New here? Start with these.
If you are new to data-driven training, these are the most important concepts to understand first:
1. Understand your HRV baseline
Heart Rate Variability is the single most useful recovery metric available to athletes. Before you can act on it, you need to understand what your baseline is and how to interpret daily changes.
Read first: What is HRV and Why Every Endurance Athlete Should Track It
2. Learn to read your training load
Most athletes overtrain without knowing it. Training load metrics from your Garmin, Wahoo or Polar tell you exactly how much stress you are accumulating — and when to back off.
3. Fix your sleep before fixing your training
No training plan survives bad sleep. Deep sleep and REM are when your body actually adapts to training. If these are low, your fitness ceiling is lower too.
Quick wins
- Start tracking HRV every morning before getting out of bed
- Look at your resting heart rate trend over 7 days, not day-to-day
- Check your deep sleep minutes — anything below 60 minutes consistently is a problem