Heart rate and heart-rate variability in sport

ECG signal processing plays a crucial role in understanding the physiological changes that occur during sport and exercise, allowing for evaluation of the therapeutic effect of exercise in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases and for monitoring athletes during their activity. Heart rate variability (HRV) analysis is a powerful method to evaluate the cardiovascular system during exercise. HRV provides information about autonomic control of the heart and reflects the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic influences. Changes in HRV parameters during exercise can indicate the level of stress on the cardiovascular system and provide insights into the training status, fatigue, and recovery of an individual. This lecture will offer a compendium of the most popular HRV-based non-invasive and quantitative approaches to assess the cardiovascular system’s response to physical activity, as well as several applications, both in clinics and in sport fields, enabling a deeper understanding of physiological adaptations, helping inform exercise prescriptions, performance evaluations, and clinical diagnoses, and ultimately contributing to improved cardiovascular health and athletic performance.