Apple of My Oar: Rowing Heart Rate Monitor Comparison

Accurate heart rate monitoring is critical for optimizing rowing training, but consumer wearables have unknown performance in this application. This project compares heart rate data from the Apple Watch Series 8 wrist-worn optical monitor and Polar H10 chest strap ECG sensor during training. Data from four 90-minute training sessions on the Oakland Estuary was collected simulanteously with both devices from an adult rower. While Polar devices are considered highly accurate for rowing, smartwatches could enable more scalable tracking if similarly reliable. Without medical-grade equipment for ground truth, this feasibility study focuses on relative accuracy between devices under athletic strain.

Key questions: How do absolute HR values compare at intensities from resting to maximal effort? At which training phases is agreement strongest and weakest? By evaluating consumer-grade sensors against an industry standard in rowing's dynamic, open water environment, findings will inform real-world applicability for training evaluation. 

Project repo: https://github.com/elliswmartin/heart-rate-monitors

Background Image: Bain News Service. ca. 1910. Cornell Crew. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.