HRV is informative as a multi-day trend used to guide training decisions — not as a single daily score to react to
Interpretation
Javaloyes et al.'s RCT found HRV-guided training (adjusting session intensity based on the resting HRV trend) produced performance gains associated with rising resting HRV. This supports using HRV as a trend-based, individualized training-adjustment signal — the evidence base for prescriptive HRV-guided training is still relatively small and sport/protocol-specific, so treat it as emerging rather than settled practice.
Practical implication
Any HRV feature in a training-plan tool should surface rolling trends (e.g. 7-day rolling average vs. baseline) rather than single-day readings, and should avoid overstating HRV-guided training as a fully validated prescription method.
Sources
1 source, independently verified.
IJSPP 14(1):23-32. HRV-guided training (adjusting session intensity day-to-day based on resting HRV trend) produced performance improvements associated with increases in resting HRV — supports using HRV as a trend-based training-adjustment signal, not a single daily readiness score to react to.