Workout Mode: Heart rate tracking explained

How the Ring tracks heart rate during exercise

The Ring AIR/PRO’s optical sensor shines light into your skin and reads how much bounces back. Blood absorbs light differently depending on oxygen content and pulse timing, and the Ring estimates your heart rate from those absorption peaks.

Four things work together to keep that reading accurate while you move.

• Motion filtering. An accelerometer and gyroscope record your movement continuously through the session. The algorithm uses that as a reference to isolate the cardiac signal, so the number tracks your heartbeat rather than your arm swing.
• Multi-wavelength redundancy. Green and infrared LEDs read at different tissue depths. Your heartbeat is common to both channels, so cross-referencing them confirms the signal.
• Finger placement. The digital arteries sit close to the surface, giving a stronger baseline signal than the wrist. The motion profile at the finger is also well suited to filtering: during running, the dominant movement is arm swing, which sits below your heart rate in frequency at hard effort.
• On-device processing. The algorithm runs on the Ring rather than in the cloud, so readings reach the app within seconds.

How to use Workout Mode in the app

Tap the + icon in the bottom left corner of your app and select Workout, then pick from a library of more than 100 profiles covering running, cycling, HIIT, strength, yoga, swimming, martial arts and team sports. Recording starts immediately.

You don't have to start one by hand. When the Ring detects you've started moving, it raises a Live Activity on its own, which expands to a full-screen zone-by-zone heart rate view. Live heart rate is available on the home screen outside any session too.

During a session you see your current heart rate, training zone, elapsed time and estimated active calories. At the end you get a summary with average and peak heart rate, duration and calories, alongside perceived effort and a 30-day view of your workout consistency.

That data feeds your Movement Index through its workout-frequency component. It doesn't feed your Recovery score directly; a hard effort shows up overnight instead, as suppressed HRV and an elevated resting heart rate during the following night's sleep.

Using a different device for your workout

Plenty of people train with a chest strap, a bike computer or a running watch. You don't have to give that up to use the Ring.

You can take a session's heart rate from another device you already wear, chosen when the session starts. Or connect your apps and devices once, under Connect Other Apps in the profile menu, and completed workouts arrive on their own with their heart rate already attached.

Either way, the workout lands in the Ultrahuman app as if the Ring had tracked it. Your training and your overnight recovery data end up together, so a hard Monday shows up in Tuesday's recovery score.

Technology grounded in research

Studies have shown that there are two ways to read a heartbeat cleanly during movement, and the Ultrahuman Ring uses both.

The first is tracking the movement itself. Because the Ultrahuman Ring knows exactly how your hand is moving, it can separate that from your pulse.

The second is using two colors of light. Green and infrared reach different depths under the skin, and your heartbeat shows up in both, so the Ring uses one to confirm the other.

Two studies compared places on the body for accurate readings: one across a range of activities and one across exercise intensities. Both agreed on what matters: how close the blood vessels sit to the surface, and how much that part of the body moves. The finger scores well on both, making it a great place to read your pulse.