Collins TM


Post #16 — HRV: 8 Weeks In

May 3, 2026

Eight weeks of HRV data. Mid-40s to mid-50s as the baseline, a couple of red patches, one genuinely impressive green week, and no clear slope up or down. This a metric that I hope to focus and improve over the next month.

49 ms 8-wk avg
90 ms Peak (Mar 24)
26 ms Low (Mar 26)
46 ms Last 3 nights
Weekly HRV Average — Mar 4 to May 2 (ms)
75
50
25
49
Mar
4–11
50
Mar
12–18
65
Mar
19–25
44
Mar 26
–Apr 1
46
Apr
2–8
47
Apr
9–15
45
Apr
16–22
49
Apr
23–29
44
Apr 30
–now
Strong recovery week
Dip / stress week
Baseline
Partial week
Where you sit in the HRV spectrum
20 ms 40 60 80 100 ms
← Red zone ■ Everyday band (shaded) Green zone →

Current (~46 ms)    Mar 24 peak (90 ms)

What I take from this

The week of March 19–25 proved that a 90 ms is possible. The reading on March 24 came from a stretch of good sleep and low stress. That's the path forward to achieve it.

The dip the following week (March 26–28, readings as low as 26–37 ms) was the opposite. There is no where to hide from an HRV reading, something off in recovery — sleep, alcohol, late nights, stress, travel — and the number says so before you feel it consciously.

The last four weeks sitting in the low-40s to mid-50s hovering without any major movement, but I haven't stacked the conditions that produced that green week. Consistency precedes improvement.

What consistency actually means here

The data doesn't reward occasional heroics. One great night of sleep in a week of bad ones doesn't move the weekly average. What moves it is boring, repeated inputs: same bedtime window, no alcohol, controlled training load. The March 19–25 week was probably a combination of all three aligning, not one dramatic intervention.

My goal over the next 8 weeks isn't to chase 90 ms again. It's to get the floor higher — fewer readings below 40, more readings in the high-40s and 50s as the normal case. That's a different kind of progress than a peak, and it's the kind that actually compounds.


Data sourced from 8 weeks of nightly HRV tracking with WHOOP.