Do any of the recovery time indices have validity for activities that are not chiefly cardio?

If I do a weight training session, it'll say I can recover (retrain) in like 2 hours.

Or, I'll do a 90 minute class of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (the last 30 minutes being live sparring - fighting for your life but within rulesets to keep you safe and allow you to tap out). This gets heart rates in the 170s (and I'm in my mid-40s) and resp rates in the 30s. I use a Whoop style arm band to track the HR, because you cannot really wear a watch while grappling - too dangerous.

Again, I'll get a trivially short recommended recovery, even though the next morning I feel like I've been hit by a truck.

Comments / advice?

Thanks for reading.

0 Absurd over 1 year ago

It's HR based only. It doesn't consider muscle strain or other load on your body.

It means you heart/cardio system should be recovered, if there's enough data to baseline your activity, it doesn't mean your body is ready to go again.

So basically, it's useless for strength training, as you don't have significant time periods of highly elevated HR. If you have an optical HR armband and the HR data is correct (it rarely is for non-running or cycling activities) the effect of your Ju Jitsu session should be similar to HIIT session, and valid.

It generally doesn't take more than 24h to recover from 30min HIIT session, so if you do it often, there are probably other factors affecting your recovery rather than just HR.