Oura Adds Cardio Effort and VO2 Max to Move Beyond Zones

Oura announced on October 20, 2026, that it is rolling out Cardio Effort and VO2 max metrics to expand workout tracking beyond exercise duration and heart rate zones. TechCrunch

Cardio Effort is designed to show how much a workout taxes a user's cardiovascular system. It is aggregated over the week relative to each user's individual baseline. It accounts for both intensity and duration, so a shorter, more intense workout can yield a similar score to a longer, less intense workout.

The feature has two components. Workout Cardio Effort evaluates an individual workout. Weekly Cardio Effort aggregates that effort into a weekly total. Weekly totals are categorized as Light, Fair, Maintaining, Building, or Reaching.

The measurement method departs from conventional max-heart-rate formulas. Oura measures Cardio Effort using elevated heart rate relative to each member's long-term resting heart rate rather than maximum-heart-rate estimates. Weekly Cardio Effort levels are determined using personalized ranges based on recent activity patterns. Cardio Effort is rolling out to Oura Ring Gen3 and later models.

VO2 max addresses a different layer of the stack. It measures how effectively the heart, lungs, and muscles work together to deliver and use oxygen during exercise. Oura estimates VO2 max passively using GPS-enabled workouts. Users receive an initial VO2 Max estimate after completing five qualifying activities.

Oura displays VO2 Max estimates in ml/kg/min in the My Health Heart Hub with fitness categories of Low, Fair, High, or Peak. VO2 Max is launching in Oura Labs for members with Gen3 and newer Oura Ring devices. Oura says Cardio Effort and VO2 max are designed to work together to show how hard users are working and how that effort adds up over time.

The additions sit on top of an existing activity pipeline. Oura tracks more than 40 live activities automatically. Oura It offers Live Activity Tracking that lets users start a workout directly in the Oura App and follow pace and distance in real time. Oura The Ring uses a 3D accelerometer and pre-trained algorithms to track daily movement, and its Automatic Activity Detection includes running splits that display time per unit of distance.

That pipeline has been revised incrementally. Oura Ring Generation 3 added workout heart rate tracking. Oura and Strava partnered to integrate activity data, including adding Strava workouts to the Oura app. More recently, Oura rolled out updates to its rings and app to provide more accurate step count and calories-burned measurements, and its upgraded feature set tracks more than 50 metrics, including GLP-1 insights.

The broader context here is the shift from absolute thresholds to longitudinal personalization. Fixed zone models and age-predicted maxima are computationally simple but noisy across individuals. Anchoring effort to long-term resting heart rate and recent activity patterns trades universal comparability for tighter intra-user tracking. Personalization is the point.

In this author's view, the pairing of load and capacity is the more interesting choice. Weekly effort without an outcome proxy tends to reward volume alone. VO2 max without load context leaves users with a number and no lever to move it. Coupling a strain accumulator with a passive aerobic capacity estimate gives tech-literate users both sides of the training equation without requiring lab testing or structured protocols. Worth flagging is the Labs placement for VO2 max, which signals Oura still treats passive estimation as provisional while it gathers distribution data across devices and workout types.

If the estimates hold up in everyday use, the practical gain is continuity. Rings already collect overnight resting physiology. Extending that baseline logic into daytime training closes a loop between recovery and exertion inside one system.