Janne Miettinen from Aikasyke, a Finnish company specialized in athletes’ fitness testing, is monitoring the training load and recovery of the players in the Finnish national ice hockey team with Firstbeat Sports. The team is currently preparing for the IIHF World Championships on the 1st-17th of May in the Czech Republic.
The team is getting ready for the World Championships on a several weeks training camp including rehearsal games against other national teams. Kari Jalonen, Head Coach of the team, thinks that monitoring the players’ training load and recovery is a very important part of the team’s intensive training period. Also the team doctor Harri Hakkarainen wants to see how the players recover.
– We are interested in finding out the share of stress and recovery in a player’s day. It is crucial that for example when going to bed the body starts to recover as soon as possible. If the HRV measurement reveals stress during the night sleep, the body is not recovering from the day in an optimal way. It is normal to have one or two nights in a week with a more poor recovery but if the whole week on a training camp consists of “red” nights, it usually is a signal of overtraining state, flu or something else that overloads the body, Hakkarainen explains.
In addition to the coaching team and medical specialists, also the players give credit to the Firstbeat solution.
– It is extremely interesting to learn how I’m recovering from training. Monitoring heart rate variability provides tools to reconsider my actions – what I could do better, what works and what doesn’t, Topi Jaakola, a defenceman of the team, notes.
Jaakola is familiar with HRV measurement since his training load and recovery have been monitored already for over a year now, not only with the national team but also with his club Jokerit Helsinki.
References: leijonat.fi, aikasyke.fi
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