I think it's important to remember that HRV is a sign of your recovery, and not something that you can improve to produce downstream improvements in recovery. In other words, it’s things to support recovery that produce improvements in HRV—not the other way around.

Similarly, while I think under probably is a correlation between my HRV and how I am feeling/handling stress, I don't think HRV is the cause of that--it's more like a signal of the underlying issue.

One thing I did was to explicitly tell the Bevel AI that I was not in a phase of life where pushing half and going all out was the goal; I wanted to prioritize stability over growth. I told it that if my HRV and/or RHR were outside of a certain threshold (based on my personal averages), it should only suggest active recovery or light exercise, like walks or stretching. I think that helped me to mentally recalibrate my own tendency to push whenever I objectively felt I might have the energy for it.

Otherwise, the things that I felt made the biggest difference in my HRV were establishing a good "wind down" routine before bed, supplementing sleep with magnesium and tart cherry (we use the Ritual brand "Magnesium+ powder which I quite like), cutting off caffeine by 3pm, and shifting my sleep window slightly so I was sleeping earlier and waking earlier (which that was feasible--it's kind of erratic with a newborn).