Heart Rate Recovery

Heart Rate Recovery is a Firstbeat Sports Cloud feature that measures how fast the heart rate decreases within a set time period. Sports Cloud calculates the values automatically for all measurements, sessions and laps.

Availability

• Heart Rate Recovery is a Sports Premium+ feature.
• Heart Rate Recovery is available in Sports Cloud only. The Firstbeat Sports: Coach app does not calculate Heart Rate Recovery in real time.

Values and periods

• Absolute value (bpm): The heart rate drop in beats per minute.
• Relative value (%): The drop as a percentage of the maximum heart rate (HRmax) set in the athlete profile. Example: with an HRmax of 193 bpm, a drop from 168 to 146 bpm in 30 seconds is 22 bpm, or 11.4%.
• Sports Cloud uses a rolling window of 15, 30, 60 and 120 seconds, so athletes can do a test at different times without a separate lap for each test.
• Name laps and sessions consistently to find the right values, for example a lap for a regular fitness test or for the last 5 minutes of each game period.

Where to find the values

• The Ranking table of the Sports Cloud Dashboard.
• The data export, in columns such as Heart Rate Recovery (%) 30s and Heart Rate Recovery (bpm) 30s.
• The Summary Cards and Athlete Ranking views of a custom Session Report.

Screenshot: the Dashboard Ranking table with Heart rate Recovery (bpm) columns for 30, 60 and 120 seconds.

Data requirements

• Heart Rate Recovery needs R-R interval data (the time between consecutive heartbeats). The Firstbeat Sports Sensor always records R-R interval data. Garmin optical wrist sensors do not, so no values are calculated for those measurements.
• Sports Cloud skips periods with unreliable data and omits abnormally high heart rate drops. Poor data quality can cause a missing value.
• When an athlete has several measurements on the same day, Sports Cloud shows the best value.

Need more help? Ask the Customer Agent chat on this page or email support@firstbeat.com.