Apple Watch is an excellent device for health tracking, including recovery. It comes equipped with a variety of state-of-the-art sensors and a powerful processor, while the smallest aluminum version is very lightweight, making it comfortable to wear almost around the clock.
If you charge your Apple Watch during showers or while taking a bath, you essentially get an always-on device that makes any additional performance monitor or fitness tracker unnecessary.
How Modern Wearables Calculate Your Recovery Score
Most fitness trackers and smartwatches use heart data to calculate recovery. They rely on heart rate variability (HRV) and resting heart rate. Apple Watch collects this data and saves it in the Health app. You just need to analyze it, find your baseline, and show the results in a clear way.
Let’s use Apple Watch to Find Out Your Recovery Rate
To process the raw data stored in Apple Health, we built the Wellhero app.
It lets you access heart data in different ways, including analyzing data from Apple Watch.
Once you install Wellhero and allow access to your data, you’ll see a Recovery Score screen.
It will look something like this:
What Data Does Wellhero Use to Track Recovery?
Like industry leaders such as Garmin, we also calculate recovery using HRV and resting heart rate data.
Let’s take a closer look.
Resting Heart Rate and Recovery
Resting heart rate is measured when your body is calm and under no stress. A stronger heart pumps more blood with each beat. This means it needs fewer beats to support your body at rest.
The lower your resting heart rate, the better your fitness and the higher your readiness for the next workout.
Apple Watch knows when you’re resting. You just need to stay still and avoid moving your hand. During these moments, the watch records your heart rate.
It also takes readings while you sleep, so we strongly recommend wearing it at night. (By the way, Wellhero offers excellent sleep analysis. We’ll talk about that separately.)
If you forget to charge your Apple Watch, you can still measure resting heart rate and HRV. Use a Bluetooth sensor if you have one, or try your phone’s camera. It works like the watch. Light passes through your blood vessels, and the camera tracks changes.
Then we run smart algorithms to process the data. In short, it works.
HRV and Recovery
HRV is a strong marker of training readiness. Higher HRV means your body is ready for stress. Lower HRV often means stress is high and you need rest.
The key is to measure HRV at the right time.
Wellhero prefers measurements right after waking up. After the reading, you can add a wake-up tag. If you skip that, we use your average HRV during sleep. If you didn’t wear Apple Watch at night or slept too little, we take your daily HRV average instead.
The screenshots below show that Apple Watch measures HRV (as SDNN) about every 4 hours during the day.
At night, it usually records only 2 HRV readings.
And a Nice Bonus for You
Recovery score and daily comparisons in Wellhero are free.
We know how important this metric is, so we include it in the free version.
Wishing you strong training and great recovery!