Training Today

I’ve started using Training Today in conjunction with the 80/20 zone 2 training methodology for my cycling. The two work very well together. The 80/20 zone 2 methodology means you train 80% of the time at your zone 2 cardio rate, and 20% at your zone 4/5 cardio rate going all out. For example, in a 7 day period, you spend four days in zone 2, and 1 day in zones 4/5. In a week’s time, that allows 2 recovery days. I use the Training Today as a guide to see how hard to train. For example, if it has a medium Heart Rate Variability (HRV) score of 5, I’ll train in zone 2 and bike about 30 miles. If the HRV score is 0, I can take a rest day or just bike 15 miles in zone 1. I’ll also make sure there is a rest day before the zones 4/5 push and the HRV score is high enough. Remember zone 2 means endurance training, if you stay in zone 2 for a few hours, you’ll be very tired and the HRV score will show it afterwards. The main reason I like Training Today is the way they bound your HRV data into a range between 0 to 10, that’s because everyone’s HRV range is different, and that range can change as you train over a long period. I’ve also found the HRV read out is quite in tune with what I did during the training. One important thing to remember is Training Today needs to keep track of your HRV over a period (e.g. 1 month) in order to calibrate the range, that’s because your HRV of 30ms is different from my HRV of the same value. Give the app a try, it’s well worth it.

Edit 2: changing to 5 stars because Ian on the dev team went above and beyond to help me out with the app. Couldn't figure it out in the long run but appreciate the customer support and will keep the app to see if/how it improves over time. Edit: ended up just deleting. No response from team with an app that's got just over 200 reviews. The app might as well be just pulling arbitrary numbers. I'm fully rested and ready to train, and it's telling me I'm at a 3 and should rest. Better off just seeing how you feel than try and decipher what this app is trying to tell you. Not sure what the 5 star reviews are about. Not sure how to read this. I workout heavy weights for over an hour. Sleep a decent 7 hours. Run 4 miles in 100 degree weather and it still says "10 - peak performance!" How about maybe 5? And this is with intensity adjusted to -10. Like, what? Not to mention it has said "no hrv reading use breathe app" every day even though i have hrv readings via my health app AND have done the breathe app twice each day. So what exactly does your app DO? I know what it's SUPPOSED to do. Luckily it's free and easy to delete. Anyone have suggestions for an app that does what this says it does but actually works? Im willing to pay. Just want something to help gauge my recovery and "readiness" to train.

I’ve been trying to incorporate HRV into my training for a while but so far available apps have insisted on specific hardware and/or been too top-heavy looking for manually inputted correlations with other metrics. Many of the latter exist in other app ecosystems that only partially share data with each other or with apple health. I’d frankly rather be out riding my bike that any more messing around with this, and have been waiting for a solution that just used what’s on hand in apple health already. I get that it’s not as good as standalone hardware, and that ideally HRV would be measured at a fixed time, like every am etc., but it’s still data, and after looking at it for over a year (and using Breathe first thing each am) it does correlate with how I’m feeling and my performance. So, 5 minutes with this new app and using existing apple health data it perfectly predicted in retrospect what my week has been like, including having felt fantastic on the bike this morning, which was correlated with a 10/10 peak performance prediction. Not much in the iOS app itself, but the watch complication/app is perfect. Get it. Oh, and I’d be willing to pay for this BTW.