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The what and how of Recovery Status

What is Recovery Status?

The Recovery Status feature estimates how much training load you can tolerate. It keeps track of your cumulative load – that is, intensity, volume and frequency of your training and activity – taking your training background into account, and estimates your current and future level of physical strain.

To whom is the Recovery Status feature most useful?

The calculation is based on heart rate measurement, which is a great way to assess exercise intensity during endurance type of training. The Recovery Status feature works best in endurance type of training - also when combined with strength training. In each training session, the neuromuscular load of exercise is estimated taking the sport of a session into account. But the feature is not suitable for strength or power athletes whose training is mainly focused on straining the neuromuscular system.

How do I benefit from Recovery Status?

This feature helps you understand how much training you can tolerate and how much recovery is needed for optimal training benefits. It helps you find the balance between training and recovery, which is important for improving your performance and achieving your training goals. If you train hard and often, and don’t take enough time for rest and recovery, it may lead to fatigue and decrease your performance.

In the long term, Recovery Status helps in keeping your total training amount in control. In the short term, it helps you plan your future trainings.

You can train even when you are not in “Balanced” state. We recommend that you do your harder sessions when you are “Balanced” and lighter sessions when you are "Strained".
 

How is Recovery Status calculated?

Your Recovery Status combines your Training Load with the data on the activities you do every day. High intensity and/or long duration activities are taken into account in the Recovery Status. They increase the load, prolong the recovery time and affect your Recovery status. On the other hand, significant rest periods and restful sleep affect your Recovery Status positively.

The same personal information, including training history, that affects the Training Load calculation, also plays a role in the Recovery Status. The past week’s training and activity data is used in the calculation and is evaluated against your long term training history. The most recent trainings and activities affect the Recovery Status the most.

The Recovery Status is updated in the training device regularly.

Where is Recovery Status in Polar Flow web service?

Go to Diary and click RECOVERY STATUS to view your recovery status for the selected period. Choose the period – DAY, WEEK or MONTH. Browse the periods using the arrows.

The bars show your cumulative load. The red part of the bar is the load accumulated from your training sessions recorded using a heart rate sensor. The turquoise shows how much of the load comes from your daily activity. Only activity with high enough intensity or long enough duration affects your Recovery Status and is shown in the graph. The grey part is the remaining load from your past trainings and activity from the last 8 days. The grey bar continues to the future days and predicts your Recovery Status based on your long and short-term Training Load and activity. Note that if you have created training targets taking place in the future, they are not taken into account in the recovery prediction.

The scale on the left describes your recovery status.

Balanced tells you that your recent training from the last week and the time you need to recover from it are in balance. When you devote enough time for recovery, you can make sure you get the most out of your training.

Strained shows that your training load has cumulated and become high. This may also mean that you're not fully recovered from your past training and activity. Improving fitness and performance requires strenuous training every now and then, but also time to recover well.

Very strained means that you have been training hard lately and your cumulative load is very high. Over time this will improve your fitness and performance. You just need to give yourself enough time to fully recover before your next heavy training period or competition.

Undertrained means that you have recently been training less than normally. Perhaps you need some extra time to recover due to an illness, stress from everyday life or change of focus in your training plan. Please remember, though, that if you cut down your training load for weeks in a row without careful planning, some of the training benefits you have already gained may diminish.

Click a date on the MONTH or WEEK view to see the training load and recovery of that day.

Hover your mouse over a bar on the MONTH or WEEK view to see the trainings of that day. Click the training to open the training result view.

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