Restwise: Superior performance through intelligent recovery.

I have been using the Restwise product over the course of the past year to help me track how my body recovers from the previous training day.  It is an excellent tool that allows me to monitor my training and most importantly keeps me aware of the signs and symptoms of overtraining.  This product is basically a pulse oximeter that measures my heart rate and oxygen saturation level before I get out of bed each morning.  I then go onto to Restwise app on my iPhone and answers series of questions that include: hours slept, energy level, mood, the previous day's training performance, urine shade, body weight etc. and I get a score. "Every marker selected (with one notable exception: oxygen saturation) has been scientifically demonstrated to offer a variable correlation to stress and fatigue."

Greetings from your team at Restwise! 

The following is just a small piece of content from their site that will eventually help you to begin to understand the factors that influence recovery.  Alright... let's dive in!

Resting Heart Rate
Sports science has confirmed the link between variability in resting heart rate and stress levels in the body.  But this link is not entirely understood, and the evidence can be confusing.  The problem is that an elevated resting heart rate may indicate compromised recovery from training stress... but it may also simply mean that you had a rough day at work.  To complicate matters, an elevated pulse may be a sign of sympathetic (over-training) stress, whereas a dramatically lowered pulse may indicate parasympathetic stress.  Restwise analyzes resting heart rate variability within the context of both your heart rate history and your other daily inputs. Our algorithm then distills this complexity and adjusts the calculation.

Resting heart rate should ideally be monitored during sleep or first thing in the morning, before getting out of bed.  Day-to-day variations in resting heart rate of approximately 5% are common and not usually associated with fatigue or stress.  However, increases of greater than 5% are typically reported in fatigued or acutely over-reached (sympathetic) individuals.

Weight
Sport nutritionists agree that rapid weight loss compromises the body's ability to repair itself following training.  Rapid reduction in body mass occurs as a result of fluid and/or substrate loss, both of which affect recovery and performance.  Further, an acute body mass loss of 2% or greater can adversely affect cognitive and physical performance.

Regularly monitoring pre-breakfast body mass can aid in optimizing fluid and energy balance, and can lead to more robust recovery and performance.  But simply weighing yourself every morning isn't enough. Why? Because hydration, type of food, regularity, etc. can all influence daily weight. Restwise analyzes the body weight input within the context of other variables and your historical trends. In so doing, it is able to interpret daily variability within your complete recovery profile.

We will continue to post content at times from the Restwise team that will be extremely helpful with various aspects of your training so check back periodically and for more information on this product visit Restwise.

Until next time... Intelligent recovery - Superior performance!

This article was provided by Recovery Science & Technology, LLC, makers of Restwise, the world’s first non-invasive recovery monitoring system.  Athletes and coaches around the world use Restwise to intelligently balance hard training and recovery. This summer Restwise athletes earned 28 Olympic medals in six different sports.