Nervous lurker finally saying hello

Welcome. The HRV up / sleep score down split is interesting. Did your lifting volume change in those 12 weeks? Mine rises when I’m actually more run down.

Same for me. HRV up and sleep score down usually means I added volume too fast. What was weekly lifting volume before vs now?

Watch sleep scores are proprietary black boxes. I stopped trusting mine. Subjective sleep and wake times tell me more.

Agree on the watch skepticism. Did you keep a sleep diary? Mine gave me a 74 while I felt great.

Caffeine matters, but I’d look at ferritin alongside hs-CRP. My ferritin rose during a hard block even without supplement changes.

Ferritin is noisy. Did you get iron saturation or just ferritin?

The HRV jump might be a parasympathetic rebound if you were under-recovered before. I saw 45→60 ms after cutting alcohol, but my sleep score fell because the watch flagged more wake events. If bedtime is the same, I’d log room temp, late meals, caffeine timing, and 3am wakeups for two weeks. That plus resting HR and how you feel at 3pm will tell you more than another lab right now. The A1c and CRP moves are solid, though. What does your weekly RPE look like? I’m not saying ignore sleep—just separate signal from noise.

I’d prioritize the sleep complaint over the HRV win. HRV is one signal. How do you feel at 3pm?

Welcome. Your A1c and CRP improvements are solid. When do you do zone 2? My sleep gets worse if I do it late.

Late zone 2 wrecks me too. Moving it to morning cut my awke events.

Can you post four weeks of resting HR? That’s usually less noisy than a sleep score.