Heart rate variability – from cardiology labs into the world of recreational and professional sport

Abstract

Heart rate variability (HRV) is one of the most recognized noninvasive tools in the assessment of cardiac autonomic modulation. The development of commercially available wireless heart rate monitors, detecting R-R intervals with a high resolution and accurately calculating HRV parameters, has pushed the methodology beyond the borders of exercise physiology laboratories into the world of recreational and professional sportsmen and coaches. Therefore, a growing number of Slovenian physicians are nowadays faced with questions about the physiological mechanisms of HRV and interpretational dilemmas in individuals with changed HRV parameters. Hence, the aim of the article is to clarify the physiological background of HRV, to describe conventional linear and non-linear HRV parameters and to elucidate how HRV parameters change under various physiological and pathological conditions.