The High Performance Journal Written By Dan Go - May 26th, 2026

I have a confession to make:

For the past 5 months, I’ve been doing nothing but strength training and walking. Out of curiosity, I wanted to check my resting heart rate, and it was in the high 50s. It wasn’t bad, but by most charts it’s average for a healthy adult, and it’s better than 70% of men my age.

But I’m not after average, though. I’ve spent 20+ years lifting, I’m strong, I’m lean, and my blood work is dialed in. I assumed all of that would carry my heart along for the ride.

I was wrong.

Strength training builds muscle and bone, but it doesn’t do much for your resting heart rate. That’s a completely separate skill with its own inputs, and ​I had been ignoring it​.

What I found in the research changed how I think about my cardiovascular training in my 40s.

What Your Resting Heart Rate Says About Your Health

Your resting heart rate is the engine of your body, and it’s always running to keep you alive. The lower your resting heart rate, the more efficient your heart is, and the longer it’s likely to keep you around. I don’t know about you, but I want that.

A 2017 meta-analysis of 1.2 million people found that every 10-beat increase in resting heart rate (about an 80 bpm increase) was linked to a 9% rise in all-cause mortality. People above 80 bpm had a 45% higher risk of dying from any cause compared to the lowest range.

Your resting heart rate at 40 is a window into your health at 60

Optimal is 50-59, and elite is 40-49, where endurance athletes tend to fall. I want to be there by the time I hit 47, and I've got less than a year to do it.

The Hidden Number No One Talks About

There’s a second metric tied directly to resting heart rate: heart rate recovery. It’s the number of beats your heart rate drops in the first minute after hard effort.

Less than 13 is a red flag. 20 or more is good. Athletes often see 30 or more.

Heart rate recovery reflects how quickly your parasympathetic nervous system (the “rest and digest” side) can take over after stress. It’s the same system that controls your resting heart rate at night. When you train one, you train the other.

A meta-analysis in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that for every 10 bpm decrease in one-minute heart rate recovery, all-cause mortality risk rose by 9%. Slow recovery is a longevity flag, not just a fitness one. The good news is that both numbers respond to the same training inputs.

How And When Do I Track My Heart Rate?

Overnight average from a wearable is the cleanest signal, since daytime readings get polluted by caffeine, stress, and movement.

Once a week, I cross-check it manually: two fingers on the wrist, 30 seconds, multiply by 2.

For heart rate recovery, I note my heart rate at the end of a Zone 2 session, sit still for 60 seconds, and check it again. I track the gap over time.

If the trend is going down over weeks, the training is working. If it's flat or climbing, something in life (sleep, alcohol, stress) is blocking the adaptation.

Nasal Breathing Is The Foundation

Before we get into the new protocol, I need to mention that the foundation I’ve been quietly building over the last 3 years has been ​turning me into a nasal breather​.

It started with taping my mouth at night, which I talked about in this video here:

I used a small piece of tape across my lips so I’d stop mouth breathing in my sleep. Within a few weeks, my morning resting heart rate dropped, and my sleep got deeper. Breathing through my nose also became easier.

I then brought it into the gym, trying to breathe through my nose as much as possible, even when it felt hard, during lifts, cardio, and walking. Now it’s almost my default.

Nasal breathing is important because it slows your respiration, increases CO₂ tolerance, and shifts you into ​parasympathetic dominance​.

That’s the same nervous system branch that controls your resting heart rate at night and your heart rate recovery after exercise. Train this during the day, and your numbers improve while you sleep.

A lot of people hit a ceiling with cardio because they train their heart hard, but they breathe through their mouth the entire time. That keeps the parasympathetic system turned on, so the work is still happening, but the adaptation gets blunted.

After 3 years, I can keep my breathing almost entirely nasal, and that is the foundation on which everything else gets built.

The Protocol I'm Using To Achieve A Top 1% Resting Heart Rate By 47

180 minutes of Zone 2 per week. Zone 2 is the intensity where you can hold a conversation, but can't sing opera. Roughly 60 to 70% of the max heart rate. This dose builds mitochondria, improves fat oxidation, and lowers resting heart rate by 3 to 5 bpm over 8 to 12 weeks. I do mine on a stationary bike while I work and aim to get all of it nasal.

1-2 REHIT sessions per week. ​Reduced-exertion HIIT​: two 20-second all-out sprints inside a 10-minute easy ride. Research shows VO₂ max improvements of around 12% in eight weeks, the strongest predictor of cardiovascular longevity outside of resting heart rate itself.

3 strength sessions per week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Muscle mass drives metabolic health, which feeds back into heart rate.

Sauna 3 to 4 nights per week. Finnish data on 2,300 middle-aged men found that 4 to 7 sauna sessions per week were associated with a 50% reduction in fatal cardiovascular events compared to one. Heart rate climbs, vessels dilate, and parasympathetic tone improves on the cool-down. Doubles as a sleep aid.

Zero alcohol. A single drink elevates resting heart rate for 24 hours and tanks HRV for 48. Drinking is rowing in the opposite direction.

Sleep and food. 7.5 to 8 hours in bed, same sleep/wake times, protein-forward whole-food diet, last meal three hours before bed. This gets the basics covered.

My Weekly Workout Schedule

Monday: lower-body focused lift with Zone 2 on the desk bike in the afternoon. Tuesday: Zone 2 during work, sauna at night. Wednesday: upper-body lift, Zone 2 at the desk. Thursday: REHIT in the morning, sauna at night. Friday: full-body lift, Zone 2 during the day. Saturday: longer Zone 2 outside if the weather cooperates. Sunday: Rest day

Cardio happens during work hours, strength stays in 45-minute blocks, and evenings and weekends stay mine.

This may look like a lot of activity, but the key is to listen to the body and feel how sore or recovered you are, then decide whether to train.

There is a fine line between not training because you’re lazy and not training because you’re still sore from the workout before.

Your Resting Heart Rate Is A Window Into Your Future

Most people assume that if there’s no chest pain, everything is fine.

But the heart doesn’t fail suddenly; it drifts. By the time the numbers tell you there’s a problem, you’ve lost a decade of efficient function.

A low resting heart rate isn’t for flexing on social media. It's the compound interest of a thousand small choices: daily activity, breathing through your nose, declining drinks, hours slept, miles cycled (or run or rowed).

I have less than a year to go from fine to elite. Keep you posted on how it goes.

Onward and upward. 🚀

- Dan

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Disclaimer: This email is provided for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute providing medical advice or professional services. The information provided should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease, and those seeking personal medical advice should consult with a licensed physician.