How your recovery score works

What a recovery score really represents

Recovery is an estimate of how well your body bounced back overnight, expressed on a 0 to 100 scale. It is not a measure of how fit you are or how hard yesterday's session was. It's a snapshot of your current capacity, taken at the moment you wake up, before the day has had a chance to interfere.

Think of it as the difference between your engine's potential and its current state. Two people with identical fitness can wake up with very different recovery if one slept badly, drank the night before, or is fighting off a cold. The score exists to catch that gap so your training matches the body you actually have today, not the one you had on a good week.

The inputs: HRV, resting heart rate and sleep

A few signals do most of the work. Heart rate variability reflects the balance of your nervous system and tends to drop when you're stressed, under-slept, or carrying training fatigue. A reading that sits below what's normal for you points toward a body that hasn't fully bounced back.

Resting heart rate adds to the picture. When your body is working hard to repair itself or fend off illness, your resting pulse tends to climb. A morning that's elevated against your own usual range is a reliable sign you haven't fully recovered.

Sleep matters too. Both the hours and the quality count: time spent in deep and REM stages, how broken the night was, and whether your duration matched what your body needs. A short or fragmented night tends to weigh on recovery even when the other signals look fine. Throughout, Beebsi looks at your overnight signals and relates them to your own normal rather than a generic chart, since what's typical varies enormously from person to person.

Reading the number: green, yellow and red

Recovery sorts into three simple zones. Green means your body is primed and can handle a demanding session if you want one. Yellow says proceed with awareness: you can still train, but it's a day to hold something in reserve rather than chase a personal best. Red is your body asking for a lighter day or proper rest.

The zones are guidance, not orders. You know context the data can't see, like a stressful week at work or a niggling joint. Use the score to inform the decision, not to override your own judgment.

Using recovery to decide how to train

On a green morning, that's your window for intensity: intervals, heavy lifting, the long hard effort you've been planning. Spending high recovery on an easy walk is a missed opportunity, just as forcing a hard session on a red day digs you deeper into fatigue and slows the progress you're chasing.

The real value shows up over weeks. Watching recovery alongside your training load reveals patterns a single day hides: a slow decline across a heavy block is a sign to deload before you're forced to. Beebsi pairs your recovery with strain and, if you use the AI coach, turns it into a plain recommendation for the day. HRV is one of the signals behind recovery, so the HRV tracking page is worth a read if you want to understand it more closely.