With the Vitalmonitor to the Ironman!

With the Vitalmonitor I have achieved my athletic goals!

This is how it all began

At the beginning of the 2000s, during my sports science studies in Vienna, the journal "Sport in Motion" fell into my hands. The editor and author of most of the scientific articles in this journal was a certain Mag. Bernhard Schimpl. He himself is a sports scientist and apparently the luminary in the field of heart rate variability (HRV) in Austria. The articles inspired me already at that time, however, an application for personal training was still far away.

How I came to the Vitalmonitor

Years passed without further contact with the topic of HRV. Then, in the summer of 2016, I got into conversation with a triathlete from Vienna at the Faakersee Triathlon. She mentioned the Vitalmonitor, which had helped her to optimize her training and thus to achieve better performances. This made me curious and I researched on the homepage of the Vitalmonitor. Here I came across Berny Schimpl again. Berny Schimpl, who seemed to know everything about heart rate variability already 1 1/2 decades before, had developed together with some sports physicians and sports scientists a device that made the measurement of HRV very easy for everyone and derived concrete recommendations for the daily training intensity from these measurement results. I was thrilled. Since the spring of 2017, I now train according to the recommendations of the Vitalmonitor shows. At the same time, with each morning measurement, I recognize how nutrition, sleep, general stress, etc. affect my regeneration.

Surprised by the Vitalmonitor

In the fall of 2017, after many years without sporting goals, I once again set myself goals for the coming year. I had planned the Vienna Marathon and my first Ironman 70.3 in St. Pölten. For this purpose I did a performance diagnostic with Berny Schimpl and also took him as my personal coach. From then on, every day after I did my morning measurement and announced via chat how much time I had that day, I got a training target from Berny. I was surprised after a few weeks that I could do a workout almost every day and actually only needed to take a rest day every 2 weeks. A shorter regeneration session every now and then was perfectly sufficient and I was recovered.

Optimal training design with the Vitalmonitor

Also the duration of the sessions were not necessarily long - mostly between 45 and 60 minutes. All this together led to the fact that after years, where I averaged maybe 1-1.5 hours of training per week in the winter, I settled down to 4-5 hours per week. In addition, almost every year I had a flu-like infection at least twice, and then I didn't train for 1-2 weeks "just to be on the safe side".

When I caught a mild infection in November, I could see with the measurement of the Vitalmonitor after only 2 days that I could train again easily. Berny planned the sessions so that I could quickly get back into my normal training. In January, I felt fit like I hadn't since I was a student athlete. I was confident that I would reach my goals. Unfortunately, I caught the flu at the beginning of February and was completely absent for 2 whole weeks. Only after that I could think about a light, regenerative training again and I adapted my goals to run only the half marathon instead of the marathon in Vienna.

The challenge

Berny had an additional challenge to overcome when creating my training units according to the Vitalmonitor Method, because in addition to training for the half marathon and ironman, my dance and tennis training had to be accommodated. Especially with the daily measurement I was able to reconcile these different sports well.

The half marathon in Vienna was a big challenge this year, as the heat was quite hard on the runners. My goal was under 1:40 hours and with 1:41 hours I missed this only extremely narrowly - but considering the warm temperatures I could still be very satisfied with my performance.

5 weeks after the half marathon, the Ironman 70.3 in St. Pölten was on the agenda and also on this day the weather gods meant it all too well with the temperatures. Never before had I done such a long and intense training session or competition and the tension before the start was therefore quite high. I implemented Berny's recommendations very well during the swim and bike and I could even enjoy the atmosphere and the beautiful landscape. Only at the final half marathon I had to pay tribute to the heat and I had to reduce my speed considerably. After 6:04 hours I had then done it - Ironman 70.3 finisher!!!

My conclusion

With the training according to the Vitalmonitor method and Berny Schimpl as my coach, I managed to reach my athletic goals with a very low training effort of 5 hours per week on average. The next goals are already set and with the support of Vitalmonitor I am sure that I will be able to reach them as well.