Heart Rate Recovery (HRR)

Rate at which the HR declines subsequent to exercise

During exercise the activity of the sympathetic nervous system increases, accompanied by the typical rise of heart rate. Those load-dependent changes are frequently controlled via heart rate monitors by fitness enthusiasts all over the world. However, other easy assessable non-electrocardiographic measures are often overlooked. One of those measures is the heart rate recovery (HRR) - the observable deceleration of heart rate due to a vagal reactivation during recovery. During the first 30 seconds after exercise, there is an initial steep fall in heart rate, followed by a slower decrease.

The heart rate recovery curve is known to be changed by a regular endurance (1)and resistance (2) training. In concrete terms this means that the heart rate of athletes returns to pre-exercise levels more quickly compared to sedentary individuals (3). Different heart rate recovery indices have been proposed as an indirect parameter of endurance capacity. Usually those indices are calculated by subtracting the one-, two-, or three-minute recovery rate from the maximal heart rate after exercise (4).

To investigate the significance of HRR in context of cardiovascular fitness, researchers addressed its correlation to some fundamental physiologic parameters. Darr et al. (5) for example found that high aerobic capacity in trained subjects is associated with a fast HRR. These results are supported by a study of Du et al. (6) who found faster HRR in female marathon runners with higher VO2max compared to non-athletes. Unfortunately no correlation coefficients were presented in those studies.

Since heart rate recovery is impacted by factors others than training (e.g. environmental influences), controlling exercise HRR remains controversial (7). General threshold values might be inapplicable and interpretation guidelines for HRR are rare. Therefore some authors suggest, that HRR might be a useful measurement for tracking an individual progression, but that it should not be used to compare between individuals (3).

More recently Bosquet et al. (8) investigated the reliability of HRR-measurements. They compared HRR of 30 healthy subjects after two maximal and two sub-maximal treadmill tests. An interesting finding of this study was that relative reliability was lower for HRR-index (exercise HR – recovery HR) compared to raw HR. The authors therefore concluded raw HR to be the preferable method for describing HRR.




Reference List

(1) Yamamoto K, Miyachi M, Saitoh T, Yoshioka A, Onodera S. Effects of endurance training on resting and post-exercise cardiac autonomic control. Med Sci Sports Exerc 2001; 33(9):1496-1502.
(2) Heffernan KS, Fahs CA, Shinsako KK, Jae SY, Fernhall B. Heart rate recovery and heart rate complexity following resistance exercise training and detraining in young men. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 2007; 293(5):H3180-H3186.
(3) Wilmore JH, Costill DL, Gleim GW. Physiology of Sport and Exercise. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 1995; 27(5).
(4) Kaya EB, Yorgun H, Akdogan A, Ates AH, Canpolat U, Sunman H et al. Heart-rate recovery index is impaired in Behcet's disease. Tex Heart Inst J 2009; 36(4):282-286.
(5) Darr KC, Bassett DR, Morgan BJ, Thomas DP. Effects of age and training status on heart rate recovery after peak exercise. Am J Physiol 1988; 254(2 Pt 2):H340-H343.
(6) Du N, Bai S, Oguri K, Kato Y, Matsumoto I, Kawase H et al. Heart rate recovery after exercise and neural regulation of heart rate variability in 30-40 year old female marathon runners. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine 2005; 4:9-17.
(7) Pierpont GL, Voth EJ. Assessing autonomic function by analysis of heart rate recovery from exercise in healthy subjects. Am J Cardiol 2004; 94(1):64-68.
(8) Bosquet L, Gamelin FX, Berthoin S. Reliability of postexercise heart rate recovery. Int J Sports Med 2008; 29(3):238-243.