HRV4Training

I supplement my Apple Watch data with this manual HRV reading every morning to monitor my parasympathetic system that's affected by a chronic neurological health condition. I've taken my reading every morning for more than a year under consistent conditions, same finger on the camera at the same time every morning prior to any external stimulants like food, coffee or activity, and I find the reading to be an accurate predictor of how I'm going to feel and fare for the rest of the day (low parasympathetic frequency means my body is struggling.) I've also had times where my HRV reading is super low but I feel fine and I think pffft this thing is off, and then I come down with a virus three days later, proving again that the HRV app knows if I'm sick before I know I'm sick!! I've taken measurements with this app while simultaneously checking heart rate with both an oximeter and my Apple Watch, and HR has been accurate so maybe those reviewers who had accuracy issues had older phones. Even my doctors find this data fascinating, since the correlation to my neurological symptoms has proven time and again to be accurate. Another great tool to have in my health management toolbox!

I’m loving this app!! Deceivingly simple to use. Incredibly useful insights. To get this level of physiological insight for $10 bucks is simply AMAZING. The fact that it can all be done with the phone you already have is downright awesome. Hats off to the developers!! Athletic improvement comes from stressing the body and then allowing the body to recover and adapt. The whole point of training is to give the body the maximum amount of training stress it can recover from before the next workout. But how much is too much? Training and life stress can accumulate in quite unintuitive ways. Especially over time. That’s what this app helps you to understand and it does it with a direct measurement of your particular physiological “state”, and then tracks that over time. I linked it to Strava and Training Peaks (super easy) to pull in workout data and now have a single point of reference for monitoring fatigue. Just great. If you want to optimize your training time and efforts this is absolutely the app to get. Incredible value for the $$.

What can I say I’m impressed. I’ve tested and downloaded several other HRV apps but they either required an external or didn’t support the new Apple Watch feature that supports HRV. Even though this app doesn’t support the Apple Watch either, it still offered the ability to use my existing iPhone. Don’t be fooled, the iPhone camera works just as great. I used to use the camera for other things to measure HR and I found it to be just as accurate. The HRV was spot on at least referencing against the Apple Watch readings. As for the app, there are some bugs that I’ve worked with Marco to resolve so while minor he has worked with me. I do acknowledge that most of these HRV apps tend to favor runners, cyclists, or triathletes. Fitness and CrossFit folks are just as interested in peak training. Remember us too! Lastly, the insights are great and this is the kind of easy advice I was looking for. Integration with other apps to include Strava and Training Peaks is a plus. A negative is the inability to get into the weeds with your data or edit but I just found out they have a Coach app that will allow you to do that and I might have to investigate that! Overall very impressed and hope they keep developing this app.