The New Fitness Metric For Ravers

Introducing"Daily Heart Rate Per Step"

Average Daily Heart Rate

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Average Daily # of Steps

Ravers are a health-conscious bunch, and are always looking for ways to evaluate their fitness and cardiovascular health. 

Unfortunately, we’ve been bogged down with misleading metrics such as BMI and body-fat percentage.

But now, there’s a new way to check. It’s simple, and is found to be a predictor for type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, cardiovascular disease, cancers, and related death. 

The Daily Heart Rate Per Step (DHRPS) is the quotient of your average daily heart rate, and your average daily number of steps. 

                DHRPS = (Average Daily Heart Rate) / (Average Daily # of Steps)

The number is always very small, and the lower the number is, the healthier you are (which can be confusing), but with wearable technology and smartphones, the work of tracking your heart rate and step counts are mainly done for you.

Let’s say you, on average, walk 7,500 steps per day; and your average heart rate is 75BPM. Your DHRPS score is 0.01.

If you walk an average 5,000 steps per day, and your average heart rate is 85 BPM, your DHRPS score is 0.017.

While more studies using DHRPS are ongoing, one promising one through Harvard University, in which participants wore devices to measure step counts and heart rate. 

Those with “low”, “medium”, and “high” DHRPS scores, as defined below, had corresponding risks of disease and mortality:

• Low: < 0.008 

• Medium: 0.0081- 0.015

• High: >0.015 or higher.

DHRPS is an improvement because:

• It focuses on the amount of physical activity, and the amount of work the heart must do to sustain that amount of activity. 

• It does not focus on body size/composition, which are unreliable health indicators. 

• It implies (accurately) that:

  • fitness can be improved (and risks can be reduced) by increasing daily activity; 

  • that a lower heart rate generally means better overall cardiovascular health.

Works Cited

Robert H. Shmerling, MD. “Counting Steps Is Good - Is Combining Steps and Heart Rate Better?” Harvard Health, 17 Apr. 2025, www.health.harvard.edu/blog/counting-steps-is-good-is-combining-steps-and-heart-rate-better-202504173095#:~:text=Here’s%20how%20it%20works.,this%20is%20a%20positive%20trend. 

Chen Z, Wang CT, Hu CJ, Ward K, Kho A, Webster G. Daily Heart Rate per Step: A Wearables Metric Associated With Cardiovascular Disease in a Cross-Sectional Study of the All of Us Research Program. J Am Heart Assoc. 2025 May 6;14(9):e036801. doi: 10.1161/JAHA.124.036801. Epub 2025 May 7. PMID: 40156587; PMCID: PMC12184247.

Banach M, Lewek J, Surma S, Penson PE, Sahebkar A, Martin SS, Bajraktari G, Henein MY, Reiner Ž, Bielecka-Dąbrowa A, Bytyçi I. The association between daily step count and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality: a meta-analysis. Eur J Prev Cardiol. 2023 Dec 21;30(18):1975-1985. doi: 10.1093/eurjpc/zwad229. Erratum in: Eur J Prev Cardiol. 2023 Dec 21;30(18):2045. doi: 10.1093/eurjpc/zwad263. PMID: 37555441.