Assessment of Autonomic Cardiac Activity in Athletes

Abstract

Athletes, coaches, and supporting staff should assume a scientific approach to both designing and monitoring training programs. Proper load monitoring is essential to determine whether an athlete is adapting to a training program and to minimize the risk of increasing non-functional overreaching, illness, or injury. To gain an understanding of training and competition demands and their effects on the athlete, various potential physiological variables are available. Nonetheless, very few of them have robust scientific evidence to support their use. Therefore, this chapter will discuss the use of non-invasive and time-efficient methods to record and/or calculate heart rate variability (HRV) in athletes. HRV variables can provide detailed information about positive and negative adaptions over short and long periods throughout the competitive season. The accumulated knowledge regarding the importance of HRV has led both monitoring variables to become popular strategies among elite athletes, coaches, and supporting staff.