Using the Polar H10 and A360/370 for Recovery Training

Note: This is an archived post from 2019. In the end, I decided that the Morpheus (in its configuration at that time) wasn’t useful enough to warrant keeping it. I’m still (2023) searching for the “best in show” wearable for recovery tracking – they all seem to have some inaccuracies. What has proved most effective over time is simply tracking my heart rate all day (mostly using Polar products) and learning what activities cause my heart rate to spike. Then I could devise a recovery plan that stayed within the proper zone at different stages of recovery. I’ve put these findings together in a name-your-price online course, if you’d like the full details.

Yesterday, I reviewed the Morpheus Recovery Band. Today, I’ll talk about a suite of Polar devices/apps.

I’ve been using the Polar H10 chest strap the longest, both for morning heart rate variability (HRV) readings and for tracking exercise. I started using the Polar A360 in October for wrist-based heart rate tracking. The A360 isn’t made anymore, but the A370 is very similar and has nice new features like all-day heart rate monitoring and GPS. Then I also need two free apps: Polar Beat (for the H10) and Polar Flow (for the A360 and bringing all the data together). I know it sounds kinda clunky, but in practice, it’s pretty simple. Here’s how I use all of this to guide my active recovery.

Goals

My current goal is to recondition after a long illness. One of the problems with adrenal fatigue is that if you overdo physical or emotional stress, you can knock your recovery back days or weeks. It took me a year to figure out that 20 minutes of gardening, sweeping the deck, or moderate exercises like a few pushups and situps constituted “entirely too much exercise.” I would wake up feeling good, overdo it, and get knocked back to the couch for several days. It was incredibly frustrating because I rarely felt good two days in a row. For, like, two years.

So I wanted a way to quantify how much work I was doing and have some data to help me understand how much was too much. The key data I needed were my morning heart rate variability (HRV) scores, and some way to measure how much energy I was actually expending not just during workouts, but during daily activities, chores, walking to meetings, etc.

Polar H10

For HRV

I’ve already talked about measuring my HRV. I largely did that with the H10, though Welltory also let me measure it with my finger on my phone. (I ended up abandoning Welltory – it seemed less accurate over time and didn’t give me much uniquely useful info.)

For exercise tracking

• Use with the Polar Beats app. Start the app, tell it what kind of exercise you are doing, and press “Start.”
• If you leave the app open, you can see your heart rate moment-to-moment on your phone – if you can put your phone someplace visible while you exercise.
• Five “zones” are color-coded from 1-5 based on your maximum recommended heart rate (220 minus your age).
  • For me, Zone 1 (50-60% of max HR) is 88-105 bpm because my max HR should be 176.
  • Zone 5 is 90-100% of your max (158+ for me), and I avoid it like the plague at this stage of my reconditioning.
• Building on what I learned from the Morpheus band, Polar Zones 1-3 are recovery, Zone 4 is conditioning, and Zone 5 is overreaching. In practice, I aim a little lower – I think my conditioning zone probably starts around 130 bmp, which is 75% max or “Zone 2.5” and I don’t like to go above 150/Zone 3.5/85% max right now.

Polar A360/370

The 360 and 370 work basically the same way. You can use them as a wrist-based HR tracker for exercise, though it is not sensitive enough to track HRV (use the H10 for that). It is supposedly very accurate for walking and jogging, but less good for weightlifting and cycling. It also has an all-day activity monitor, and a sleep monitoring feature I’ve not used much at all.

The reason I got it is because I wanted to see my HR during exercise on my wrist, not my phone – I often use my phone to play workout videos and can’t see both apps at once. I also wanted to be able to track exercise on the fly during the day – e.g., walking to a meeting, or giving a presentation – because I suspected that many of my daily activities were more strenuous than I’d realized. It works great for this – I can see the same fitness zones on my wrist that I had been getting from the H10, and I regularly set it to record my activity while I’m at work.

You track day-long activity on the Polar Flow app. This will also take in info from Polar Beats, so if you do use the H10 for certain exercises, all the data gets collected into one place and count toward your daily activity. What’s slightly confusing is that “activity” is broken into different “zones” than training. Here’s a table…

To keep things simple, I mostly just look at the Polar Activity chart during the day. On “good” days, when my morning HRV reading is 8-10 on Elite HRV and 7.5 or above on HRV4Training, I go for 15 minutes of “high intensity” activity (HR above about 130). On days my HRV reading is around 6.5-7.5, I avoid high-intensity activity entirely but generally try to get in some low-medium intensity activity around Zone 2/HR 105-120. On days when my HRV says I’m overtaxed, I really try to rest as much as possible, including having my husband drop me off in front of my building at work, always taking the elevator, and going to bed an hour early.

I improved steadily through 2018, and I am MUCH better able to handle physical activity now! In Feb. 2018, I was pleased that that my edge was to do 20 minutes of gardening on Saturday AND Sunday, and feel fine on Monday. In September 2018, my edge was 3.5 hours a day of vigorous t’ai chi, on a Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, and though I was a little tired the following week, it wasn’t a real setback. I don’t think I’ve come close to pushing past my physical boundaries since then (3 months), though I am learning the toll stress and allergies take on my HRV scores. But that’s another post. 🙂