and I will give your more details.