Guide

Readiness, explained

Readiness is one number for how hard you can go today, built from last night’s sleep, your HRV and your resting heart rate. Garmin, Oura, WHOOP and Shape all have a version. This guide explains how they work, using Shape’s as the example, and why they often disagree.

Samuel KraftUpdated 22 October 2026

The short version

Readiness is one score from 0 to 100 for how ready your body is to train today, measured against your own normal. An ordinary morning lands around 68.
HRV is how much the time between heartbeats varies at rest. Higher than your normal is good.
Resting heart rate is your pulse at rest. Lower than your normal is good.
Sleep is how long you slept last night. More than you usually get is good.

Your normal, not everyone’s

A resting heart rate of 53 is perfectly healthy. For most people it would mean nothing. For the made-up athlete this guide follows, whose resting heart rate usually sits around 46, it means something is up.

That’s why readiness never compares you with other people. Every reading is measured against your own last 60 days: what is normal for you, and how much it usually wobbles from day to day.

46Usual range53 bpmthe second day of a cold

Sixty mornings of resting heart rate. Most sit inside the usual range. The morning on the right is 3.7 times the usual wobble above normal, which is a lot.

That “times the usual wobble” is what the Today page shows as σ. Half a σ is an ordinary day. Two is a long way from your usual. It needs 14 days of readings before it can say anything at all.

The three readings

HRV
Heart rate variability is how much the time between your heartbeats varies at rest, usually measured overnight. A relaxed, recovered body varies more. Stress, illness, alcohol and hard training tend to push it down, often a day or two before you feel anything. Higher than your normal is good.
Resting heart rate
Your pulse at rest, usually measured overnight. It moves more slowly than HRV and is harder to fool. Lower than your normal is good. A few beats above normal for several mornings in a row is one of the clearest signs of a cold, or of training that’s not being absorbed.
Sleep
How long you slept, against how long you usually sleep. It’s the reading you can do the most about, and a short night shows up in the score the next morning.

How they add up

Each reading gets a share of the score. HRV gets the biggest because it moves first. Your load ratio from the fitness, fatigue and form guide gets a small one, since Shape shows it separately.

HRV moves first, often a day or two early35%
Resting heart rate a slower, steadier signal30%
Sleep how long you slept25%
Load ratio this week against your usual10%

How much each reading counts on a morning when all four are there.

If your watch doesn’t measure one of them, it simply drops out and the others count for more. You’re not marked down for owning a watch without HRV. The one rule is that a score needs last night’s sleep or HRV: a resting heart rate on its own, taken from a few minutes of wearing the watch in the morning, isn’t enough to go on.

What the score means

A morning exactly at your normal scores 68, in the middle of Moderate. That’s on purpose: an ordinary day should look ordinary, not like a warning. A morning one usual wobble better than normal scores about 80. One worse scores about 50. It takes a truly rough night to fall below 25, and a run of excellent readings at once to reach Prime.

Late night25

A cold43

Your usual68

Tapered86

Under 25Poor: You have not recovered. Rest is the session.
25 to 49Low: Recovery is lagging. Steady or easy work today.
50 to 74Moderate: Recovered enough to train. Keep it to your usual load.
75 to 95High: Well recovered. Most sessions are on the table.
Over 95Prime: Recovered and ready. A good day for the hard session.

Mornings from the six weeks in the chart at the top, on the bands Shape uses. Each band's line is the advice the Today page shows with it.

Shape always lists what moved the score, worst first. A number on its own is hard to trust. “43: resting heart rate up, HRV down” is something you can check against how you feel.

It drops as you train

Readiness isn’t only a morning number. It also counts what you’ve already trained today, so it falls as you use the day up. A fresh morning at 86 drops to 75 after a normal day’s training and to 48 after a very big one. Move the slider to see it.

Trained so far todayNothing yet

86High

Well recovered. Most sessions are on the table.

A fresh morning after a taper, for an athlete whose normal day is 60 load. The advice is the line Shape shows on the Today page.

A morning with nothing trained yet gets no bonus, or every rest day would look like peak form. And the drop stops at a limit, because what an enormous day really cost you shows up tomorrow morning, in your heart rate and your sleep.

Readiness and form

Form comes from your training log. It says what the work you did should have done to you. Readiness comes from your body. It says what actually happened.

Most days they agree. When they don’t, the body is usually right about today. In the hard week in this guide, readiness fell to 45 as HRV sagged. During the cold it fell to 43 even though nothing in the training log had changed. Use readiness to decide today’s session, and form to plan the weeks around it.

Why your watch says something else

Garmin, Oura, WHOOP and Shape all put a number on your morning, and on the same morning they rarely agree. That’s expected: they read different things and weigh them differently.

Score	What it reads
Garmin Training Readiness	Last night's sleep score, recovery time, HRV status and acute load, plus sleep over the last three nights and stress over the last three days. Updates through the day. Garmin manual
Oura Readiness	Last night's sleep, sleep balance and regularity over two weeks, the previous day's activity, activity balance, resting heart rate, HRV balance, body temperature and a recovery index. Oura
WHOOP Recovery	HRV and resting heart rate, which it calls the two biggest factors, plus respiratory rate, sleep against what you needed, sleep stages, skin temperature and blood oxygen. Calculated during sleep. WHOOP support
Shape Readiness	Last night's sleep, HRV and resting heart rate against your own last 60 days, your load ratio, and what you’ve trained today. This guide

In each company’s own words, from its documentation, read on 22 October 2026. None of them publishes how much each input counts.

So a night with a raised skin temperature can pull Oura and WHOOP down while Shape, which doesn’t read temperature, stays where it was. Garmin also counts your stress over the last three days, which Shape doesn’t. And even when two scores read the same inputs, the arithmetic differs.

Pick one and learn how it behaves for you, rather than comparing them. Whichever you use, look at what moved it.

When there’s no score

Your first two weeks: Readiness compares today with your normal, and it takes 14 days of readings to know what normal is. Until then there’s nothing fair to compare with, so there’s no score.
No reading of the night: A score needs last night's sleep or HRV. If the watch was on the charger, or hasn’t synced yet, wear it to bed and sync in the morning.
A device that measures none of it: Some watches and apps only record workouts. Readiness needs sleep, HRV or resting heart rate from somewhere, such as a Garmin watch or Apple Health.

Things that throw it off

Sleeping long while ill. Sleep counts hours, not how restful they were. On the worst day of the cold this athlete slept 8.8 hours, which scored as good sleep. Resting heart rate and HRV are what caught the cold.
Switching watches. Different devices measure HRV in different ways, and the numbers are not comparable. Shape only compares a night with earlier nights measured the same way, so a new watch may need a couple of weeks before HRV counts again.
A late night, a few drinks, a stressful week. These usually do show up, as a lower HRV and a higher resting heart rate. That’s readiness working, not a fault. The late night in this guide scored 25.

Questions

There’s no number that’s good for everyone. HRV varies a lot from person to person and with age, so one athlete's 40 can be as healthy as another's 90. What matters is yours against your own normal, which is exactly what readiness compares.

No. Garmin, Oura, WHOOP and Shape each build their own score from a different set of readings, so on the same morning they often disagree. Shape's reads sleep, HRV and resting heart rate from whichever device you connect, and scores them against your own last 60 days.

Because it counts what you’ve already done today. A fresh morning shows how recovered you are. After a hard session you have less left, so it drops. Tomorrow morning starts from your sleep and heart rate again.

No. Without HRV, readiness is scored on sleep, resting heart rate and your load ratio, with their shares scaled up to fill the gap. It does need sleep or HRV, so resting heart rate on its own isn’t enough.

Check what moved it before you change anything. A short night before an easy run changes little. Several days of a raised resting heart rate and low HRV, especially with a sore throat, is a good reason to go easy or rest.

On Shape's scale, 75 and up is High (over 95 is Prime): well recovered, and most sessions are on the table. 50 to 74 is Moderate, fine for your usual training, and an ordinary morning sits around 68. Under 50 means recovery is lagging. Other devices use their own scales, so compare a score with your own past mornings, not with someone else's or another app's.