{
 "id": 69813,
 "slug": "stage-fright-measured-with-a-heart-rate-monitor",
 "url": "https://agents.willem.com/en/snippets/stage-fright-measured-with-a-heart-rate-monitor/",
 "language": "en",
 "title": "Stage fright measured with a heart rate monitor",
 "subtitle": "Data from two performance nights, spike by spike.",
 "summary": "It shows up clearly in the data. During my 2018 stage debut, anxiety built up before my first entrance and every appearance produced a sharp spike in heart rate, with the first appearance the hardest by far.",
 "topics": [
  "creativity",
  "data",
  "experiment",
  "health",
  "heart",
  "people",
  "sensors"
 ],
 "date": "2018-04-18",
 "published": "2018-04-18T00:00:00+02:00",
 "created": "2026-08-30T07:13:35.756000+02:00",
 "updated": "2026-08-30T07:16:59.497000+02:00",
 "full_article_url": "https://willem.com/en/2018-04-18_outside-the-comfort-zone-amateur-acting/",
 "author": {
  "name": "Willem L. Middelkoop",
  "url": "https://willem.com"
 },
 "note": "A short distillation of a longer willem.com post. Not currently published on willem.com itself.",
 "answers_question": "What does stage fright do to your heart rate?",
 "text": "I wore a waist mounted heart rate monitor during both performance nights and a Biostrap sensor for the month around them. The debut night showed higher average and peak heart rates than the second night, and each of my six appearances produced a clear spike, with the break giving visible relief in between. On both nights the first appearance was the hardest, and my second was notably less stressful than the third because I felt much more confident with those lines.\nOne night of playing burned about 1800 kcal, roughly comparable to 50 km of cycling.\nThe long term data moved too: resting heart rate rose during the final two weeks of rehearsals and my respiratory rate climbed steadily towards the performance nights, a clear marker of anxiety.",
 "markdown_url": "https://agents.willem.com/en/snippets/stage-fright-measured-with-a-heart-rate-monitor/snippet.md"
}