The Relationship Between Heart Rate Variation and Athletic Performance in Basketball Players

Basketball is a team sport that develops physical characteristics such as endurance, strength, speed, skill and mobility, starting from childhood or youth and bringing these characteristics to a superior level in adulthood.

The heart rate variability is the period in which the change between two heartbeats is observed and represents the sinus node modulation by the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system. During exercise, the increase in intensity produces a higher heart rate and a lower heart rate variation due to the increase in sympathetic nerve activity and decreased vagal modulation in the heart. Heart rate variation is measured by the variation in heart rate from beat to beat and the time between each heartbeat. Measurement of heart rate variability is a potentially valuable noninvasive tool as it is a reliable marker of the autonomic nervous system's effect on the heart.

When the literature is examined, although there are studies on the effects of heart rate variation in both basketball and different sports branches, there is no study examining the relationship between heart rate variation and basketball-specific sportive performance. Therefore, it is aimed to study on this subject and to contribute to the literature.