Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is one of the most available and heavily used technologies in health and wellness and it doesn’t seem to just be a fad. I’ve been using it for over ten years, starting with Joel Jamieson’s BioForce, then Morpheus, and I’ve tested most of the big-name devices you’ve heard of. It’s one of the few metrics I’ve stayed consistent with over the years and plan to continue to do so.

That being said, not all data is equal. HRV isn’t a magic number. It won’t tell you everything about your training or recovery, and it shouldn’t dictate your day. Still, when used correctly—and consistently—it can help guide your decisions about how to adjust your programming over time. Not necessarily on a day-to-day basis, but medium and long term.

Let’s get into how it works, what it’s actually useful for, and why you should use it as a tool, not a game to win.

What Is HRV and Why Should You Care?

HRV is a measure of the variation in time between heartbeats. At first, the idea might sound like a bad thing, but more variability usually means better nervous system health. Higher HRV often reflects a stronger parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) state, while lower HRV indicates higher sympathetic (“fight or flight”) activation.

Ever risen in the morning with a pounding heart rate after a night of drinking or anxious about a test? That’s your sympathetic nervous system in overdrive. Ideally, you’d see the opposite most mornings.

HRV is one of the best objective markers we have for tracking recovery and systemic stress. It tells us if your body is bouncing back from stress or if it’s stuck in a stressed state. Again, you should see fluctuations, that means you are applying the right amount of stress for adaptation. But HRV can help us take note when we are going too far in one direction or another.

Here’s a little more nuance for you: HRV doesn’t predict performance. You can PR on a low-HRV day and feel like garbage on a high one. Think of it more like your car’s check engine light than a fuel gauge. It doesn’t say how far you can go today—it tells you what kind of state your engine is in. This is why it’s still important to learn to feel how your body is recovering from day to day and not just rely on gamifying your HRV.

So What Does HRV Actually Tell Us (and What Doesn’t It)?

Let’s be clear: HRV is not perfect. It’s influenced by a ton of variables even with the equipment being imperfect—sleep, alcohol, hydration, stress, training load, and even how you breathe when you take the reading.

What it does tell you:

• General readiness and resilience
  
• How well you’re recovering from stress
  
• Whether your body is in sympathetic (stressed) or parasympathetic (recovered) mode
  
• Long-term trends in fitness and stress management
  

What it doesn’t tell you:

• How strong you are today
  
• Whether you’re going to crush or bomb your workout
  
• If your training plan is working (in isolation)
  
• Whether you should or shouldn’t train today—context is key
  

The most useful takeaway? HRV is a trend tool, not a daily grade. You’ll see ups and downs, especially when training hard (as you should). That’s normal. But those swings should be predictable. If HRV is consistently low and you feel drained, it’s time to pull back. If it’s rebounding after a deload or restful weekend, that’s a green light.

How to Apply HRV at Every Level of Training

Whether you’re an elite athlete or just trying to stay fit between Zoom calls, HRV can serve you. But how you use it should change depending on your context.

Elite & Competitive Athletes

HRV can help fine-tune your training blocks. Use it to monitor recovery between hard sessions and deloads. If HRV tanks after a peak phase and stays tanked, it’s a cue that you’ve pushed hard—maybe too hard—and some rest is overdue. You should see ebbs and flows following workouts that reflect the effort you put in.

For higher level athletes, you may find you disagree with your readings occasionally. This is why you don’t want to gamify or try to “win” HRV. It’s also why you shouldn’t panic if you get a poor reading and plan on doing a tough workout that day.

Use it as a tool to learn how you feel when you are recovering, pushing harder, and see if you can start to predict when it will suggest you should scale back. HRV is an effective tool to know when you should “test the fences” and when you should ease up.

Aspiring Athletes & “Hardcore Hobbyists”

This is where HRV shines. You’re training seriously but juggling life. No offense, but I’ve been coaching for over a decade and I often find people in this category don’t really know how they feel or if they’re recovering at all. 

HRV can help you learn to regulate intensity: green days are go-days, yellow might be technique or zone 2 work, and red days = recovery. It doesn’t have to be this black and white, but on a broader scale your workouts could adhere to this strategy.

Don’t use HRV to avoid training—use it to shift the focus of your session. Remember, stress is a good thing until it isn’t. You still need to be able to push hard, but if you’re limited because you’re always worn down, the data will reflect that and you may not get the results you want from your training.

Active General Population

HRV is a way to check in with your nervous system, especially if you’re dealing with work stress, poor sleep, or overtraining without realizing it. Use it to reinforce healthy habits. If your HRV drops every time you sleep poorly or drink too much, that’s valuable feedback. And, frankly, it will. HRV often dips quite a bit after just one or two drinks. This is objective data, not just some annoying influencer lecturing you about your life. 

If you feel like you’re in this population, the biggest thing would be to use HRV as a baseline data collection tool to help you fine tune your environment to help set you up for success. You will see very positive results in your HRV if you start sleeping better, fueling more healthily, and managing daily stress.

Best Practices for Tracking HRV (and Keeping Your Sanity)

Here’s what I recommend to all my clients:

• Take it at the same time each morning
  Right after waking up, before caffeine or training.
  
• Use the same device and method
  You’re tracking patterns, not comparing brands.
  
• Look at the trend, not the daily number
  One low reading? No big deal. Five in a row? Pay attention.
  
• Cross-check with how you feel
  HRV is a tool, not the boss. Some of your best days might come on “low HRV” mornings.
  
• Don’t gamify it
  You’re not trying to “beat” HRV. Training hard will lower it temporarily. That’s fine. Recovery is part of the plan.
  

Final Thoughts: Know Yourself, Use the Tools

HRV isn’t a crystal ball—it’s a mirror. Albeit, maybe one of those weird mirrors you see at the fair with some distortion. 

It helps you see patterns you might miss or be ignoring. But like any mirror, it only reflects what’s in front of it. If you’re inconsistent, distracted, or too focused on the number, the reflection gets distorted (And a clown might chase you. Probably not, but maybe).

Used correctly, HRV can help you recover better, train smarter, and feel more connected to your body’s rhythms. That’s the win—not chasing a higher score.

Train hard. Recover smart. And remember: you are not your HRV reading.

Training ADHD in a World of Fitness Hype

The fitness industry has done you wrong—not because available information is bad, but because everyone’s selling you their “one magic pill” solution. Big chains, influencers, and bootcamp classes need you to believe their single modality fixes everything. That’s marketing, not science.

After years of coaching real athletes in the trenches, I can offer this truth: there is no one answer to optimal fitness. It’s about the right dose of different training modalities.

Today we’ll break down the critical differences between strength training and metabolic conditioning (often oversimplified as “HIIT” or Metcons) and why timing them intelligently—not mashing them together—is key to performing your best.

The Problem: Everything Becomes a Sweaty Mess

Ever find yourself racing through a workout, drenched in sweat, wondering if you’re doing it right? You’re not alone.

In today’s fitness culture, there’s massive hype around high-intensity interval training, “metabolic” bootcamps, and sweat-soaked circuits. Meanwhile, traditional strength training gets pushed aside—or worse, gets mashed together with conditioning until everything becomes a painful mish-mash without any proper direction towards adaptation.

Many active adults (especially those 30+) who still love skiing, biking, and mountain adventures struggle to balance these approaches. Should you lift heavy with long rests, or do rapid-fire circuits? Can resting longer possibly benefit endurance athletes?

The truth: strength training and HIIT are distinct training methods with unique stimuli and adaptations. Understanding their differences—and how they complement each other—is key to training smart, staying healthy, and performing your best.

What Exactly Is Strength Training?

Strength training means exercises with heavy resistance performed specifically to increase maximal force production. According to the NSCA, true strength training focuses on developing neuromuscular adaptations like improved motor unit recruitment, synchronization, and firing rate.

Classic strength workouts involve high intensity (heavy loads) for low-to-moderate reps with adequate rest between sets. You might do 5 heavy squats, then rest 2-3 minutes before the next set. That rest isn’t laziness—it’s when your body replenishes energy stores and recovers the neural drive required for maximal effort.

Key point for endurance athletes: Strength training is primarily neurological adaptation. Higher reps with lighter loads or bodyweight won’t yield the strength adaptations you’re looking for—that’s a different stimulus entirely.

What Proper Strength Training Feels Like

During a strength session, your heart rate will spike briefly on heavy lifts, but you shouldn’t be breathless between sets. If you’re gasping and your goal is strength, you need longer rest periods.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is turning strength workouts into conditioning by rushing rest periods. The result? Your muscles and nervous system never fully recover, so you lift lighter with poor form or can’t more very much weight —essentially doing accidental metabolic training that shortchanges strength gains.

You don’t necessarily have to lift like a powerlifter, but it can help to understand their approach and why: they take 3-5+ minutes between heavy sets because those long rests let the fastest, strongest muscle fibers and central nervous system recover fully for maximal force production.

Bottom line: Strength training prioritizes intensity of effort over density of work. Volume and rep schemes should vary based on your experience and skill level. But the effort needs to be focused on moving heavier weights with adequate rest.

Lastly, you don’t need to be doing heavy strength splits all year. Like many training modalities, it should undulate throughout the year. You can make adjustments based on your fitness focuses. That being said, you should have 1-2 focused programs per year where your priority should be adding strength.

Energy Systems and Adaptations

Strength training primarily uses the anaerobic alactic system (ATP-PCr), providing explosive energy for 10-15 seconds max. After that, your aerobic system quietly works during rest periods to clear fatigue and refill energy stores.

Train consistently with proper strength protocols and your body adapts through:

Increased Neuromuscular Strength: Your brain gets better at recruiting more muscle fibers and firing them in sync. Early strength gains come from improved neural drive before muscles even grow.

Muscle Hypertrophy: With adequate volume and nutrition, strength training increases muscle cross-sectional area. Bigger muscles produce more force and raise metabolic rate. However, hypertrophy specific programming is often quite different than strength specific. This will depend on your experience in the gym, genetic factors, age, and more.

Stronger Bones and Connective Tissue: Heavy loading stimulates bone density and strengthens tendons and ligaments—crucial “armor” against injury whether you’re lifting luggage or carving down a mountain.

Sport Performance Benefits: Being stronger makes everything easier. Build a stronger squat and each pedal stroke or ski turn takes a smaller percentage of your maximum force. Strength is also the foundation of power (power = strength × speed).

Important limitation: Strength training alone won’t improve cardiovascular endurance much—and it’s not supposed to. You’ll get strong and muscular but not well-conditioned for long activities. Strength endurance is certainly a trainable quality, but it’s not as simple as high reps = strength endurance.

What Is HIIT (Metabolic Conditioning)?

High-Intensity Interval Training involves repeated bouts of very intense effort interspersed with variable rest periods. Examples include track sprints, burpee circuits, kettlebell intervals, or rowing sprints—typically 20-90 seconds of near-maximal work followed by recovery periods.

If you can keep going hard with no rest, you’re not at true HIIT intensity. By design, HIIT is anaerobic (lactic) during work intervals and aerobic during recovery as your heart rate drops.

What HIIT/Metabolic Training Sessions Feel Like

During work intervals, your heart rate should skyrocket, you’ll experience heavy breathing, and your muscles will burn. Appropriate metabolic training sessions can certainly have you questioning your life decisions.

Metabolic Training has to be a concentrated effort —instead of jogging 30 minutes at a moderate pace, you might do 10 one-minute sprints with breaks to thoroughly exhaust your capacity. Both train your aerobic system, but HIIT also pushes you into the anaerobic red zone repeatedly. This isn’t just intentional suffering – It trains your body to manage stress all the way down to a cellular level.

Metabolic Training Adaptations

Improved Aerobic Capacity: Some studies have suggested that metabolic training can increase VO₂ max as much as traditional endurance training in a fraction of the time. The famous McMaster University study showed 20 minutes of interval training produced similar aerobic improvements as 90-120 minutes of steady cycling. However, I would caution against replacing endurance training with HIIT training. Those studies suggested that you work at 120% of your maximum output for short bursts, which is exceptionally difficult. Instead, view metabolic conditioning as training your body to handle stress more efficiently and recovery faster between hard efforts even in action.

Greater Anaerobic Capacity: Your muscles get better at tolerating and clearing metabolites, so you can sustain high efforts longer and recover faster between bursts—crucial for stop-and-go sports or steep climbs.

Metabolic Health: HIIT improves insulin sensitivity, blood pressure, and cardiovascular markers. It also elevates post-exercise metabolic rate (the “afterburn” effect) for hours after training. It has recently been suggested that it can improve longevity and cognitive health long term as well.

Fat Loss: HIIT burns more calories per minute than lower-intensity exercise and is more muscle-sparing than excessive steady cardio.

Important limitation: While HIIT offers excellent conditioning benefits, those 20-minute metcons and bootcamp classes can’t prepare you for long days in the mountains, on the bike, or trail running. That requires a different approach to aerobic development—but that’s a topic for another article.

Why You Need Both (Not a Mish-Mash)

Strength training and HIIT shouldn’t be competing—they’re complementary. One builds your physical chassis (muscles, bones, strength), the other tunes your engine (cardiovascular capacity and efficiency).

Recent research highlighted by Joel Jamieson: As little as 30 minutes of strength training per week was associated with 10-20% lower all-cause mortality. But combining strength with aerobic training? About 40% lower risk—roughly double the benefit.

The “Mish-Mash” Trap

A common mistake in bootcamp classes, Crossfit, Hyrox, and among inexperienced trainees is mixing strength and HIIT incorrectly—moderately heavy weights lifted fast with insufficient rest interspersed with fatigued interval efforts, day after day.

You might think you’re getting the best of both worlds, but you’re often getting the best of neither:

• Strength gains require high intensity (heavy load) and adequate recovery
• HIIT gains require high intensity (heart rate) and adequate recovery between intervals

Perpetual circuits lead to chronic fatigue, poor movement quality, plateaued strength (never lifting truly heavy or fresh), and plateaued conditioning (never pushing max effort or allowing adaptation).

Do we use interval training from time to time? Absolutely. But we provide very specific parameters, recognize that the stress accumulation is HIGH, and the adaptations happen quickly. So the programs are short and intentional. And they are all out, not sloppy.

Smart Integration

Organize your week so some sessions target strength with proper intensity and rest, others focus on conditioning. Many experts now follow a high/low/high/low model – IE One high output day followed by a low one. This requires a lot of discipline, whether it’s in the gym or on the trails.

Other examples can include:

Option 1: Lift heavy first, then finish with a brief metabolic “finisher” (5-10 minutes max) once strength work is complete.

Option 2: Separate days entirely—Monday/Wednesday/Friday strength, Tuesday/Saturday conditioning, with low-intensity recovery work filling gaps.

The key: These all depend on your fitness level, training background, and what you need to address presently. Energy is finite. You can’t maximize everything simultaneously. Prioritize one modality while maintaining the others based on your current goals and season.

Signs You’re Doing It Right

When balanced properly, you’ll notice:

• Strength progressing or maintaining while cardio improves
• Energy for heavy lifts because you’re not exhausted from yesterday’s HIIT
• Ability to push harder during conditioning because legs aren’t destroyed from squats earlier
• Reduced injury risk and overtraining
• Faster recovery time between workouts or even hard consecutive efforts (Think cycling ascents or backcountry skiing transitions)

The Bottom Line

In a fitness landscape full of quick-fix marketing, don’t fall for the “one solution” trap. Both strength training and HIIT are powerful—but in different ways.

Embrace your heavy lifting days: Enjoy the grind of getting stronger and hitting new PRs.

Embrace your HIIT days: Relish the sweat and endorphin rush knowing you’re pushing aerobic capacity. Don’t dog it or finish up with a bunch of slow cardio after. Send it and call it.

Just don’t confuse the two. Give each its own space to shine, and you’ll build what every athlete desires: a body prepared for anything.

As research consistently shows, the greatest rewards come from mixing training styles intelligently. It’s not strength versus conditioning—it’s both working together to create muscle with hustle, strength with endurance, and a body built for long-term performance.

Want to learn how to structure strength and conditioning for your specific goals? Our coaches at Revo Training Center specialize in building programs that work with your outdoor adventures, not against them.

At Revo, we don’t just run workouts — we coach humans.

If you’re ready to train with intention, move better, and build real-world strength, we’d love to work with you.

Here’s how we can help:

👉 Try RevoFit – Your first 10 days are free. No pressure, just smart training.
👉 Get a Free Strategy Session – We’ll map out a custom training plan based on your goals and lifestyle.
👉 Learn More About Semi-Private Coaching – For outdoor athletes and everyday humans who want expert guidance and accountability.

🔗 Explore Membership Options
🔗 Book a Free Strategy Session

By Michael Savasuk – Revo Training Center | August 2025

You’ve been outside. A lot.

Long trail runs, big rides, ridge scrambles, backpacking trips — it’s what you live for. It’s the whole reason you train in the first place.

But maybe lately, your body’s been whispering that something’s a little off. Or screaming.

• That familiar twinge in your knee starts to show up by mile five.
  
• Your hips or SI joint ache at night in bed — not enough to stop you, but enough to notice.
  
• You need longer to warm up, or it takes hours to truly wind down after a big effort.
  
• You’ve rolled your ankle twice this summer, even though you’ve been trail running for years. And now it seems to just keep happening.
  

This isn’t weakness. It’s just your body asking for a little backup. A little more resilience.

And that’s exactly what this next RevoFit training block is built to do.

What This Block Is All About

For the next six weeks, we’re dialing in a focused blend of restoring strength, movement precision, and targeted conditioning to help you:

• Rebuild strength and tissue quality that’s been worn down by high outdoor volume
  
• Address the subtle imbalances and compensations that show up when you move in the same patterns all summer at fatigue
  
• Prep your nervous system and joints for higher output and contrast work in the fall
• Provide your brain and muscles with a larger toolbox with which to move through space
  

This isn’t just about training hard. It’s about training intelligently — with intention, adaptability, and carryover to the life you actually live.

Day 1 & 2: Strength — Better Foundation, More Resilient, [Re]Building Strength

Normally we only do strength on Day 1, and our Day 2 is more metabolic. However, with this program both days 1 and 2 are strength-focused — but not in the way you might expect.

Instead of chasing PRs or volume for volume’s sake, we’re asking you to move with more control, stability, and conscious positioning than you might be used to.

But don’t worry if you’re on the gains train – We’ll be building a lot of strength this program as we head into our fall training protocols.

Day 1: Offset Strength & True Core Control

You’ll notice a lot of single-arm work, mixed rack positions, and anti-rotation challenges. That’s not random — it’s deliberate.

This type of loading forces you to deliberately maintain a stacked position in different movements, using your obliques, glutes, and breath to control your ribcage and pelvis, instead of defaulting to low-back tension or brute-force strategies.

This is what real core training looks like:

• Moving with load while managing pressure and position – And being able to breathe while doing it
  
• Bracing through movement, not against it
  
• Learning to breathe under stress, so you can actually access your strength when you need it and keep doing so over time
  

We’re training proprioception and postural awareness in ways that carry directly into things like descending technical trails, picking your line on a bike, or scrambling over scree when your balance matters most.

Progression-wise? Expect loads to increase week-to-week as your control and movement quality improves.

An Analogy I like: “Think of this like training your body to stand strong in a storm. Not rigid, but anchored. Responsive. Ready. Defiant”

Day 2: Power Across Planes

In Day 2 we will continue with strength, but we will add movements that ask you to generate force — and absorb it — in multiple directions. That means more frontal plane work (think side lunges), more transverse plane (rotation), and more explosive effort.

A big mistake a lot of training modalities make is they only train in the sagittal plane (Flexion & extension, think a leg press) and then we go out in a world that moves in all directions. 

If you want to be more athletic — not just stronger — you need to be able to move fluidly, under load, with precision in every direction. You need to be able to rotate.

We combine offset weights with vertical hops, rotational movement, and control-demanding transitions. Your body learns to coordinate different muscle groups together, instead of letting compensations dictate your strategy.

Built into each set, we still come back to postural reset tools — like slider pikes, bear plank variations, and bridge positions — to lock in quality positions before fatigue erodes it.

The goal isn’t just to be able to move better. It’s to move better under pressure & stress, so it carries over into the messy, beautiful chaos of the real world.

Day 3: Conditioning That Doesn’t Break You to Build You

We’ll say it loudly because it bears repeating: not all conditioning needs to be a sufferfest to be effective.

Joel Jamieson’s conditioning framework and a great deal of metabolic research — which we draw from heavily — teaches us that strategic conditioning can build athleticism, speed, and recovery capacity without trashing your nervous system or joints. Sometimes, pushing too hard is limiting your results. 

Part 1: Aerobic Plyometrics

These look like jumps, throws, and low-intensity bounds — but they’re not about going all-out.

Instead, we’re training elasticity, joint durability, and fast-twitch aerobic capacity — all while staying submaximal.

It feels like rhythm and bounce. Think flow, not fight. 

If you watch world class athletes – Particularly runners & cyclists – You’ll notice how fluid and rhythmic their movement is. This can be trainable.

Benefits include:

• Increased tendon and connective tissue resilience
  
• Improved ability to recover between efforts
  
• Better running/athletic economy and overall joint health
  

Part 2: Explosive Repeats

This is where you will bring the power — but with full recovery between sets so you can actually maintain output.

We’re targeting the alactic energy system, which fuels short, high-force efforts — like charging up a hill, or picking up speed for a pass on the bike.

What this gives you:

• More top-end power and repeatability
  
• Better nervous system efficiency
  
• A chance to train intensity without systemic overload
  

This is what sustainable, smart, performance-focused conditioning looks like. What’s great about both of these modalities is they should pair perfectly with a weekend packed full of adventures. You won’t feel beat up the day after these. In fact, they should help upregulate you so you feel up to the task.

And yes, it’s still hard — just not suffering for the sake of it.

This Block Isn’t Just for the Hardcore Outdoor Athletes

You don’t have to be training for a trail race or backcountry objective to benefit from this block.

If you’re:

• Feeling a little beat up from a long summer of play
  
• Coming back to training after some time off
  
• Looking to feel better, move better, and train with more intent…
  

This block will meet you where you are — and help you build a stronger foundation for what’s coming next.

Looking Ahead: The Fall Ramp-Up

This block sets the stage for our fall programming, where we’ll introduce contrast training, heavier strength progressions, and more advanced power-skill development for those prepping for ski season or looking to peak physically before winter hits.

But that only works if your movement quality, strength foundation, and joint integrity are in place now.

Movement in the gym is a skill, just like any other sport. Don’t wait to strength train in the fall, only to find that you have to re-learn how to move first.

We’re laying the groundwork now — with precision, care, and intention.

You’re Stronger Than You Think

At Revo, we believe training is about more than what happens in the gym. It’s about what you get to do because of it.

We don’t coach workouts. We coach people — with real lives, real goals, and real limitations. And our job is to help you keep going — not just harder, but longer.

So if your body’s been talking to you lately, this block is your chance to listen, reset, and come back stronger.

We’re here for it — and for you.

Ready to train with purpose? Join us in this new block, or come in for a free strategy session and we’ll help you map it out.
Schedule Here →