What Is a Good HRV on Apple Watch? Use Your Own Range
No single HRV number is good. Here is how Apple Watch measures it, why age charts mislead, and how to find your own normal range. Not medical advice.
Last updated: Oct 20, 2026
Short answer: there is no HRV number that is good for everyone. Healthy adults differ widely, and age, genetics, fitness and how HRV is measured all change the value. A good HRV on Apple Watch is one that sits inside or above your own normal range, judged on a 7-day average rather than a single night.
That sounds like a dodge, but it is how sports scientists and HRV-guided training plans actually use it. The rest of this page shows how to find your normal range and what to do with it.
Why “HRV by age” charts mislead
Most pages answering this question show a table of average HRV by age. Three problems make those tables a poor guide for your Apple Watch number:
- The spread is huge. Two healthy people of the same age can differ several-fold. An average says little about what is normal for you.
- Different metrics. Apple Watch reports HRV as SDNN. Most published norms and most other wearables use rMSSD. They are both in milliseconds but are not the same measure. See Apple Watch HRV vs Recovery HRV, and SDNN vs RMSSD.
- Different conditions. SDNN grows with recording length, and norms come from lab recordings under set conditions. Apple Watch takes short readings whenever you are still, at different times of day.
So a 32 ms reading is not “low” and a 70 ms reading is not “good” in themselves. What carries information is the change compared with your own history.
How to find your own normal range
- Collect your nightly HRV: in the Health app on iPhone, tap Browse › Heart › Heart Rate Variability › Show All Data and note one value per night from the readings taken while you slept.
- Take the natural log of each value (HRV is skewed, so the log scale treats high and low nights fairly).
- Your normal range is the log-scale mean plus or minus half a standard deviation over the last 60 nights, converted back to milliseconds.
- Compare your 7-day average with that range.
The HRV normal range calculator does steps 2–4 for you in the browser and stores nothing.
Worked example
Sixty nights with a typical value of 45 ms and the usual night-to-night spread (0.151 on the log scale) give a normal range of about 41.7 to 48.5 ms.
| Situation | What it means |
|---|---|
| 7-day average 49.6 ms | Above your range: a good sign for a hard effort, if you feel fine |
| 7-day average 45.2 ms | Inside your range: a normal day |
| 7-day average 40.3 ms | Below your range: favour easier training until it comes back |
| One night at 49 ms, 7-day average 47.5 ms | Nothing has changed; one night is noise |
Half a standard deviation is narrow on purpose. It is roughly the size of change practitioners treat as real rather than day-to-day wobble.
Why is my Apple Watch HRV so low?
Compared with your own normal, a lower week usually has an ordinary cause:
- Several hard training days in a row
- Short or broken sleep
- Alcohol, especially in the evening
- A cold or infection coming on
- A hot bedroom, a late heavy meal, or travel across time zones
Compared with other people, a low number usually means nothing at all. And a single low night is mostly measurement noise: Apple Watch only samples HRV when you are still, and a few readings either way move one night a lot.
HRV is not a diagnostic tool. If a low stretch comes with symptoms, or you are worried about your heart, talk to a doctor rather than a fitness app.
What to do with a below-range week
In the HRV-guided training studies (Plews et al. 2013, Vesterinen et al. 2016), athletes did their hard sessions when HRV was inside or above their normal range and swapped them for easy ones when it dropped below. They improved at least as much as athletes on a fixed plan.
The same logic works in a weekly ring competition: on a low week, collect the points that cost little (close Stand, get Exercise minutes from an easy walk) and save the big Move day for when your average is back. See how competition points are counted.
How Competo Readiness uses this
Competo Readiness does this comparison every morning from Apple Health. It uses only HRV readings taken during sleep, adds resting heart rate (normal range: mean ± 1 standard deviation) and sleep duration (checked against the 7-hour adult guideline from the AASM and SRS), and gives you one of three bands: Primed, Steady or Take it easier. It never compares you with anyone else. It works on any Apple Watch that records HRV while you sleep.
FAQ
What is a normal HRV on Apple Watch?
There is no single normal value. Healthy adults vary widely, and Apple Watch uses SDNN, which is not comparable with the rMSSD figures in most charts. Your useful normal is the range of your own last 60 nights.
Is 30 ms HRV bad on Apple Watch?
Not by itself. If 30 ms is typical for you, it is normal for you. What matters is whether your 7-day average has dropped below your own range.
Does HRV go down with age?
On average, yes, HRV tends to be lower in older adults. But the differences between people of the same age are much larger than the average change with age, so age tables are a poor yardstick for one person.
Why is my HRV different every day?
HRV responds to sleep, training, alcohol, illness and temperature, and Apple Watch takes only a few short readings when you are still. That is why a 7-day average is more useful than any single night.
How can I raise my HRV?
Sleep enough, keep regular sleep times, limit evening alcohol, and balance hard training with easy days. Fitness tends to raise HRV over months. Judge progress by your own normal range moving up, not by a target number.
Is Apple Watch HRV accurate?
It is useful for trends when you compare like with like: the same watch, readings taken while asleep, averaged over several nights. It is not a medical measurement and should not be compared with numbers from other devices.
Know when to push in your competition
- Readiness from your overnight HRV, resting heart rate and sleep
- Compared only with your own 60-night normal
- Today’s strategy uses your rank and the gap to the next person (Premium)
Sources
- Plews, D. J., et al. (2013). Training adaptation and heart rate variability in elite endurance athletes. Sports Medicine, 43(9).
- Vesterinen, V., et al. (2016). Individual endurance training prescription with heart rate variability. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 48(7).
- Shaffer, F., & Ginsberg, J. P. (2017). An overview of heart rate variability metrics and norms. Frontiers in Public Health, 5.
- HRV4Training. Daily score, baseline and normal range: an overview.
- Watson, N. F., et al. (2015). Recommended amount of sleep for a healthy adult. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 11(6).
- Apple Developer. heartRateVariabilitySDNN.
Related guides
- Readiness on any Apple Watch
- HRV normal range calculator
- Apple Watch HRV vs Recovery HRV, and SDNN vs RMSSD
- Activity rings explained
- Apple Watch group competition for 3+ people
Not medical advice. Competo is independent and not affiliated with Apple.