lukesdad said:
The difference is simple rhr is when you rest after any activity and should be taken as you indicate 2o mins etc. Whr is when you wake up before you partake in any activity, I thought it was quite obvious.
The first indicates your fitness level the second indicates impending problems you may have during the day due to the night or day before I.e bad nights sleep or some activity eating etc. Or impending illness.
I would have to disagree with your contention. My "waking heart rate" rises and falls with my level of fitness and I have many years of heart rate data which confirms that. For instance a few years ago when I was unable to ride for several months because of physical injury (hip, knee & ankle problems and not a cardio/respiratory/viral illness as I presume you mean when you say illness) my "waking heart rate" went from 39bpm to 54bpm (or thereabouts). It took months of training before I got my resting heart rate down to that level again. Have you any such data yourself which shows that after a period of detraining that your "waking heart rate" did not rise and did not fall back as you regained fitness?
I find the slapdown for not understanding the difference between waking & resting heart rate interesting because it just seems to me that I cannot think of a time when I am more likely to be in a more rested non sleep state than when I have just woken up.
I haven't a clue why anyone would want to conduct a test in those circumstances myself. I can understand why they would want to know recovery rate ie resting heart rate at normal activity levels so that you can see how well you recover from physical exertion and that is certainly another measure of fitness however it doesn't replace or negate the usefulness of "waking heart rate" or as I more commonly know it as "morning resting heart rate".
Just what my use of heart rate training has taught me, however incorrect that may be. I now use power, much less ambiguity but I still measure my mrhr as it does warn me sometimes that illness may be coming. I use power data now to assess training stress so not so bothered about trying to predict overtraining from mrhr these days either although an elevated mrhr can indicate overtraining too.
Much more useful a number than maxHR in my opinion.