Using Gyroscope’s weekly, monthly, and annual reports (exclusive Pro feature), you can see how your diet and exercise, among other factors, are impacting your heart rate — making you feel good about your healthy habits. Using the iPhone app, you’ll even get a daily reminder about your heart rate range from the previous day.

Understand and improve your fitness

Aerobic exercise (“cardio”) is the best way to get and stay heart-healthy. You should aim to exercise throughout the week for at least 30 minutes per session, with at most 2–3 days off. Some studies have shown that even 7 minutes of high-intensity exercise a few times per week can make a big difference.

Cardio exercises like running, biking, rowing, swimming, and group sports like basketball or volleyball can be fun and easy to build a habit around. That’s even truer when you connect Strava or RunKeeper to Gyroscope and use our Running and Cycling apps to capture and share your sessions with beautiful share cards.

A run through San Francisco’s Marina Green with matching photo and heart rate

To obtain the most accurate data, be sure to set your wearable to workout mode each time you exercise. This will take more frequent samples of your heart rate, helping you achieve your specific workout goals — whether it’s fat loss, strength, or cardiovascular fitness. Warm-ups/cool-downs tend to be 80–105 bpm, and a good workout will typically be 125–165 bpm.

While wearables do the job most of the time, chest strap devices are the most accurate trackers during exercise (but uncomfortable to wear). Thanks to manufacturers like Polar that now feed data into Apple HealthKit, Gyroscope can also receive data from chest straps.

Keep a watchful eye on your heart

Sometimes, despite doing your best to stay healthy, you could still encounter heart problems. While it’s true that diagnosing certain heart conditions requires more sophisticated hardware such as an electrocardiogram (EKG), these devices are often unable to monitor your heart on a continual basis. In contrast, wearable devices can be worn all the time and provide a much larger window into your health.

Card showing steps and heart rate tracked together

We’re not suggesting you diagnose yourself based on your heart rate data, but we think collecting data is better than not. Gyroscope lets you spot connections between the many things that could affect your heart rate: alcohol, caffeine, medications, dietary supplements, and more. For example, if you visited a coffee shop and your heart rate wasn’t elevated afterward, or you were still able to get a good night’s rest, then maybe you’re better at metabolizing caffeine than you would’ve thought (or vice versa).