In my last post, I introduced HRV and explained a little about how I came to discover a relationship between my HRV, eye-hand coordination, and my shooting scores. I mentioned how I was using reaction balls to test out the theory about how HRV and eye-hand coordination was related. Since publishing the previous post, I have completed collecting my reaction ball data from 30 consecutive days of trials. The chart below (same as the previous post but updated for all 30 days) shows the correlation pretty clearly!
For those of you into statistics, the correlation coefficient is calculated to be 0.46 – not bad for a simplistic trial such as this!
So, if we accept the premise that HRV can influence our sport performance, especially those sports with a high dependence on eye-hand coordination, what we can do to improve it? In this post, I will cover two areas in the order in which I discovered them!
I have mentioned in previous posts, that I work out at Planet Fitness. My membership allows me to use any of their facilities. In mid-July, I was vacationing in the Denver Co. area. Lucky for me, my hotel was located less than ½ mile from a Planet Fitness. While there, I was able to make 3 visits to the gym. The particular facility was less than a year old and had all of the latest equipment, including an installation that they refer to as “Total Body Enhancement”. I was intrigued, so I spoke to the desk manager who explained to me that it incorporated red-light therapy in addition to a vibrating plate that you stood on while getting the treatment – reminiscent of those 1960 / 1970’s motor driven belts machines that were supposed to vibrate the pounds off of your belly…
The red light was not UV light like those used in a tanning bed, so it is safe for skin and is thought to have many positive aspects for skin and health.
I had to try it. the standard treatment is 12 minutes. The red light also has a blue light component, so it actually appears as white light. It is bright, but not so powerful that special glasses are required.
Being surrounded by the light while being “rock and rolled” on the vibration plate while listening to some new age music was actually quite pleasant. I loved it! Unfortunately, my home gym back in NC did not have such a machine… But… one in a neighboring city a few minutes further drive from my house did! I decided to make the drive over to the other gym 2-3 times / week to use the “Total Body Enhancement”. In fact, the day I shot my best score of the year, I had gotten up extra early that morning and had a “treatment” before going to the shoot!
Even still, I have to admit I was a little surprised when I checked my fitbit app for the trends of my HRV data and noticed something! I showed it to my wife as well and she immediately commented that the distribution of HRV scores had taken a change!
I decided to plug in my HRV results into a spread sheet so I could run some calculations. What I found was pretty cool! I compared the 45 days prior to first starting using the TBE machine in Denver to the 45 days after using it (and continuing on 2-3 days per week). It turns out that my HRV increased by 10%! While it might be presumptuous to assume the red light therapy affected the change, so I did a little digging. I found a book written by Dave Maxfield entitled “Up Your HRV”.
In it, he discussed a study by lead researcher Dr Paul Gourion-Arseneault published in the Journal Frontiers is Physiology that found that HRV increased significantly during exposure to red light. Other studies have shown that blue light exposure can increase HRV by up to 24%. Wow! I also listened to this podcast:
Andrew Huberman mentioned a study in which light therapy had also been shown to improve visual acuity – especially when the exposure occurred within a few hours of waking (which might explain my early morning session prior to shooting my best round of the year).
So, what can a reader do? Well, first, I am not a doctor, so my experiences are just personal anecdotes, and should be taken as such, but one could certainly join planet fitness (check first to see if your local one has the Total Body Enhancement installed). You will need to have their “Black Card Membership” (roughly $25 / month) in order to use the TBE.
Another option would be to consider purchasing your own red-light panel. There are page after page of them listed on Amazon. If you go this route, just be careful about exposing your eyes to some of the panels as many of them are designed for treating skin conditions and could be damaging to eyes. Do your research!
So, enough about light – let’s talk about the absence of light – and my second finding that I promised I would share in this post. Most of the resources I found regarding HRV mentioned improving sleep quality as a good way to increase HRV (Including both the book and the podcast I referenced above). I have written about good sleep quality before here on the blog, and consider myself to have very good sleep hygiene – I go to bed and arise pretty much at the same time. I control blue light exposure prior to going to bed. I don’t eat or drink too close to bedtime, etc. But… one area I have not controlled well is my sleep environment. Ideally cooler is better, as is darker! In deference to my spouse, I have agreed to keep the temp somewhat warmer than ideal (and will not try to monkey with that!), and also allowed more light than would be optimal to enter the bedroom. In his podcast, Huberman sights a study that even very, very low levels of light (say 100 Lux) can still pass thru the eyelids (even if you sleep the night through) and activate the sympathetic nervous system (read “decrease HRV”)! What to do… well, here you go:
I started wearing the mask on 10/6. This chart shows my sleep scores as captured from my fitbit as well as my HRV for those nights. As you can see, my sleep scores jumped up! I am collecting the data for the next month or so and will update more later, but the initial results are promising that wearing the mask is improving sleep.
So there you go! A couple of useful tips to get you on the road to improving your HRV! Will that help your sport performance? While I certainly hope so, but HRV is not the magic bullet that will give you a good game if you don’t have one! You still need to get out there and do the skills practice and refine your technique both physically and mentally! But from what I have seen so far, higher HRV will help to unleash your skills and perform at your very best!
I will continue to research HRV and report back on any findings in subsequent posts. As it turns out, there is an international HRV conference being hosted in Chapel Hill NC at the end of Nov 2023. I plan to attend that with the hopes of learning the state of the art! Stay tuned for more!
If you are interested in Dave Maxfield’s book, you can find it on amazon: