Understanding Stress, HRV, and Self-Regulation in Performance

Four Stages of Performance

Let me preface this conversation by saying we can help our clients manage stress within four different stages of performance:

Baseline
Pre-performance
During performance
Recovery

We probably want to significantly reduce stress during baseline and during recovery (especially deeper, longer recovery, which becomes our next baseline). We want to optimize stress levels pre-performance and during performance—which doesn’t mean eradicate it necessarily, but rather manage it well (lowering it at times, accepting it also—which leads to an “organic” kind of lowering).

Much of what these states are is subjective. As I’ve said often, the objective simply informs the subjective. The gadgets or metrics are kind of like “training wheels” to guide improved awareness and self-regulation.

RMSSD as a Baseline Indicator

To gauge one’s state of being during baseline, RMSSD (measured for a few minutes in the morning before any activity) may be your most useful number. I’m often encouraging clients to look at themselves relative to themselves, rather than comparing to norms.

Lower RMSSD can be a cue to address lifestyle, sleep, and stress management (we provide stress management… just one set of factors for them).

Breathing at one’s resonance frequency pace regularly can help, but also simply doing biofeedback to both:

maximize LF, and
gain mastery in switching between VLF and LF,

…could be among many interventions to help with that stress management.

To make that second point clearer: I often teach what I call the “red light – green light drill.” This involves intentionally alternating between a stress response (“red light,” showing up as elevated VLF) and a quick recovery (“green light,” reflected in rising LF). By practicing shifting between the two on purpose, clients learn rapid, deliberate state-change—a core self-regulation skill they can use under pressure.

Analogy… HRV Is Like Color

If you think about it, “HRV” is like “color.”
I could have a range of mediums to produce color (e.g., paints, colored pencils, and crayons), with blue, red, orange, yellow, purple, etc. at my disposal.

Similarly:

I can have many ways to measure HRV, and none of them are exactly the same (e.g., spectral analysis, max–min, and RMSSD).
With spectral analysis, I can see sympathetic nervous system activity (more accurately—releasing the vagal brake) when VLF is high.
With LF, I have some sympathetic and parasympathetic activity.
With HF, I see parasympathetic activity (engagement of the vagal brake).

Technically, when one is raising any of the three, they are raising HRV (because each of the three is a metric of HRV). People would typically only say this with LF, or possibly LF + HF.

“Which one causes the most HRV?”

To say this is kind of like saying, “Which one makes the most color?”

Paint, colored pencils, and crayons all make color, but they make different kinds. Even with just paint, you could get a lot of color by mixing them all, but the color it produces might be brown (but there’s a lot of it!).

Likewise:

You could mix VLF, LF, and HF and have “more HRV”…
…but maybe you don’t like what you’re getting.
And lots of things influence the “color” produced—like what kind of paper, canvas, or other medium you apply it to.

Similarly, lifestyle, sleep, etc., play a role in what someone’s HRV is, whether measured with spectral analysis, max–min, or RMSSD.

My Role in All This

In my role, I feel like I am doing my job if I influence clients to:

Take steps to feel better in general (improve baseline and recovery through lifestyle and stress management, including resonance frequency breathing)
Learn self-regulation skills (e.g., using biofeedback to heighten awareness, gaining influence/mastery over their moment-to-moment state of psychophysiology—including the “red light – green light drill”)

Ultimately: