---
title: "Stage fright measured with a heart rate monitor"
language: en
topics: ["creativity", "data", "experiment", "health", "heart", "people", "sensors"]
full_article_url: https://willem.com/en/2018-04-18_outside-the-comfort-zone-amateur-acting/
---
# Stage fright measured with a heart rate monitor

*Data from two performance nights, spike by spike.*

> 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.

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.
One night of playing burned about 1800 kcal, roughly comparable to 50 km of cycling.
The 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.