Pogačar Has Freakish Heart Rate Data

Updated November 9, 2026 03:32AM

Tadej Pogačar’s powers of recovery might be as impressive as his 430-watt FTP.

Data released last week suggests Pogačar sleeps longer and suffers less physiological stress than his peers.

When combined with what we already know about his ridiculous power output, it gives a full 360 perspective of what has made Pogačar the defining figure of his generation.

As we already knew from his “intentional” leak on Strava, Pogačar has an FTP north of 430 watts. At his leanest climbing weight, that’s around 6.7w/kg. More than many weekend warriors can hold for one minute.

A recent estimate put Pogačar’s VO2 Max – the gold standard measure of aerobic capacity – at around 96ml/kg/min, or potentially as high as 102ml/kg/min. A triple-digit VO2 Max is almost unheard of.

A documentary released by Eurosport/TNT this weekend titled “Anatomy of a GOAT” and a tranche of data previously shared by Whoop add the final layer: Pogačar’s heart rate data, sleep scores, and heart rate variability.

His average heart rate variability (HRV) over the first half of the season was 100ms.

And if those numbers don’t mean much to you, how’s this – Pogačar slept a dreamy eight hours per night while he was crushing skulls at the Tour de France.

The heart rate and HRV data shared in the new documentary are seriously attention-grabbing.

That’s why social media is buzzing with posts swooning over his sedate heart rate and a high-speed HRV.

But they’re numbers that mean nothing in isolation – they need a little context and interpretation.

Here’s what Pogačar’s data actually means, and how it shows that Pogačar’s superpowers extend beyond the bike.

Whoop data helps complete the picture of Pogačar

They’re the distinctive bands worn on the wrist or occasionally on the bicep of athletes, businessmen, and “wellness” people.

They continuously track heart rate, heart rate variability, and sleep to put a “score” on an individual’s recovery and readiness to perform. Smartwatches and Oura rings have similar functionality.

UAE Emirates-XRG – the home of Pogačar, Brandon McNulty, Isaac del Toro and many more – partnered with Whoop earlier this year.

TNT Sports also collaborates with Whoop. The platform’s 45-minute Pogi-doc feels like an advertorial for the brand, but hey ho, we got some juicy data out of it.

Whoop also separately released a deluge of data collected from UAE Emirates-XRG riders after Pogačar won his fifth yellow jersey this summer. Those numbers cover the first half of the season and help contextualize what’s revealed in the TNT documentary.

Resting Heart Rate

Resting heart rate (RHR) is commonly thought of as an at-a-glance reflection of fitness. A well-trained heart beats slow and hard.

Pogačar’s resting heart rate of 40-ish is impressive, sure. Compared to a dude on the street, he’s basically a blue whale. And being four beats lower than the average of riders like McNulty and Del Toro says something.

Miguel Indurain was reported to pump at 28bpm, which is insane. Marathon legend Eliud Kipchoge’s RHR is said to be 33bpm. Mathieu van der Poel recently revealed he beats at 38.

The fact that my resting heart rate is in the low 40s proves RHR isn’t the most insightful metric. I can’t even win a Zwift race, let alone the Tour de France.

What’s more impressive about Pogačar’s pulse is the range. He maxed close to 200bpm at this year’s Tour, meaning his floor is very low, his ceiling very high.

Pogačar has got a lot of cardiac capacity to work with. That’s perhaps a better sign of his physiological freakery than RHR alone.

Heart rate variability

The heart rate variability piece is far more insightful and more widely misunderstood.

It’s the best insight into physiological readiness that can currently be continuously tracked.

The heart beats to a syncopated jazz rhythm rather than a rock ‘n’ roll 4/4 march. Heart rate variability is a measure of the variance in time between the beats. The bigger the number the better.

A low HRV indicates a body under stress – in a sympathetic state. Think illness, fatigue, deep athletic recovery.

A high HRV – when the beat is scattered – indicates the nervous system is in a parasympathetic state. It’s a green light to hit the VO2 Max workout, take on a 12-hour workday, or, if you’re an annoying overachiever, do both.

There was much hype about the HRV data shared in the Pogačar documentary. The TNT show revealed the 28-year-old’s HRV averages 100ms, a full 20ms more than his teammates.

Heart rate variability isn’t about absolute numbers. It’s about daily deviation.

Everyone’s heart rate variability is unique. HRV scores differ by gender and race and fluctuate further within a given population. The HRV of elite endurance athletes is typically off-the-charts, but that’s not guaranteed.

The Dutchman said his HRV hovers at around 200ms in a revelation that blew up social media. That’s twice Pogačar’s average score of 100ms.

The important part: The variability in heart rate variability

What matters about HRV is how far it fluctuates from an athlete’s own baseline. And that’s why the data shared by TNT means little in isolation.

The data Whoop separately shared earlier this year provides the important context.

It showed the variability in Pogačar’s HRV during the Tour de France was just 13.4 percent. The team average was 19.4 percent.

His physiological readiness the day after his record-breaking ascent of Alpe d’Huez on stage 19 of the Tour was little different from the day after he soft-tapped through the stage 5 bunch sprint.

Pogačar hasn’t bonked, blown up, or been seriously dropped since that day on the Col de la Loze in 2023.

It would be intriguing to know how Pogačar’s HRV stacked up the day after his brutal high-speed crash at the Vuelta a España. It’s unlikely we’ll ever find out.

Sleep

For athletes, sleep is when all the good stuff happens. The taps open on human growth hormone production. The brain gets breathing space to take out the trash and tidy up.

Sleep ranks above any protein shake or cryogenic ice blast in the recovery tier list.

He banks seven hours a night in the season, which is solid enough. I wish I averaged that.

Sleep is a precious and sometimes rare commodity at a grand tour. Fatigue, sickness, and endless transfers degrade sleep quality through the three-week journey. For Pogačar, monotonous media obligations put further pressure on spare time, and time to sleep.

That Pogačar slept more during the Tour de France flips the paradigm, and suggests the smiley superstar checks all the boxes to boost his chances.

UAE Emirates-XRG trucked “EightSleep” smart mattresses around France for this year’s Tour. Pogi evidently made sure to spend time lying on top of his sleep-optimizing bedding.

Pogačar got only four hours of sleep the night he and Jonas Vingegaard were controversially subjected to overnight dope tests at the Tour de France. Nevertheless, his Whoop band spat out a 62 percent “recovery score” the day afterward, on par with his Tour de France average of 57 percent.

Pogačar’s GOATed performances: Pedal power and recovery power

“His recovery capacity is from a whole different world,” San Millán said after Pogačar won his first Tour de France in 2020. “It is much better than the rest. It is like twice as good.”

The Basque physiologist pops up again in the documentary to explain his former protégé’s genetic “bouncebackability.”

“He has an astonishing ability to recover,” San Millán says in the show. “We did some metabolomics testing. We can see between 1,000 and 2,000 metabolic parameters, and one of them is the power of recovery. Some of the antioxidant parameters are very important for recovery.

“When we saw his results, Tadej was far ahead of everybody else,” San Millán says.

Pogačar’s palmarés proves it further. He’s as durable over 21 days as he is over 210km.

He’s won deep into the third week of every grand tour he’s finished, bar one. Only sickness and a knee injury could stop him from finishing the 2025 Tour as strong as he started it.

If Pogačar wins Tour de France stages with his god-tier VO2 Max and FTP, he wins yellow jerseys with his ability to express those stats, day in, day out.

Tadej Pogačar Shared His Freakish Heart Rate Data – Here's What It Actually Means