COMING SOON! Heart rate variability (HRV) is a valuable tool used to assess cardiac function, evaluate mental and emotional well-being, and optimize training based on your unique data. Written by a world-renowned author team: Sylvain Laborde (@prof.dr.dr.sylvain.laborde ), Marco Altini (@altini_marco ), Dr. Emma Mosley, and Dan Plews (@theplews ). Heart Rate Variability introduces the fundamentals of HRV and provides practical guidance on how to measure and interpret HRV data, train smarter, prevent injuries, manage stress, and improve overall health. With coverage spanning everything from factors affecting HRV to ways to enhance training, this book helps coaches, trainers, and athletes understand how deeply performance is influenced by this physiological measurement. Clear explanations of data collection, interpretation, and application make it easy to turn insight into action. Mental training is also explored alongside HRV, showing how psychological stress and physiology interact to impact performance and recovery. Learn from the experts and apply it with a 30-day challenge focused on consistently measuring, interpreting, and improving your HRV.
Pre-order now on Amazon.
NEW HYROX PR – 58:56! 🏆 1st in age group & now 7th fastest all-time in the 40-45 category.
What a day. Honestly, one of the best sporting experiences and atmospheres I’ve ever been a part of. First-ever Hyrox in New Zealand, first wave of the first race—leading the field for most of the race, holding off @travisowles before he absolutely schooled me on the Wall Balls (respect! 💪). @hyroxanz , you put on an incredible event. Just wow!! 🔥
Massive thanks to @pelayofelechosa for his unwavering guidance and my amazing support crew on the day. Next stop: Pro weights in Brisbane as the build-up to the World Champs continues.
First order of business? Wall Ball target practice. 😅 Let’s go! 🚀
We’ve had the privilege of having @theplews in our corner since the very beginning. A sport scientist, coach, and record-breaker like no other:
🏅 All-time Ironman age-group world record (7:56:56)
🌺 Kona age-group course record
💪 Hyrox age-group world record
Grateful to have one of endurance sport’s finest alongside us from the start.
Muscle fiber type shapes your power output, but it also determines how fast you recover.
Fast twitch athletes produce big peaks but take much longer to come back. Slow twitch athletes are more consistent across repeated efforts and bounce back fast.
Same training. Very different demands.
Program power endurance without accounting for fiber type and you're either leaving performance on the table or digging a hole you can't climb out of.
Train the individual. Not just the session.
Check out the full pod 🔗 link in bio!
#hyrox #endurox #fitness #athlete #fasttwitch #slowtwitch
NEW BLOG: HYROX World Champs is 6 weeks away.
The question I get asked most at this point in a build: which week of training matters most, and can I still make a real difference?
The honest answer from the sports science literature is yes, but context matters.
Your performance ceiling isn't decided in the last six weeks alone. What you've done over the last twelve weeks, months, and years underpins everything.
But the four to six week window before competition is when that ceiling gets set. That's when chronic training load should be at its highest. That's when the final overreaching stimulus needs to land so it can be absorbed before race day.
Which means race-specific work, with some genuine overload, needs to happen now.
One thing worth remembering: training adapts on a rolling window. The work you did twelve weeks ago is being expressed right now.
So while you do want to push hard in these next few weeks, it's always on a knife's edge, don't overdo it, especially if you're already carrying a solid training load.
Read the full blog via the link in bio, how to periodize these final weeks, what to prioritise in training, and how to arrive in Stockholm ready to perform! 🔥🔥🔥
#training #HYROX #fitness #sportsscience #trainingtips #athlete #endurance #periodization
Two athletes. Same VO2max. Same workout. Both adapt. But to completely different things.
The difference is VLamax.
VLamax is your maximal glycolytic rate. Think of it like: V = Velocity/Rate, La = Lactate, Max = Maximum. It represents how fast your body produces lactate during hard efforts, and it has a large effect on which energy system actually contributes to the work.
Low VLamax Athlete
*Aerobic, efficient, diesel
*Strong steady-state power
*Greater fat oxidation
High VLamax Athlete
*Explosive, glycolytic, punchy
*Strong sprint ability
*Higher carbohydrate reliance
An athlete with low VLamax doing high-intensity intervals (30/30s or 40/20s) heavily recruits glycolytic pathways, and thus creates a strong signal to increase VLamax, leading to unwanted changes that will lower lactate threshold and increase lactate production at lower wattage. They might respond better to longer intervals that allow them to reach a high percentage of VO2max without stimulating VLamax.
An athlete with high VLamax doing the exact same session will also respond quite differently. Their glycolytic system might dominate before the aerobic system is properly challenged, meaning they never reach a high percentage of VO2max. The body adapts to what it actually experienced, not what the session was designed to do.
Both of which may, or may not be the desired training response. As always, "Context, before Content".
By repeatedly doing these types of sessions without understanding, you may be unknowingly training the glycolytic system with the goal of increasing VO2max, causing your lactate threshold to drift downward, carbohydrate reliance to increase, and fat oxidation to drop.
The same workout can lead to a completely different internal response.
This is why intervals have to be specific to your goals and your physiology.
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#endureiq #endurancetraining #cyclingphysiology #vo2max #vlamax #triathlon #triathlontraining #trainingphysiology #hiit #lactate #sportsscience #performancecycling
It’s all about the balance, without the recovery your body cannot adapt to the stimulus. ⚖️
Ensuring your body can adapt from your training with the appropriate recovery your body needs is just as important as going hard.
#Kaiora #TrainingBalance #Recovery #Endurance
"HRV trends upward over weeks and months when training is going well." Not necessarily.
What our new HRV book, co-authored with Sylvain Laborde, Marco Altini and Emma Mosley, actually says:
1. HRV is training-phase dependent. The same direction of change can mean different things depending on the phase. In my 2013 study on Olympic rowers, and again in our 2017 study on World Champion rowers, HRV rose during aerobic training, dropped during the overload phase, and returned toward baseline during the taper. The athletes performed best at that lower point. This doesn’t mean your body has suddenly got worse at regulating stress.
2. HRV saturation. As an endurance athlete becomes very aerobically fit, greater cardiac vagal activity can coincide with a lower HRV, evidenced by a reduced resting heart rate. Falling HRV in that context is not maladaptation.
3. A rising HRV is not automatically a sign of a good training response. Le Meur et al. (2013) reported an increase in cardiac vagal activity after 3 weeks of overload training in triathletes; HRV only dropped back to baseline once they tapered. My own 2013 study in Olympic-medal rowers showed the same pattern: HRV climbed during overload, then fell during the taper. A rising HRV trend can reflect the body's response to heavy training stress, not positive adaptation. In some cases hyper- parasympathetic activity it a negative sign, usually coinciding with lower maximal outputs and poor HR reactivity.
4. Stability is the more valuable marker. The book is explicit: a stable resting HRV, held within an individual's normal range, is what reflects positive adaptation, not an ever-rising average line.
A continuously rising HRV trend is not the gold-standard signal of good training. Context, meaning training phase, individual baseline, and the response and recovery pattern, is.
Power endurance hits different when you train it right.
Cluster sets are one of the most underused tools for building race-ready strength. Break your reps, keep the load heavy, and push your capacity further than standard sets ever would.
To learn more about how to integrate this into your training listen to Episode 1 of the @endurox__ Podcast, now live on Spotify and Apple Podcasts!
Or check out the link in Bio!
We’re incredibly excited to announce the launch of The ENDUROX Podcast, coming very soon to all your favourite podcast channels, with ENDUROX Coaches Dr. Dan Plews and Dr. Adam Storey.
This podcast is designed to meet in the middle: fun, lighthearted conversation alongside practical science and training discussion, all in the world of hybrid and HYROX. With Dans’ extensive endurance background and Adam deep strength and conditioning expertise. This will be a combination of great guest and simply Dan and Adam chewing the fat on all things training and racing.
Two bona fide professionals, real-world academics with real-world experience. You’ll sure get a hell of a lot more information and entertainment than whatever ChatGPT spits out 😁.
Stay tuned for Episode 1.
April is now behind us, and we’re super excited to bring you another episode of TSS 🎉
TSS is where Dr. Dan Plews and Dr. Ed Maunder review 10 studies and break them down with practical applications for anyone interested in coaching, sport science, or training.
This month they cover a huge variety of topics:
* Race nutrition & fuelling strategies
* Mitochondrial function & muscle mass
* Heat & altitude for enhanced adaptation
* Rapid weight loss drugs
* Blood flow & carbohydrate timing during exercise
* Sprint training & muscle glycogen depletion
* Exercise & back health, good or bad?
* Menstrual cycle data & substrate use during exercise
* Exercise training & impulse control
* How mitochondrial function declines with age
If you’re interested in TSS, don’t miss out. For a very small monthly investment you’ll get access to genuinely informative content. Check out the link in bio.
