Transcription
In this video, I'm going to explain how to train to purely increase your heart rate variability. And I'm going to lay out a step-by-step training plan that got my heart rate variability to go from the 50s to 197 in less than 1.5 years.
Some of the methods we'll get into are contrarian to the current science. So, this will be a very interesting video. Now, this video isn't about how to increase your health span. It isn't about how to increase your lifespan. It's purely to increase your heart rate variability so you become more resilient to stress and have more energy during the day.
Step one is to first identify your maximum heart rate. Most people just use the 220 minus your age formula, but the truth is that's not very accurate. For example, if you're 30 years old, the formula will say your maximum heart rate is 190 beats per minute. But in reality, you might hit above 200 or maybe just 180. That difference might look small on paper, but it completely shifts your training zones.
This part is very important because when we program this training block, we'll have to look into how many minutes we spend per each zone. The accuracy of how long we spend per each zone really impacts our HRV. And that's why this part of getting accurate maximum heart rate is crucial. So, the best way to test your maximum heart rate is with a one-mile time trial. Here's how you're going to do it. You're going to start by sprinting the first 400 meters as hard as you can. Then you're going to start and hang on and push the rest of the mile as fast as you can. And the reason we use this test instead of a short sprint is because heart rate doesn't actually peak right away. Research and real-world testing both show that your heart rate tends to climb steadily and usually peaks around the 4 to 5 minute mark.
So if you're using Whoop, it's simple. You just plug in your maximum heart rate and it will automatically calculate all your training zones for you. But if you're on a tracker that doesn't do that, don't worry. You can still calibrate your zones manually using the following formula. And only when your zones are accurately set, the next step is designing your program for maximizing HRV.
However, what the latest research says is optimal looks very different from the training that actually took my HRV to 200. The most optimal cardio routine for boosting HRV, at least according to the science we have right now, is spending about 80% of your aerobic training in lower zones like zone 1 and 2 and do hit training in zone 5 to build the peak. This is the model you'll often hear guys like Andrew Huberman or Peter Attia talk about. Is >> saying I'm going to spend about 80% of my aerobic training time in zone 2. >>
But here's where my experience doesn't quite line up. When I trained strictly in zone 2 and occasional zone 5, my heart rate variability improved when I was starting out, but eventually I hit a plateau. I was at a plateau for more than 2 months before breaking out. And the only way I was able to break out of that plateau was to go against the grain. And instead of avoiding the so-called no man's land of zone 3 training, I leaned into it with a long endurance day of 1.5 to 3 hours spent in zone 3 to zone 5.
Now, according to most of the literature, this isn't supposed to be optimal, and in the short term, it looks like the science is right. The very next day, my recovery score tanks, my HRV crashes, my sleep is wrecked, and stress is sky-high. But after two full days of recovery, my HRV rebounds and hits new peaks. And that's how I was able to break through and reach 197.
And it's not just me. I've had subscribers and friends test the same approach and they've consistently found the exact same pattern. When I was following what the latest science was telling me to do, which is the 80/20 rule, I was working out five to six times per week. But with a new approach, I've only been running three to four times a week, and I was still able to see HRV gains without any plateaus.
So, here's the simple setup. You'll try and schedule one to two easy runs in zone 1 to 2 and one long endurance session in zone 3 to 5 lasting 1.5 to 3 hours. Now, how you schedule these sessions matters just as much as what you do. So, here's how you can structure your workout.
On day one, we'll start by doing a long endurance session. Here, you'll be in zone 3 to 5 for 1.5 to 3 hours. Day two is your easy run. You'll go for zone 1 to 2 for 50 minutes. Even if your body feels wrecked, going easy here actually helps the heart adapt by increasing stroke volume. Just make sure you don't drift past zone two. If you have to walk, walk. The key is staying in that zone.
Day three and four will focus on recovery. This is when the HRV rebound happens, and it's often where you'll see the new PRs. You can still do some strength training, maybe some breathwork on these days since it doesn't have a huge impact on overall strength.
Now, on day five is when we're going to do our high-intensity interval training. You can do something like a Norwegian 4x4 or a 800 meter repeat. Our goal here is to stay in zone 4 to 5 for about 3 to 4 minutes. Take 4 minutes to recover and repeat the process. Day six is another zone 1 to 2 run for 50 to 60 minutes. Try and program it to run a little longer than the easy run you did in day two.
Now, on day seven, we'll have a recovery day. You can also do some weights or do some breathwork. Now, it is true that we've adopted zone 2 and hit training for both of our workouts, but contrary to the classic 80/20 model, we're not treating them as the main focus. Instead, we use them as supplementary tools that support the long endurance session, which is where most of the real gain is going to happen.
Zone 2 training will give you the capacity to handle longer runs without constantly breaking down your joints or running into nagging pain. Hit training builds the speed you need to sustain pace when the effort really gets tough during your endurance run.
So, why do you hit a plateau when you follow the 80/20 rule? The problem with HIT training is that the workout is so intense that if you do the workout properly, you can probably only last for 20 minutes for a workout, which means you just don't spend enough time in zone 4 to 5. And as for zone 2, while it's safe and consistent, it doesn't push hard enough on its own where at a certain point you eventually hit a plateau.
That's why the 2 to 3 hour endurance session at zone 3 to 5 becomes the bottleneck for improving your heart rate variability. By spending abnormal amounts of stress at once in the higher zones, this forces your body to recover from an abnormally large amount of stress. And that's really what HRV is about, measuring how resilient you are to stress. And from my experience and my subscribers' experience, this has been the most effective way to push HRV higher.
Now, here's the warning. You don't want to do these abnormally hard workouts every single day. Once a week is enough. The rest of the week should be focused on recovery so you can actually see the rebound and HRV instead of digging yourself into a deeper hole. That's why a lot of marathon trainers end up with lower heart rate variability despite having a low resting heart rate signaling of efficient heart. It's because they push through the stress and keep training without properly recovering.
Maximizing HRV is always a balance between filling the cup with water, which is your recovery, and actually increasing the size of that cup, which is your maximum potential for your HRV. Exercise is what's going to grow that cup bigger, but recovery is what's going to fill the cup in.
Now, that said, I want to be very clear. Everyone's starting point is going to be different, and this is where the nuance comes in. If you're a beginner, following the 80/20 rule might not be the worst idea. It makes sense to start with more zone 1 to 2 runs, maybe three to four times per week, and keep the endurance session short. A good starting point for endurance run is about 1.5 times your easy run in zone 3 to 5. As your fitness improves, you can begin to pull back some of the zone 2 volume, and you can push it to two times longer than your easy run sessions. And once you're more advanced, you can go up to three times more than your easy runs. The key point is to increase that endurance session gradually because if you ramp up that long run too quickly, you're more likely to get injured.
Now, if you want me to walk you through exactly how to apply this to your own training safely and effectively, I'm opening 10 spots for you guys. My promise is simple. I'll double your HRV in 3 months or we work for free until you actually do. While I want to work with all of you guys, I'll only be able to work with 10 of you because I'll be your personal coach guiding you step by step through the exact protocols I use to go from 50 millisecond in HRV to 197. We'll have weekly one-on-one calls to troubleshoot any issues, and you'll even get my personal cell phone number for unlimited text in between.
Anyways, through this method of constantly increasing my endurance session and lowering zone 2 volume, the limitation I ran into this approach wasn't the plateau in heart rate variability. I never really found a ceiling for that. The limitation was actually enduring the physical pain and the mental grind of essentially running a marathon every week. These days, I'm not chasing max HRV anymore. Instead, I cap my long runs at around 15 to 20 miles and just focus on maintaining an average about 150 milliseconds of HRV.
Okay, so once you've designed your program, how do you actually know it's optimal? The answer is simple. If you can predict your heart rate variability the next day, you're on the right track. For example, one night I was so confident I was going to hit a new PR on my HRV that I actually posted it on my story saying I would. And the next morning I woke up with 176 HRV, exactly like I predicted and you'll know how to do that very very soon.
The day after our endurance training, we actually want stress to stay high throughout the day. When we sleep, we want that stress curve to look choppy as well. And ideally, HRV will be really low the next morning. Like if your baseline HRV is 120 millisecond and you get 75 milliseconds the next day, that is really, really good. This is the most important sign that you've trained correctly.
On day two, after the easy run, we want to see stress trending down. Throughout the day, when you sleep, it shouldn't be perfect, yet the stress curve should still be a little choppy. If the curve is too flat, you can increase your endurance session or your easy runs a week after. On day three and four, we want to see a completely flat stress curve. This is the rebound phase where HRV peaks. Stress should rise in the morning from things like breathwork and sunlight, then settle into that flat recovery pattern for the rest of the day.
On day five, you'll most likely hit a green recovery. And same with the day after the hit training. The thing with HIT training is it doesn't cause you to exert that much strain because the workout in and of itself is very short. So, you'll probably end up with a green recovery. On day six, it's back to an easy run. If your recovery score is high, you might want to stretch your run out longer. If it's slow, cut it shorter. If you're around 70% recovery score, stick with the plan. And day seven is going to be our recovery day. So, we want our stress to stay low throughout the day so we'll be able to push the day after to do our endurance training.
Now, in order to increase our heart rate variability, we need to follow these four rules on recovery. And if we don't follow these four rules, no matter how hard you train, I'm sorry to tell you, my friend, but you're not going to see any results.
So, rule one is always eat a whole food diet and finish your meals early during the day. Studies show insulin sensitivity is higher earlier in the day and declines at night because of our circadian clock, meaning you're going to have a harder time absorbing nutrients in the evening compared to the morning. And food has a huge impact on HRV.
Rule two is you need to sleep at the same time every single night and get at least 6.5 hours of sleep. The training plan, especially our endurance training, requires a lot of stress in our body. So, we don't want to miss our window for deep sleep. And sleep is a huge factor on recovering our body faster.
Rule three is sleeping in a cold environment. This is a recent discovery I made, but my HRV significantly goes down if you sleep in high temperatures. This is why I set my mattress to 13° every single night. And let me tell you, this temperature is not comfortable to sleep in. I shiver myself into bed and shiver my way out. Yet, my data says it's good for me. So that's why I stick with this setting.
Rule four is exercise in the morning. There's actually a physiological reason behind this. Studies have shown high cortisol in the morning gets you to be more alert and helps you stay energized during the day. But not just that, but it actually increases the amount of melatonin you produce at night when you're sleeping. As we age, these fluctuations will flatten out. And training in sync with these rhythms will definitely help your health, but also increase your HRV and recovery process. So, by following these basic four rules, you'll get 90% of the benefits once it comes to recovery.
That said, there are still a handful of micro optimizations we can layer on top of it. I'll go through five protocols I do occasionally and two protocols I'm currently testing out at the moment.
The first one is breathwork. Now, HRV is closely tied to how we breathe. Every time you inhale, your heart rate goes up slightly. And every time you exhale, it goes down. This back and forth is called respiratory sinus arhythmia and is actually one of the main things HRV is measuring. That's why how we breathe matters a lot. So, there are three types of breathwork I currently use.
The first is Wimhof breathing, which I'll do either in the morning or right after a long run. This style of breathwork is sympathetic. In other words, it revs your system up. Heart rate spikes, adrenaline rises, and you feel alert and energized. Research shows that Wimhof breathing lowers inflammation and improves your tolerance to cold and hypoxia. Wimhof breathing is so powerful that Wimhof himself and a couple of his students when injected with E.coli were able to fight it off with just their breathing technique. So, this is a tool I use quite often.
The second is nasal breathing. I've been testing this nasal strip recently. It uses a small magnetic repelling system that literally opens up the nasal airway. At nighttime, I also apply mouth tape which actually helps me eliminate snoring during sleep and also reduces my resting heart rate. Nasal breathing filters the air better, keeps nitric oxide levels high and improves oxygen delivery.
The third breathwork is yoga nidra at night. This is more parasympathetic, meaning the goal is to direct your attention towards deep relaxation and allow the nervous system to downshift before bed. In my experience, this has been a simple but effective way to improve sleep quality and end the day in a much calmer state. Now, while breathing is a huge factor in heart rate variability, the reason why I still categorize it in the micro-optimization group is because it hasn't significantly improved my heart rate variability. And this video is how to purely train for heart rate variability. That said, breathwork, specifically Wimhof breathing, has physically lowered my respiratory rate, the number of breaths you take per minute. And I did have a couple occasions where I experienced psychedelic effects when I took Wimhof breathing to the extreme.
Okay, so the second recovery tool is going to be the vagus nerve stimulator. The vagus nerve is the main highway of your parasympathetic nervous system. It connects your brain to your heart, to your lungs, and guts, and one of its roles is to help slow the heart rate down and increase heart rate variability. And there's actually human data to support that. For example, transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation has actually shown to improve heart rate variability. That said, there are also a lot of shade around these products because there are scammy products out there that market themselves as vagus nerve stimulators without much real evidence behind them.
One scammy product I tested was Sensei. It uses vibration on the chest to supposedly stimulate the vagus nerve. But honestly, this product was no different than putting your phone on vibration mode and putting it on top of your chest. And Sensei did not do anything whatsoever when it comes to lowering stress. However, with Pulto, I actually did feel a bit calmer. The effect wasn't huge, but it was actually noticeable compared to my baseline. Now, the downside was when you use Pulto, you have to apply a conductive gel before each session. And by the end, when you're relaxed, you have to wipe it off, which isn't exactly convenient. And on top of that, the device has a fairly bright light to it, which isn't ideal if you're using it at night since it can interfere with your sleep. And unfortunately, there are no published peer-reviewed clinical trials validating Pulto. Pulto's website does show research on transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation in general, but not on their own device specifically, and that's really the issue here. The technology itself is very interesting, but the evidence behind these consumer stimulators just isn't strong enough quite yet. That said, I do see a lot of potential in this space, which is why I'm going to keep testing more devices in the future and report my data.
Now, a third micro-optimization we can do to improve HRV is yoga and working on posture. I'm going to be honest, this is probably the most uncomfortable micro-optimization for me to talk about because I've struggled with consistency here. But every time I actually do it, I notice an immediate benefit on my nasal breathing. And there's a lot of science backing this up. Studies on yoga intervention have shown improvements in HRV. For example, one 6-month yoga breathing and posture program shifted cardiac autonomic balance toward greater parasympathetic activity and led to an increase in heart rate variability. Anything that lowers heart rate is great for recovery. So that is why I'm putting yoga and posture on the list. I don't think having perfect posture or extreme range of motion is a key driver for boosting HRV. But on the flip side, if your posture is poor or your body is stiff, it can definitely bring your HRV down.
Okay, so sauna and cold exposure also made the list, but more as a supportive tool than primary drivers of HRV. With sauna, the heat stress raises your heart rate to something similar to light cardio. And then when you cool down afterwards, HRV usually rebounds higher. That's why I'll recommend evening sauna sessions. And as for cold exposure, it's the total opposite. You get into a very low heart rate parasympathetic mode while you're doing the cold plunge. But once you get out and your body stabilizes, you get into a sympathetic state where your heart rate rebounds back up with higher stress. Um, this is naturally good for more energy. So, I would recommend doing these in the morning. It's a very minor difference. I wouldn't say either sauna or cold plunge will significantly raise your baseline HRV, but they do make me feel more recovered in the short term, and it feels good. So, I consider them useful micro-optimization tools.
Now, there are two devices I'm testing at the moment that are a bit more experimental. Transcranial direct current stimulation and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. With transcranial direct current stimulation, it works by applying a very low electrical current to the scalp to change how excitable neurons are. The idea is that by shifting brain activity in certain regions, you can make the brain more neuroplastic. Basically, more adaptable and better at learning. There's research suggesting that tDCS can improve working memory and cognitive performance. And some studies even show links to greater parasympathetic activity, which could potentially help HRV. Right now, I'm working directly with experts on this and running a 30-day brain scan to see if I can actually make my brain more neuroplastic and improve my working memory. And I'll also be tracking heart rate variability the whole time to see if there's any carryover benefits to recovery. I'll be posting a video on it very soon.
Okay, so with the second experiment, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, you've probably heard of Brian Johnson's $200,000 agebot setup, which he had incredible results like lowering inflammation to zero, fixing his gut, increasing collagen production, and so much more. But in an upcoming video, I'm testing whether a $1,000 Hbot can give me the same results. I'll be running all the same tests Brian does to compare if we get the same incredible effects. I personally think the big problem with health therapy right now is access. Clinics can charge around up to $400 per session with HBOT. And not a lot of people want to spend $200,000 on HBOT. This is where I feel like if a smaller, more affordable unit can replicate even part of those results, that would be a huge breakthrough in accessibility. And that's why I'm making this video. Anyways, I think by calming the brain and improving oxygen delivery, both of these tools have real potential to support higher HRV. But we'll see soon if that actually holds up in practice.
Increase in heart rate variability not only translates to better health and resilience to stress, but it also helps you be more successful at what you do. During the phase when I triple my HRV, I also tripled my monthly income in my business, hitting a 40k monthly revenue for the very first time. My friend at the time, who was following the exact same protocol as me, also got his channel from 2,000 subscribers to 180K subs in just 3 months when we were actually seeing HRV gains. High heart rate variability helps you make better decisions because it helps you be in a calmer state.
And if you're an entrepreneur or in a highly demanding career who's feeling like you're not performing your best, I want to invite you to apply for my heart rate variability transformation program. Again, my promise is I'll double your heart rate variability in three months. And if I don't, I'll coach you for free until you do. But I have to inform you, this program is strictly limited to just 10 people with whom I will work very closely with. I'll be your personal guide, helping you systematically double your heart rate variability from its current baseline. Using the exact protocols I've refined over the years of testing, I've gone through being the unhealthiest man to being healthy. And so because of that experience, I have an easier grasp of where you are in health and how far someone can push based on their current health stats.
Here's just a glimpse of what you can expect:
Personalized protocol design that fits your chaotic schedule, not generic advice.
Weekly data reviews and pattern decoding so you understand exactly what's moving the needle.
Ongoing protocol adjustments based on your HRV response to drive continuous progress.
A follow-don't-think execution system that eliminates decision fatigue.
Strategic stress recovery optimization to build elite resilience.
Progressive training periodization to systematically improve your cardiovascular capacity.
And last, a transition to self-sufficiency so your transformation becomes permanent and access to an elite community of high performers for ongoing accountability and support.
But I can't share all the details here. If you want to learn more about how this program can transform how you feel and perform, head to the link in the description to apply now. I'll be closing applications as soon as we hit 10. So, don't wait. I'll see you on the inside.