What drew you to HRV Tracking?

At a lower level of sport, a small incremental change might not matter. But at an elite level, those tiny percentage points in your energy and recovery make a massive difference to your performance.

 I was drawn to HRV tracking as a way to objectify my recovery and gain visibility into how her body was coping with the high physical demands of hockey training, alongside full time work and study. I wanted to see that data, as a perfectionist and bridge the gap between how I felt subjectively and what was happening physiologically under the surface.

Even when you look fine on the outside and your training seems okay, things can be slipping in tiny, incremental amounts under the surface without you ever realising it.

What stood out most to you from the reports?

That there were periods of time during the days when I was working but was actually in parasympathetic rest and digest activation. I am always doing lots of things, so seeing this was great as it meant I was getting some recovery during the day to balance out the impact of training and other stress which helped my system return to baseline levels more easily.

Were there any expected or unexpected findings?

I knew that at times my sleep is impacted by training late at night when I find it hard to wind down afterwards and this showed in my sleep data and difficulty switching into parasympathetic activation until very late at night or early morning. It validated what I felt subjectively.

In addition there were inconsistencies with my recovery trends and sleep quality indicating that external variables beyond pure training load were influencing my physiological state which is being investigated further.

“I used to look at what other athletes were doing and think, ‘Well, they’re surviving on that, so I should be fine too.’ But I’ve learned I can’t just do what everyone else does. My body is physiologically different, and I have to focus purely on what I need.”

How did seeing the data change your awareness of your daily habits ?

It made me more aware how my body was responding to my environment. It encouraged me to build in intentional pauses and slow things down rather than rushing from one high-energy commitment to the next. This helped ensure I am minimising the red (sympathetic activation) and maximising parasympathetic where possible. Sometimes I was in red when I hadn’t felt I was so this was an interesting observation.

When you study human performance, you feel like you should know all this stuff and be able to fix yourself. It’s hard to admit when you miss something in your own body, and you have to remind yourself to be kind and that nobody gets it perfect.

How much has this experience given you the confidence and ability to manage your health or performance going forward?

I realised how much I care about tracking and the data – ‘what you track is what you can change’. Subjective feelings can be ignored and are hard to understand, where the data along with the subjective is more powerful.

The data is incredible, but you can’t lose sight of how you actually feel. Your subjective experience and intuition matter just as much as the numbers on the screen.

If the data is excellent but an athlete feels depleted, or vice versa, it prompts a deeper investigation into underlying factors like nutritional density, hidden life stressors, or deep systemic fatigue.

As a  high-performing, elite athlete, data tracking can easily feed into my perfectionist tendencies though. The journey tracking HRV highlighted the importance of not getting “wrapped up” in achieving a perfect score every day.

How much did the coaching portion contribute to your ability to interpret and act on the data, compared to just having the device alone?

“Having the raw data from a wearable is one thing, but having a coach to actually give you objective insights, point out the long-term trends, and give you those little ‘nuggets’ of advice is what actually makes the data useful.”