Reviewed by Mukul Mittal, MD, Medical Director at Ultrahuman
Elite athletes often have resting heart rates that look abnormally low by everyday standards.
The most famous example is Spanish cyclist Miguel Indurain, whose 28 bpm reading was recorded at the University of Navarra in 1995 and held the Guinness World Record for a time. Others cluster in the 30s.
For context, a normal adult resting heart rate sits between 60 and 100 bpm. Anything above 100 at rest is generally treated as a marker of stress, poor fitness, or an underlying condition. For an elite endurance athlete, a reading in the 30s or low 40s is normal, and often optimal.
Highlights
- Endurance sports (running, cycling, cross-country skiing, triathlon) produce the lowest resting heart rates because of structural adaptations in the heart.
- The main adaptation is cardiac remodelling – the left ventricle grows larger and stronger, so the heart pumps more blood with each beat and needs fewer beats overall.
- Elite endurance athletes typically show resting heart rates between 30 and 60 bpm.
- Across 532,149 Ultrahuman members, only 0.4% average below 40 bpm overnight, and 3% below 45 – putting the numbers reported for elite athletes at the extreme end of what a human heart does at rest.
Famous athletes’ resting heart rates
- Miguel Indurain (cycling) – 28 bpm. Tested at the University of Navarra in 1995 and recorded by Guinness. Five-time Tour de France winner.
- Michael Phelps (swimming) – around 38 bpm. Widely reported across sports science coverage of the most decorated Olympian in history.
- Lance Armstrong (cycling) – 32 to 34 bpm. Published on his official athlete profile at the time of his professional career.
- Eliud Kipchoge (marathon) – around 33 bpm
- Usain Bolt (sprints) – around 33 bpm, notable because sprinters usually sit higher than endurance athletes
- Paula Radcliffe (marathon) – around 38 bpm
- Tadej Pogačar (cycling) – around 36 bpm
- Jan Frodeno (triathlon) – around 36 bpm
- Steve Redgrave (rowing) – around 36 bpm
- Bjørn Dæhlie (cross-country skiing) – around 35 bpm
- Serena Williams (tennis) – around 43 bpm
- Martin Fourcade (biathlon) – around 25 bpm. Widely repeated as one of the lowest athlete readings ever recorded, but the primary source is thin.
- Rich Froning (CrossFit) – around 26 bpm. Reported across fitness publications rather than in peer-reviewed testing.
The current Guinness World Record for lowest resting heart rate is held by Martin Brady, a non-athlete, at 27 bpm, tested at the Guernsey Chest and Heart Unit in 2005. That places the more strongly sourced athlete readings roughly at the boundary of what a human heart can sustain at rest.
How rare are athlete-level resting heart rates?
Ultrahuman Ring AIR reads overnight resting heart rate from the finger while a member sleeps. Across 532,149 members with at least seven valid nights, the picture looks like this:
| Overnight resting heart rate (bpm) | |
|---|---|
| Lowest 5% of members | Below 46.2 |
| Lower quarter | Below 52.2 |
| Median | 56.9 |
| Upper quarter | Above 62.0 |
| Highest 5% of members | Above 69.9 |
Around 15% of members average below 50 bpm overnight, 3% below 45, and just 0.4% below 40. That last group is largely made up of trained endurance athletes.
So an athlete like Kipchoge or Bolt at 33 bpm sits well below the lowest 0.4% of a very health-engaged half-million-person cohort. Indurain at 28 bpm sits below even that. These aren’t just low numbers – they’re at the physiological floor for a resting human heart.
The whole distribution above is lower than the standard 60 to 100 bpm textbook range because these are overnight readings taken during the quietest hours of sleep, not seated clinic measurements. Both are valid ways of measuring resting heart rate, but they answer slightly different questions – something worth knowing if you’re comparing a number from your Ring to a number from your GP.
Why do elite athletes’ resting heart rates drop so low?
Endurance training reshapes the heart. Over months and years of consistent training, the left ventricle – the chamber that pushes oxygenated blood out to the body – grows larger and its walls thicken. A bigger, stronger left ventricle moves more blood with each beat. That’s called stroke volume, and when it goes up, resting heart rate comes down. The heart does the same amount of work with fewer beats.
Two other adaptations reinforce it. The autonomic nervous system shifts toward greater vagal (parasympathetic) tone at rest, which further slows the heart. And the muscles themselves become better at extracting oxygen from the blood, so less circulating volume is needed to meet the same demand.
This is why the very lowest readings show up in athletes whose sport is built on sustained aerobic output: multi-week Grand Tour cyclists, marathoners, cross-country skiers, long-course triathletes.
How resting heart rate varies by sport
Endurance disciplines produce the biggest drop because of how they load the heart – long durations at moderate intensity are what drive left-ventricular remodelling. Power sports load the heart differently. Weightlifters and sprinters do experience cardiac adaptations, but they’re weighted toward wall thickness rather than chamber volume, and resting heart rate stays higher.
Team sports sit somewhere in the middle. A Premier League footballer or an NBA guard typically runs a resting heart rate in the mid-40s to mid-50s, reflecting a mixed aerobic-anaerobic training load.
When a low resting heart rate is a warning sign
An athlete’s low resting heart rate is a healthy adaptation. But not every enlarged or thickened heart is the same thing.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a genetic condition where the heart wall thickens abnormally, narrowing the chamber and reducing the amount of blood pumped out with each beat. It’s one of the leading causes of sudden cardiac death in young athletes, and its outward signs can superficially resemble athlete’s heart – which is why cardiac screening exists for competitive athletes.
The distinguishing measurement is wall thickness. A left ventricular wall over 13 mm is generally treated as pathological rather than adaptive, and warrants further investigation. Anyone with a genuinely low resting heart rate paired with symptoms – dizziness, fainting, chest pain, shortness of breath at rest – should see a cardiologist rather than assume it’s fitness.
Conclusion
A resting heart rate in the 30s or low 40s in an elite endurance athlete reflects years of cardiac adaptation to sustained training. The numbers reported for Indurain, Phelps, Armstrong and Kipchoge sit at the extreme end of what those adaptations can produce – below the lowest 0.4% of Ultrahuman’s half-million-member cohort. Endurance training will bring resting heart rate down for most people who commit to it, but the very low readings at the top of this list belong to a tiny population whose training loads and genetics both point the same way.
The Ultrahuman Ring reads overnight resting heart rate from the finger every night, so members can see where their own baseline sits and how it moves over time. Regular check-ups still matter – a low resting heart rate is usually good news, but paired with symptoms it can be a signal worth investigating.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are for general information and educational purposes only. It neither provides any medical advice nor intends to substitute professional medical opinion on the treatment, diagnosis, prevention or alleviation of any disease, disorder or disability. Always consult with your doctor or qualified healthcare professional about your health condition and/or concerns before undertaking a new healthcare regimen, including making any dietary or lifestyle changes.
References
Ultrahuman Ring resting heart rate data based on 532,149 members with at least seven valid nights. Full dataset and methodology .
Speed C, Arneil T, Harle R, et al. Measure by measure: resting heart rate across the 24-hour cycle. PLOS Digital Health 2023. PMID 37115739 .
Quer G, Gouda P, Galarnyk M, Topol EJ, Steinhubl SR. Inter- and intraindividual variability in daily resting heart rate and its associations with age, sex, sleep, BMI, and time of year. PLoS One 2020. PMID 32023264 .
Reimers AK, Knapp G, Reimers CD. Effects of exercise on the resting heart rate: a systematic review and meta-analysis of interventional studies. Journal of Clinical Medicine 2018. PMID 30513777 .
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