Recovery score

How the recovery score works

Every morning Pulse Coach reads three signals from Apple Health and compares each one with your personal baseline (the last 60 days):

Signal	Weight	Why it matters
Heart rate variability (HRV)	50%	The most sensitive overnight marker of how your nervous system is handling stress and training load. Higher than your normal is good.
Resting heart rate (RHR)	30%	Tends to rise with fatigue, heat, alcohol and illness. Lower than your normal is good.
Sleep duration	20%	Measured against an 8-hour target. Short nights reduce how much you can absorb hard training.

Each signal is converted into how far it sits above or below your own normal. The three are blended with those weights into one 0–100 number. Read the full method on How it works.

Your baseline, not a chart

Raw HRV varies enormously between people, by age, genetics and fitness. A 45 ms HRV can be excellent for one person and a bad night for another. That’s why Pulse Coach scores you against your own rolling baseline. Scores start to become personal after about 7 nights and get steadier as your 60-day window fills in.

What you do with it

The score drives the training call on your Today screen:

• High (67–100): push. A good day for your hardest planned session.
• Moderate (34–66): train with intent. Steady work, and leave a little in the tank.
• Low (0–33): ease off. Walk, do mobility or a recovery routine, and go to bed early.

Feeling run down? Turn on rest mode and Pulse Coach switches every recommendation to recovery until you turn it off.

Which HRV does it use?

Apple Health has long stored HRV as SDNN. Where Apple Health also records RMSSD, the measure most recovery research uses, and has at least 7 days of it, Pulse Coach switches to RMSSD automatically. Otherwise it uses SDNN. Either way you’re compared only with your own history from the same measure. See RMSSD vs SDNN.