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Recovery scoring

A recovery score needs sleep, HRV, resting heart rate and your own baseline.

daygauge's readiness score, out of 100, uses sleep, HRV and resting heart rate compared with your own averages.

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The question

Start with what your own data can show.

Recovery scores are popular because people want to know whether to push or ease off.

The risk is false certainty. HRV and resting heart rate are useful trend signals, but they are noisy and need your own baseline and your sleep for context.

Quick answer

Readiness weights sleep 30%, HRV 35% and resting heart rate 35%, each against your own recent average. It gives a verdict: Ready to push, Steady day, Recovery day or Higher recent activity.

Questions answered

What this guide covers.

  • What is a fitness recovery score?
  • How should HRV affect recovery?
  • Can resting heart rate indicate recovery?
  • How do you avoid rewarding overtraining?
  • What goes into daygauge readiness?
In daygauge

How the app handles this.

Signal
Your Life Index is separate. It adds movement, consistency and balance to sleep and recovery, and runs from 1 to 1000.
Confidence
Missing readings lower confidence instead of creating false certainty.When a reading is not available, daygauge says so rather than filling the gap.
Weekly Review
Weekly Review shows what changed, what moved with it and whether the pattern repeated.Your first Weekly Review is free. Later reviews are part of Pro.
Illustrative example

What this can look like in the app.

Example: HRV 7 ms below your average, resting heart rate 3 bpm above it and sleep 41 minutes short, so readiness reads lower than usual.

Example
Confidence

Confidence rises when the same pattern repeats against your own baseline and drops when key signals are missing.

Next move

Try one small change, log it, then see whether the pattern repeats over the next week.

Example 1

Example: steps were above your average the same day. Movement and readiness are separate, so you see both.

Example 2

Example Quest: keep the next day light and compare your next readings.

Research

Further reading.

These studies describe groups of people. They help explain the topic, but they cannot tell you what will happen to you.

Research context only. daygauge does not diagnose, treat, prevent or predict disease risk. Personal medical concerns belong with a qualified clinician.

Limits

What daygauge does not do.

  • It does not diagnose, treat or prevent disease, or predict your risk of it.
  • It does not claim one habit caused a result. It shows the pattern, how confident it is and what else changed.
Read next

Related guides.

How HRV fits into a readiness scoreWearables can show stress proxies. They cannot read your mindA life score app needs a number people can inspectCold exposure works best as a logged experiment
On the App Store

Want daygauge to explain recovery scoring in your own data?

daygauge is free to download. Pro is £8.99 a month or £49.99 a year.

Download on the App Store

Personal analytics, not medical advice