What is the best way to gauge our response to training? If you have studied the scientific basis behind the newest gimmicks of genotype testing, but think it’s not enough to fulfill the claims and also if blood and saliva tests are too costly and you are aware of the need for them to be used as daily or weekly monitoring tools, and in non-professional sport, these tests are often too costly and ineffective or founded on faulty assumptions or pseudoscience?
You can check up your stats any time of the day and keep track of them, even while resting or doing other activities like having lunch, taking a bath, playing a game, or even while in sites like NetBet Sport, this way you can check your body reaction to numerous activities that don’t require to be training.
But, there are many amazing apps to monitor the training program – even when it’s just the weight room, I am a fan of the app Strong and another one that we frequently use includes the Perform app, which lets you do an amalgamation of exercise load and training selection. Finally, for endurance athletes, Training Peak is a website-based system that I would highly recommend.
The easiest way to get an idea of how your body reacts to changes in training load is to track day-to-day energy, mood, and sleep quality as well as stress. We can do this by using a POMS ( Profile of Mood States) type of questionnaire or simple with an app-based system like Inflow. They aren’t perfect but can help you take a break during times when you are stressed out This can assist in avoiding placing your homeostasis under excessive stress.
The monitoring of your macro and overall intake is crucial and a miscalculation of intake is typical for most of my athletes that have either an over-training load or a mysterious sub-performance. I do not look past the excellent MyFitnessPal for an easy method to get a clear image.
Monitoring sleep quality is now feasible with some level of control. It could help you adjust the intensity of your training as you get tired. Sleep cycle, a free application is a decent option, or more suitable for wear. Fitbit Flex Jawbone up or Jaybird Reign can also measure heart rate variation.
In a more specific way, we can see the heart rate variation, which is the variation in the interval between heartbeats is directly linked to the body’s balance in the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
In general, the higher an HRV’s, the better however there are times when the large variation can be unfavorable to the physiology of the body, however, there is not enough variation, which could result from the stress of life, illness, or under-recovery.
HRV can be monitored again with an iPhone application using the camera on the top HRV4Training equipment like Omegawave as well as continuous tracking via the fantastic First Beat – but usually is not available to elite athletes due to the cost.
This permits a daily assessment of readiness. This when combined with wellness could be a great instrument.
Another thing I’m considering increasingly is the use of Mindfulness and reflection One of the best sources is the app Headspace as well as The 5 Minute Journal who is looking to release an application-based version.
