Cardio Effort

Cardio Effort is a feature that measures the strain on your cardiovascular system during workouts, and helps you monitor if you are doing enough to maintain or improve your heart health and fitness levels. Cardio Effort is available for:

Gen3 or later with active membership
iOS
Android

This feature is not available on Gen2 or older.

Cardio Effort is being gradually rolled out and may not be immediately available to all members.

What Is Cardio Effort
How to Use Cardio Effort
Things to Keep in Mind
More Information

What Is Cardio Effort?

Cardio Effort helps you understand whether you are overtraining or undertraining during workouts. The Cardio Effort measurement uses your activity intensity (based on heart rate) and duration to generate five personal ranges, then shows you where you land in them in each week.

Cardio Effort ranges are customized based on your historical trends and heart rate data. They are not comparisons to a universal, standardized score, and may shift over time as Oura learns more about you. The ranges are:

Low: Your Cardio Effort is well below your baseline. This indicates that you may be resting or recharging
Recovering: Your effort is lower than usual. Low-intensity movement is good for periods of recovery
Maintaining: Your effort is consistent and within your three-week average. You can build or maintain your fitness in this range
Improving: You're pushing a bit more than usual, but this is where the fitness gains come from. Make sure to plan for recovery days after time spent in this range
Reaching: Large efforts can be great in certain doses, but be sure to add in adequate recovery time, otherwise this may lead to overtraining or injury

Cardio Effort is not the same as Cardio Capacity (VO2 max), which is a measurement of the maximum amount of oxygen your body is able to utilize during exercise.

How to Use Cardio Effort

The Oura App requires at least two weeks (14 days) of data in order to generate your first Cardio Effort score. After this calibration period, Cardio Effort will be measured during every activity, and shown on the post-workout screen.

For more information on adding activities, see our article on how to record a workout.

Cardio Effort can also be found as an insight card on the Today tab and a weekly graph in the Activity screen. Tap on the card or weekly graph to see a longer-term chart of your Cardio Effort scores, which can be toggled between one, three, and six month ranges. Here, you'll also find a list of activities that contributed to your Cardio Effort score.

If your activity has missing or low heart rate signal, Cardio Effort will show an estimated effort score instead. You can manually edit the intensity of the workout to adjust this estimated effort higher or lower. See Edit an Activity for more information.

Things to Keep in Mind

Cardio Effort requires at least 14 days of data before it can generate a score. If you do not see Cardio Effort in your app, trying wearing your ring consistently so that the Oura App can calibrate your baseline readings
Cardio Effort is a personalized score based on trends within your own data and is not a comparison to an external metric
Cardio Effort is measured using your workout's intensity and duration. Editing a workout's intensity will also affect your Cardio Effort score