Heart Rate Monitoring in Team Sports—A Conceptual Framework for Contextualizing Heart Rate Measures for Training and Recovery Prescription

Abstract

A comprehensive monitoring of fitness, fatigue, and performance is crucial for understanding an athlete's individual responses to training to optimize the scheduling of training and recovery strategies. Resting and exercise-related heart rate measures have received growing interest in recent decades and are considered potentially useful within multivariate response monitoring, as they provide non-invasive and time-efficient insights into the status of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and aerobic fitness. In team sports, the practical implementation of athlete monitoring systems poses a particular challenge due to the complex and multidimensional structure of game demands and player and team performance, as well as logistic reasons, such as the typically large number of players and busy training and competition schedules. In this regard, exercise-related heart rate measures are likely the most applicable markers, as they can be routinely assessed during warm-ups using short (3–5 min) submaximal exercise protocols for an entire squad with common chest strap-based team monitoring devices. However, a comprehensive and meaningful monitoring of the training process requires the accurate separation of various types of responses, such as strain, recovery, and adaptation, which may all affect heart rate measures. Therefore, additional information on the training context (such as the training phase, training load, and intensity distribution) combined with multivariate analysis, which includes markers of (perceived) wellness and fatigue, should be considered when interpreting changes in heart rate indices. The aim of this article is to outline current limitations of heart rate monitoring, discuss methodological considerations of univariate and multivariate approaches, illustrate the influence of different analytical concepts on assessing meaningful changes in heart rate responses, and provide case examples for contextualizing heart rate measures using simple heuristics. To overcome current knowledge deficits and methodological inconsistencies, future investigations should systematically evaluate the validity and usefulness of the various approaches available to guide and improve the implementation of decision-support systems in (team) sports practice.

Monitoring und Belastungssteuerung im Handball

“…Über die Anpassung dieser methodischen Steuergrößen nehmen die Trainerteams die tägliche Feinabstimmung vor und bestimmen so maßgeblich die Entwicklung der sportlichen Leistungsfähigkeit [2]. Während diese Feinabstimmung bei einer einzigen Sport-treibenden Person mit einem überschaubaren Aufwand verbunden ist, steht die Trainingsleitung bei Mannschaftssportarten schnell vor großen logistischen Herausforderungen [12]. So betrug die Kadergröße in der höchsten deutschen Spielklasse für die Saison 2019/2020 gemäß den webbasierten Kadervorstellungen bei den Frauen 17 ± 2 Athletinnen und bei den Männern 20 ± 2 Athleten [13,14], im American Football kann ein Kader gerade in der Pre-Season sogar bis zu 90 Personen beinhalten [15].…”

“…Daher können Verfahren zur Erfassung des akuten Beanspruchungsgrades als Indikatoren für diese individuelle Antwort angesehen werden. Hierzu kommen in Forschung und Sportpraxis seit Jahren verschiedene physiologische, biochemische, psychometrische und auch kombinierte Verfahren mit überwiegend apparativen Hilfsmitteln zum Einsatz, von denen sich einige auch für ein Beanspruchungsmonitoring im Handballsport eignen[2,4,12,19,20,24,25]. Die Beanspruchung eines Athleten hängt neben der erfahrenen sportlichen Belastung von weiteren Faktoren ab, wovon manche, wie der Trainingszustand, die Ernährung sowie die Gesundheit, beeinflussbar sind.…”

“…Flüssigkeitshaushalt oder den Umgebungsbedingungen), wodurch sie anfällig für Störfaktoren ist. Dieser Umstand muss bei der Planung eines herzfrequenzbasierten Beanspruchungsmonitorings unbedingt berücksichtigt werden[2,12]. Die praktizierten und validierten HRV-Messverfahren (von engl.…”

Accuracy and reliability of a free mobile HRV application in measurement of heart rate variability

“…Heart rate variability (HRV) refers to fluctuation in heartbeat intervals reflecting autonomic health (Bernston et al, 1997;Task Force, 1996). In athlete settings, practitioners utilize HRV in monitoring autonomic recovery and training load quantification (Janssen et al, 1993;Kylosov et al, 2009;Mal'tse et al, 2010;Plews, et al, 2012;Saboul et al, 2018;Schneider et al, 2018). The 'gold standard' for measuring HRV is through a laboratory electrocardiogram (ECG).…”

“…The aforementioned HRVapp studies use RMSSD which is a time-based HRV index (Bernston et al, 1997;Task Force, 1996). Implications for autonomic health can be better understood using frequency derived HRV indices (Malliani et al, 1991;Malliani et al,1994;Montano et al, 2009;Sassi et al, 2015;Schneider et al, 2018). However, there seems to be a void in literature examining the accuracy and reliability of frequencybased HRV from an HRVapp.…”