My Recent Health Focus: HRV and the Autonomic Nervous System.
One thing I’ve really focused on lately is HRV ( Heart Rate Variability ). It’s an interesting measure to help analyze recovery, stress levels and fitness.
What HRV is, is a measurement of the time interval between heartbeats and the variation of them. In a basic sense, you don’t want a droning beat that is the same every time. Slight variations are key to a healthy heart rhythm.
I’m really interested in attempting to influence my HRV to be parasympathetic dominant most of the time as opposed to sympathetic. Why you might ask? The parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system is the “rest and digest” mode which promotes recovery, while the sympathetic branch is “flight or flight”.
A balanced autonomic nervous system is ideal. One which reacts to danger and turns sympathetic when needed but can quickly revert back to parasympathetic once the danger has passed. If you let the flight or flight side dominate too much, you’ll be suffering from chronic “stress”.
This example of my HRV shows the ups and downs that can happen in just over a 30 minute period.
There are ways to influence HRV through focused breathing, meditation and possibly supplements, so I’m doing a deep dive into this. I’ll detail my discoveries at a later time but until then, here’s some good links about HRV and the Autonomic nervous system branches.
https://ouraring.com/heart-rate-variability-basics/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_rate_variability
http://www.sweetwaterhrv.com/documentation/HRV_Measurement_Explanation.pdf
https://robbwolf.com/2015/01/28/are-you-on-team-sympathetic-or-team-parasympathetic/
Quote of the week:
This is a quick excerpt from the book I just read, Seneca, Letters from a Stoic. The message he’s getting across here is that all too often we follow what “everyone” else is doing once a lot of people start doing it. It becomes the accepted norm and we follow along. He’s advising us to open our eyes and realize much of it not necessary.
Instagram post of the week:
My Workout Of The Week:
I work out multiples times a day for short periods. I never like to sit for hours, so I walk, box, shoot baskets, swim, do strength training and keep moving. Some workouts will last 30 minutes while others can be as short as 10 minutes. Here’s a quick 15 minute boxing workout I like to do.
5 - 2 minute rounds of Bas Rutten’s MMA Workout
In between rounds, I use 25 lb. dumbbells to do curls, lateral raises, shrugs, tricep kickbacks, bent rows and pushups.
If you do it hard, you’ll have a great quick workout!