Why I Never Wear My Smart Ring While Working Out
These days, every smart ring claims to be a fitness tracker; they all report steps, calories burned, and workout time. But I take my smart ring off when I go to the gym and would never recommend it to anyone looking for a dedicated fitness tracker. Let’s talk a little about why.
What are smart rings for?
Before I get into what smart rings don’t do well, I want to talk about why I think they’re a truly useful wearable for the right person. I ‘ve been wearing Oura for years and have tested several other well-known smart ring brands (for example, here are my reviews of the Ultrahuman Air and RingConn 2 ). I like a lot about smart rings!
I love that smart rings are comfortable to wear while sleeping and don’t interfere with my daily life. I wear a wedding ring, so I’ve gotten into the habit of taking them off when I need to do something where they might get in the way—mostly, working out at the gym. I want my smart rings to track my sleep and recovery, and if they can track random activities like walking to the store, that would be great.
Smart rings are suitable for two categories of people. The first are those who don’t typically track exercise but want to monitor their sleep and get a general overview of their daily activity. A ring that can record a 30-minute walk will do a lot. The second category is for people who value workout metrics and have a second device to track them , such as an Apple Watch or Garmin. A smart ring can collect data on sleep and periods of the day unrelated to exercise.
While smart rings have gotten better at tracking activity over the years, they still have fundamental flaws that mean I would never recommend a smart ring as a serious workout tracking device.
Smart rings are impractical for heavy lifting.
Using a smart ring for barbell curls, pull-ups, or most machine or dumbbell exercises is pointless. Smart rings are thick and bulky, and if they have sensory protrusions inside, it’s even worse. Wearing a smart ring while holding a barbell correctly during a deadlift is painful .
Let me explain what I mean by proper grip, as it differs for pushing and pulling exercises. You can use rings for pushing exercises if you prefer, as the bar should rest in your palm. I think of my forearm as a support, supporting the weight in my hand. This is how I hold the bar, for example, when bench pressing.
But when performing pulling exercises like deadlifts, pull-ups, or dumbbell rows, the bar or handle should be at the base of your fingers, right where your fingers meet your palm. If it rested on your palm, you’d pinch the skin and risk developing calluses. The place where you grip the bar is exactly where the rings are located. Some people wear their wedding rings while lifting, and if the ring is small enough, it may not interfere much. But larger rings are much larger, so they’re truly incompatible.
A proper snatch grip will painfully press the ring against your finger. Besides causing discomfort, this also reduces grip effectiveness because the bar can slip across the ring. Your fingers should grip the bar because it’s held in place by friction between your skin and the bar. There’s no way I could perform a proper hook snatch with the ring on my index finger.
Safety issues are not a priority for me, but they are worth considering.
There are two other factors that I’m not particularly concerned about, as the grip issue is already a deciding factor, but which are often brought up in discussions of this issue. The first is the notion that lifting weights is unsafe for the ring —that it will get scratched by weights or other exercise equipment. And yes, this will probably happen. Some rings are more durable than others, so it depends on the brand and coating. My silver Oura Ring 3 has a few scratches after several years of wear, but nothing too noticeable. My black Oura Ring 4 has very noticeable scratches where the coating has peeled off. You can buy silicone covers for smart rings, but I wouldn’t—they will only exacerbate the grip issues I described, as they add bulk to the ring.
Another problem is that some people avoid using rings during workouts for safety reasons, unfortunately, by googling the terms “skin detachment” or “ring detachment.” These terms describe a severe injury, sometimes requiring amputation, when a ring gets caught on something and tears the skin off a finger. Such injuries are often associated with industrial accidents and falls.
I couldn’t find any data linking serious finger injuries to lifting heavy weights while wearing a ring, and I suspect that the fear of accidentally tearing skin at the gym, despite frequent online discussions, is somewhat exaggerated compared to the actual risk. Nevertheless, it’s probably best to avoid wearing rings at the gym (regardless of how sensible it is).
They are not always accurate enough to track your heart rate.
It’s difficult for a smart ring to accurately track your heart rate. Some do a better job than others, but few are perfect for the task, and none are exceptional. Unlike a watch, a ring doesn’t have an adjustable strap to keep the sensor firmly against your skin. On a hot day, when your fingers are swollen , you’ll likely get more accurate data, but you’ll also find it difficult to remove the ring at the end of the day. If the day is cold and dry, and the ring slips, it may not give accurate readings at all.
Rings use a heart rate sensor similar to watches, but watches have a larger surface area for the sensor to detect and a larger form factor that blocks external light. The wearer can adjust the fit. Rings, however, are at a disadvantage in all these areas. I cynically suspect that this accuracy issue is precisely why most smart ring apps don’t display detailed heart rate graphs or allow heart rate data export to other apps. (Special thanks to the Samsung Galaxy Ring, which supports data export. Coincidentally, it has the most accurate heart rate sensor of all the rings I tested.)
Tracking workouts on the ring is inconvenient.
Even if you want to track cardio with a smart ring, it’s a hassle. You have to start and stop your workout through the phone app, which is inconvenient (and most ring apps don’t provide activity information to remind you to stop your workout once it’s finished). Some rings have automatic workout detection, which eliminates this inconvenience. But then you’re dependent on the ring to determine when your workout has ended and when it has begun. If you want to track, say, a 30-minute run, you’ll have to rely on it to choose a reasonable start and end point. Sometimes, the ring’s guess can be off by several minutes.
Smart rings are more suitable for tracking recovery than for tracking physical activity.
Despite these shortcomings, why do I still like smart rings? Because I don’t view them as fitness trackers. A smart ring can track sleep metrics like sleep time and heart rate variability , and this is useful even without tracking physical activity. I find other metrics, such as stress tracking, less helpful (I share my colleague Meredith’s skepticism about this). Smart ring apps often have other features, such as habit or diet tracking, that aren’t functions of the ring itself but can be a convenient way to organize your data.
Smart rings are designed for all of these things , not for activity tracking. Even though I’ve been wearing smart rings for years, I’ve never really considered tracking workouts with them (except for testing the device’s features). I can’t think of any exercise for which tracking with a ring would even make sense. If I’m running, I want to know my pace and heart rate in real time on the watch. If I just want to note that I did strength training or went for a walk on a particular day, I don’t need the tracking data from the ring to record it.
Ultimately, the smart ring is great for many things, but not for tracking workouts. I use the watch for everything that requires real-time heart rate monitoring (since I can see it at a glance), and the smart ring handles everything that happens outside the gym.