DOMS is not Recovery

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) is not recovery. That much to "listen to your body". In the past I waited until doms is gone. But I can train earlier. Doms is a proxy. But a proxy for what? There is this moment where my muscles reach peak performance after they are recovered, follow by a very slow decay. I need to capture this moment. But confounding factors like sleep or a thousand other ones make measuring strength and thus recovery messy. You get those confounders away via big studies, but not for me as an individual. But it seems that Heart Rate Variablity (HVR) is a good proxy, validated by such studies. But I still have to do my research if this is not just a trend. 

A five minute research tells me to measure only once per day after waking up where there are the least noise causing things in the day, like coffee or stairs. And a chest strap monitor utilizing electrocardiography (ECG), which measures the electrical activity of the heart directly, is more accurate than a Photoplethysmography (PPG) as in a smart watch, which measure blood volume changes optically.

Action: Don't listen to Doms, but measure HRV after waking up.