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Your heart rate walking uphill

Ongoing studyRecorded on trails and inclines

This is an ongoing study. The figure will be updated here as more people are recorded.

OPTICAL

Accuracy

92.0%

Hiking Heart Rate Agreement

side by side with an ECG chest strap along the same trail

Reference standard

ECG chest strap

Sample size

4 participants

Walking uphill, the Ultrahuman Ring reads within nine beats a minute of an ECG chest strap, on average.

Ultrahuman RingECG chest strapbeats per minute
92.0%agreement with the chest strap
8.8 bpmaverage difference
71%of readings inside the ±5 bpm / 10% tolerance
67–179beats 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.
-45-30-150+15+308090100110120130140150upper limit of agreement (+14.1)lower limit of agreement (-14.9)average offset -0.4 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.

A climb ought to be the friendliest thing you can measure outdoors. The effort is sustained, the rhythm is steady, and your hands are doing very little — which is the combination an optical sensor handles best.

What a trail adds is undulation. The gradient changes under you, you step up and over things, you break stride for a rock or a gate, and your heart rate answers each of those, which is a demand a treadmill never makes of it. That is why this sits below the outdoor walking card rather than above it.

Hiking is rarely covered in published wearable heart-rate validation, which is why it is measured here.