HRV status "no balance" for long time for no obvious reason

Unbalanced doesn't mean that your HRV is low...it means that the average of the last 7 days is lower than your baseline made from the past 3 weeks.

You're saying "for long time"....can you quantify? Or show a screenshot? If your HRV stays lower for x amount of time, the baseline should change too.

I have the same. Since few weeks I am on purple (overtrained) only caused by in their view consistent low HRV (around 33-38). When it started I was tapering and then recovering, so low intensity of running. I feel fine and my vo2max is 54. I am52 years old. Getting pretty annoyed by it. 

Afwesterman said:

Since few weeks I am on purple (overtrained)

Can you post your 4week HRV graph, just like posted above?

The HRV base is 3 weeks, your status is comparing your last 7 days against the last 3 weeks essentially. So a "few weeks", your baseline should evolve.

Afwesterman said:

When it started I was tapering and then recovering, so low intensity of running

That language seems to indicate you had been training for a race. During tapering, you can expect some HRV recovery, and then certainly during recovery after the race. It is likely that your race cratered your HRV, and it will take some time for it to go back up, but with real recovery and rest, it will.\

Afwesterman said:

I feel fine and my vo2max is 54

HRV is also sensitive to stress. VO2 data is ancillary here.

My recommendation is to take these numbers at face value, rest and recovery (real recovery) until you HRV gets back on track. In fact, you should wait for the HRV to bounce back towards the higher limit and then settle back down.

Recovery training is hard to do right mentally speaking. We all "feel fine" and run/bike faster than we should during recovery sessions. Make sure you stay in zone 1.

If you don't, the risk is that if you persist with unbalanced HRV, for a while and eventually end up with a HRV green assessment but in fact be in strained status. This in turn will lead to under optimized training with higher risk of injuries.

What is tricky, is that you can observe excellent to top performance while having a straining HRV status, so performance is not the reference.

There is still a chance that HRV values are off because of implementation errors or challenges due to HR data collected with an optical wrist monitor, but since the trends are what matter here, you can discount these errors.

If you really concerned with HRV data collection quality, you can complement your nightly data with a daily snapshot and an HRV stress test taken always at the same time of the day, in sitting, resp standing rest position. You will get more reliable data, but you should see the same trends.

this is my HRV status since the feature was there. It is supposed to look at the last 3 weeks, but it seems to struggle with the first measurements. I have no explanation for the mountain curve the first measured days. Here’s my resting heart rate as well:

I wonder whether things will become better automatically which I prefer of course. Or would you advise to do a factory reset to reset hrv statistics? It currently screws the daily suggested workouts by only suggesting recovery runs while it should now be in base phase for my marathon event in April. I could also switch hrv logging off iso factory reset if that would reset the assessment period.

Doing a factory reset will make you start again from the beginning...i know that's the idea but you lose 3 weeks more to get the baseline and the baseline could be affected again by few good or bad days during those 3 weeks.

It's difficult to say what was giving you those high values at the beginning but there are many factors like less training, less stress in general, amount of sleep, whatever probably.
If you don't have any clue as you did the same stuff that you're doing now then it's pretty strange

Would be useful to see also the night averages on the graph. Your baseline is definitely going to the lower side but it's like you have some spikes from time to time...or you're overdoing during some days and fully resting on others or i don't know.

This is what happened to me...at the beginning i was pretty relaxed and trying to alternate between some HIIT/Strength workouts and Garmin's running suggestions.

The huge drop on the 17th(unluckily it was also the first day of the baseline) was because of some drinks and just few hours of sleep but it was one of the main factor that gave me the low/unbalanced status as it messed up with the first part that was a lot higher.

But after that it settled pretty well.

The baseline widened too as you can see and i'm able to stay pretty much always within the range but i have a pretty quiet life. I don't drink except in rare occasions.

This is just to show you how my increased amount of activities during the first 2 weeks of september tanked my HRV and how it increased it after i decided to focus only on running as the "race" was approaching

Just to give you some examples...then you're the only one that can try to associate some changes with something that you changed in your routine too.

@Rene,

Your case is different from the Afwesterman who apparently just completed a training and a race, so recovery seemed in order.

It seems you are seeing this HRV trend because:

- of a high HRV baseline,

- training for your marathon.

A couple of things about HRV-based training.

First, it is best used to estimate the recovery from moderate to high intensity training sessions.

"Conclusion: The results of the present study suggest the potential of resting HRV to prescribe endurance training by individualizing the timing of vigorous training sessions."

Individual Endurance Training Prescription with Heart Rate Variability

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26909534/  (abstract)

"An intense day of training can result in suppressed HRV for up to 72 hours post-exercise"

A recent study by Plews and colleagues4 featuring Olympic-level rowers found that training phases of high intensity (e.g., above the second lactate threshold) suppressed HRV, while phases of lower intensities (e.g., below the lactate threshold) increased HRV.Second, training is stress and will take your HRV down."

https://simplifaster.com/articles/interpreting-hrv-trends-athletes/

Second, I was looking at the combination of your HRV and your Resting Heart Rate (RHR). HRV is slighlty too low, and your RHR is increasing by more than a couple of BPM. These are signs of an overreaching phase, which is necessary for training.

"FUNCTIONAL OVERREACHING

To accelerate fitness gains, advanced athletes will require a period of time in an “overreaching state” to achieve a new adaptation. This is literally pushing beyond the point at which your body can fully recover from training, without it breaking down. In these cases, as you increase load and intensity expect to see the following:

Mostly yellow and perhaps 1-2 green recoveries per week (with strain slightly exceeding capacity 3-4 days of the week)
HRV trends downward (around 10-15 ms)
RHR trends upward (maybe 2-3 bpm)"

https://www.whoop.com/thelocker/heart-rate-variability-training/

So, If your training phase is in the build phase, you should be OK. You will need to make sure that your "peak" and "taper" phases will produce the reverse trends.

If you are not in a build phase, your training is too intense. If you follow the watch recommendations, it is most likely because it over estimates your VO2Max. A tell tale sign is that easy runs are not that easy, and sprint run paces are hard to attain.

At any rate, I wouldn't worry about resetting the watch.

Thanks for the extensive reply and detailed analysis and explanation. I will keep the hrv history for now, assuming it will improve over time. 

Have you ever seen anything like this where no HRV baseline is shown? I've had the watch on now for over 4 weeks and the baseline still hasn't come in yet?