HRV next to published age bands.
Enter age, sex, and RMSSD. See where that number sits versus the KORA S4 short-term medians and interquartile ranges — not a personal grade.
Where does this RMSSD sit?
Enter age, sex, and a short-term RMSSD in milliseconds. The band is the published median and interquartile range from the KORA S4 sample (Voss et al., 2015), ages 25–74 only.
A comparison with the published age band shows up here.
What the band is comparing
Heart rate variability (HRV) describes beat-to-beat timing variation. This page uses short-term RMSSD. The age bands are medians with 25th and 75th percentiles from healthy adults in the KORA S4 population study, published by Voss and colleagues in PLOS ONE (2015). Recordings were about five minutes of resting ECG while lying down.
Nunan and colleagues (2010) pooled short-term HRV across healthy-adult studies and reported a mean RMSSD near 42 ms, with study means spanning a wide range. Shaffer and Ginsberg (2017) review metrics and norms and stress that methods differ. Those papers support caution; they are not used here as age-specific cut points.
Ages under 25 or over 74 are outside the Voss short-term table on this page, so no band is invented. Individual ranges are wide. A single reading is not medical advice.
Sources: Voss A, Schroeder R, Heitmann A, Peters A, Perz S. PLOS ONE. 2015. Nunan D, Sandercock GRH, Brodie DA. Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology. 2010. Shaffer F, Ginsberg JP. Frontiers in Public Health. 2017.
General information, not medical advice. Talk to a clinician about health decisions.
Reference table on this page
Short-term RMSSD, ms. Median [25th–75th]. Published KORA S4 values, not calculated here.
| Age | n | 25th | Median | 75th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25-34 | 330 | 26.2 | 36.2 | 48.5 |
| 35-44 | 292 | 20.9 | 28.7 | 39 |
| 45-54 | 235 | 15.7 | 21.5 | 29.6 |
| 55-64 | 183 | 12.5 | 17.5 | 24.8 |
| 65-74 | 84 | 11.8 | 16.7 | 23.4 |
| Age | n | 25th | Median | 75th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25-34 | 208 | 26.1 | 38.4 | 54.5 |
| 35-44 | 259 | 22.4 | 30.5 | 45.7 |
| 45-54 | 158 | 16.9 | 23.7 | 31.3 |
| 55-64 | 95 | 13.2 | 18.9 | 27.3 |
| 65-74 | 62 | 11.1 | 16.9 | 23.9 |
Common questions
What does RMSSD mean?
RMSSD is the root mean square of successive differences between heartbeats, in milliseconds. It is a common short-term HRV metric. Wearables often report something close to it; methods still differ.
Why only ages 25–74?
Those are the published short-term RMSSD age bands in the KORA S4 tables used here (Voss et al., 2015). This page does not invent bands outside that sample.
Why ask for sex?
The KORA short-term tables publish separate rows for men and women. Sex is required so the page can use the matching published row.
Can I compare a watch HRV to this table?
Only roughly. The reference values come from 5-minute resting ECG recordings lying down. Nightly wearable readings use different sensors and windows. Use the band as context, and track your own trend day to day.
Track it daily in Metrya
Metrya keeps HRV next to sleep, training, and the rest of your health record on iPhone.
Get Metrya
Other calculators: Zone 2 heart rate · Fitness age · VO2max by age