Resting Heart Rate (RHR)

Resting heart rate is heart rate measured fully at rest, ideally on waking before getting up. Typical adult RHR is roughly 60–100 bpm, and endurance training tends to lower it (well-trained endurance athletes are often well below 60). A falling multi-week RHR trend is a positive cardiovascular-fitness signal (see resting-heart-rate).

For day-to-day tracking, RHR is most useful as a deviation from your personal baseline:

• A morning RHR elevated several beats above baseline commonly indicates incomplete recovery, accumulated training stress, poor sleep, dehydration, alcohol, stress, or oncoming illness — often the earliest objective sign of getting sick.
• A sustained elevation is a recognized flag for non-functional overreaching / overtraining (see overtraining-overreaching) and a cue to back off load.

RHR also anchors heart-rate-reserve zone math via the Karvonen method (see karvonen-hrr) and is a core input to composite readiness/recovery scores (see readiness-recovery-scores), usually alongside hrv and sleep-tracking.

Tracking tips: measure under the same conditions (waking, lying/seated, before caffeine); trend it (see trend-vs-noise) rather than reacting to one reading; and define your own baseline from a rolling average — "normal" RHR varies widely between individuals.

• Measure on waking, before rising; typical adult range ~60–100 bpm.
• Endurance training lowers RHR; a falling trend = improving fitness.
• Read against personal baseline; +several bpm = fatigue, stress, or illness onset.
• Sustained elevation flags overreaching/overtraining → reduce load.
• Anchors Karvonen HRR zones; key input to readiness/recovery scores.

• hrv — paired autonomic recovery marker.
• sleep-tracking — poor sleep elevates morning RHR.
• readiness-recovery-scores — RHR is a core score input.
• karvonen-hrr — RHR anchors HR-reserve zones.
• overtraining-overreaching — sustained RHR rise as a warning sign.