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Your heart rate through lunges and squats

With and without a loaded pack
OPTICAL

Accuracy

90.4%

Functional Strength Training Heart Rate Agreement

scored against an ECG chest strap across the same sets

Reference standard

ECG chest strap

Sample size

31 participants

Through squats and lunges the Ultrahuman Ring stays within thirteen beats a minute of an ECG chest strap, on average.

Ultrahuman RingECG chest strapbeats per minute
90.4%agreement with the chest strap
12.9 bpmaverage difference
−6.9 bpmthe ring reads low, on average
93–190beats per minute the reference covered in study
Figure 1 — One continuous stretch from a single recording. The figures beside it are for the study as a whole, not for the stretch drawn. Average difference tells you how far a typical reading is from the reference, regardless of whether it is high or low. Average offset tells you the direction of that gap — whether the ring reads high or low, on average.
-75-50-250+25+5090100110120130140150160170180190upper limit of agreement (+25.5)lower limit of agreement (-39.4)average offset -6.9 bpmthe two devices averaged (beats per minute)ring minus chest strap (beats per minute)
Figure 2 — Every five seconds, against the chest strap
One dot is one paired five-second reading, as recorded, pooled across recordings.

Lunges and squats put almost everything a sensor dislikes into a single movement. The load is on your legs, but the whole body braces to carry it, the effort arrives in bursts with your heart rate chasing each one, and your hands are either gripping weights or holding a pack steady. Bracing and gripping both change the pulse at the fingertip, and they peak at the same moment your heart rate does.

The trace climbs through the working set and falls away afterwards. What the Ultrahuman Ring holds onto is the shape: it stays with the reference through the rise and through the fall, including the moment the load peaks and the grip is hardest, which is where movements like these usually pull a reading apart.

Some sets were done holding weights and some wearing a loaded pack, so both hand positions sit inside the figure rather than only one of them.