Understanding Heart Rate Variability

Cardiovascular biofeedback. Cardiovascular biofeedback has been used by re- searchers and clinicians to provide feedback about heart rate and blood flow (Zaichkowsky & Fuchs, 1989). In the clinical domain, cardiovascularbiofeedback hasbeenimplementedasameansofovercomingcardiacarrhythmias,hypertension, and vasoconstrictive disorders (e.g., Engle

We used breathing biofeedback training with elite athletes (e.g., swimming, archery, shoot- ing) to decrease or increase levels of prestart physical stress in order to improve their performance

In other research HR was related to improved performance in aiming tasks (archery, shooting, golf putting) (Crews, 1991;Landers, 1985;Landerset al., 1991;Petruzzelloet al., 1991),but HR biofeedback needs to be compared against other cognitive-behavioral techniques(e.g., relaxation, imagery, etc.; see Benson, Dryer, & Hartley, 1978; Blumenstein,

Control of the cardiovascular system via biofeedback training has been successful in clinical studies and sport. For example, studies in sport showed the possibility of decreasing the cardiovascular and respiratory effects of exercise by biofeedback training before and during the exercise regimen

When improving HRV in biofeedback, the way to keep score of whether or not HRV has improved for someone is to look at high frequency during resting baseline instead of low frequency