Heart rate variability (HRV), or the variance in time between the beats of your heart, can provide insight into how your body is responding to the many different stressors in life. This is a valuable tool to help guide women’s training through pregnancy and postpartum. When HRV is low, it opens up a conversation on what other life stressors are going on and indicates a need to reduce training load.   When HRV is stable or trending upwards, pregnant and postpartum women can use it as an opportunity to push training a little bit harder within the parameters of what is safe for their pregnancy.