Frequently Asked Questions

Think of OTO Life as a science-driven personal trainer in your pocket, offering specific, science-backed recommendations to improve your stress resilience outcomes. OTO Coach translates your complex electrophysiological data from OTO Chest Strap and Sensor into actionable recommendations to help you manage stress throughout your health and wellness journey.

Daily activity recommendations from OTO Coach include a combination of exercise, rest, and recovery tasks, depending on the data collected from your OTO Chest Strap and Sensor. Recommendations are personalized to you and supported by decades of research for maximum safety and efficacy.

Studies show that various markers of stress have a negative impact on fitness and lower ‘flight or fight’ activity is associated with improved performance.

OTO Chest Strap and Sensor tracks 50+ physiologic markers of stress and OTO Coach translates this data into personalized exercise, rest, and recovery recommendations, to help you stay on top of your stress throughout your health and wellness journey.

No. We measure the impact of stress in general on the human body. Hence, you may use our system to assess how different kind of intervention or your life-style affects your readiness and productivity.

Yes and No! In case you have a severe cardiac issue, your OTO may be all funky and all over the place. Or picture a highly unfit person who gets out of breath from already the smallest stressor. Most likely your OTO data won’t be great as your body is constantly in a mode of stress and survival. Generally, our data shows only your readiness to perform and adapt to stress. To assess fitness, which is an output measure by nature, you will need to perform actual physical fitness tests. However, you may use OTO to determine whether you are ready for those tests and, generally, how much biological cost your body pays to adapt to any given stressor imposed by training or life in general.

It is important that you observe the small trends within your data and within the biological norm areas we put in the system. In other words, although your data may be constantly let’s say in the green zone, your data may fluctuate a lot within this green zone. It is important to pay attention to those trends. If you are an endurance athlete, you may want to observe more closely your “Recovery pattern” index as this display the small adaptational variations in your parasympathetic nervous system. If you are a power or speed athlete, you may want to pay more attention of the trends of your DC Potential data. Generally, it is important that you use all data available (biological OTO data, subjective feeling, load data, etc.) in order to draw the best possible conclusion for your training.

The heart rate zones are calculated based on the Readiness assessment. By combining information about you (such as your age, weight, height, etc.) and analysing your ECG, we are able to reasonably accurately estimate your heart rate at anaerobic thresold. Based on this value, we calculate the various heart rate zones accordingly. As a result, the zones are both individual to you and may change slightly over time depening on your ECG.

The Anaerobic Development zone indicates the highest heart rate values where you may still develop running qualities. The higher end of the zone does not represent your max heart, as this may be higher than a value in which you are still developing running qualities.

Upon looking at your training zones, your anaerobic threshold lies in between your ‘aerobic development’ and ‘anaerobic maintenance’ zone.

Measuring

The best protocol to follow is to do the measurement just before exercise, or for sake of consistency, always in the morning. If possible, avoid having caffeine-based drinks or other stimulants before the measurement. Also try not eat heavy meals before the assessment. If conducted in the morning, please give yourself some time to fully wake up. Despite our recommendations, do the assessment whenever it fits into your daily schedule the best. Only try to consider what variables may be affecting your measurement at any given time.

You may initiate consecutive assessments. However, please bear in mind that even the slightest changes in activity level may alter the state of your body, thus, your assessment results. In other words, your activity level should remain the same as before the first measurement. Generally, give yourself at least 10 minutes time before you initiate a second assessment. Since we measure the transitional level of wakefullness from up-right to supine (horizontal) position, it is not advisable to keep lying down in between the measurements but to remain up-right in a calm state before initiating the second measurement.

You may have worn the sensor upside-down. Ensure that you have placed the sensor the right way up on the ECG chest belt; the MicroUSB port needs to be facing down with the OTO logo facing up right.

If your ECG graph looks funky or noisy, cancel the measurement and connect the sensor to a power supply using the micro-USB charging cable for a few seconds. Ensure that the sensor’s LED light turns red. This will reset the sensor and the problem should disappear. If it does not, please contact OTO support for further assistance: info@oto.coach.

Hardware

It takes a short moment for the App to establish a live connection to the sensor. If the heart rate is not detected after more than 10 seconds, please try the following troubleshooting tips:

Plug the sensor into the charger for 10+ seconds and re-attempt the assessment.
Make sure the sensor is fully charged.
Wear the belt with the sensor attached to both pins.
Ensure that the sensor starts to blink a blue light.
Make sure the electrodes are thoroughly soaked with water.
Ensure that the sensors on the belt are in direct contact with the skin.

Your sensor may be paired with the iOS device itself but not with OTO application. To resolve this issue, proceed with the following:

Activate the charged sensor by attaching it to your chest strap on your chest (the blue light on the sensor will start blinking)
Open the Bluetooth Settings in your iOS mobile device and ensure that Bluetooth is turned on (if not then this could be the cause of the problem)
If Bluetooth is turned on already, then continue with the steps as follows:
In your iOS device’s Bluetooth settings you should be able to find the activated OTO sensor, it’s called “OW-CB2”
Click now the little “i” icon next to “connected”
Click now “Forget this Device”
Please proceed now to the OTO application
Open the app’s settings and click “Select sensor”
You may repeat this procedure to ensure that the sensor is not paired with your iOS device but with the OTO application.

If you continue to have pairing issues, please contact info@oto.coach

After each assessment, please make sure to detach the sensor from the belt, at least with one pin. This will disconnect the electrical circuit and shuts down the sensor automatically. You know that the sensor is turned off, when all lights on the sensor are off.

Ensure that you are using unused electrodes and that you have connected the DC cable to your forehead and palm electrodes. If the application still indicates that it is unable to detect the DC Potential signal, it can mean that the micro-USB connector of the sensor may be broken. In this case, contact OTO support for further assistance: info@oto.coach.

Our chest straps have electrode pads with metallic coating, which measure your ECG. It is important to handle them with care. We recommend cleaning the chest straps with only water or with mild hand soap and water.

Washing chest straps:

the washcloth with instructions is on the belt
gentle machine wash only
max temperature 30 degrees Celsius/ 86 Fahrenheit
please avoid using industrial washing machines
we recommend using a mesh laundry bag to avoid contact with washing machine edges and other laundry
please always hang the straps to air dry

Please DO NOT tumble dry, dry clean, bleach, iron, use strong detergents, fabric softeners or use disinfectants with alcohol (ethanol, isopropanol, or other cleaning alcohol).
Especially wiping the electrode pads with strong detergents or disinfectants can destroy them. Tumble drying and ironing can destroy the electrode pads after the first time.

If your belt accidentally went to the tumble dryer for example, don’t worry, you can purchase a new belt in the OTO admin portal

Our electrodes are disposable and meant for a one-time use only. We cannot confirm their accuracy if they are used for multiple measurements.

Assessments

You may have worn the sensor upside-down. Ensure that you have placed the sensor the right way up on the ECG chest belt; the MicroUSB port needs to be facing down with the OTO logo facing up right.

Interpretation

Perhaps the current source of fatigue is something we don’t measure, e.g. local muscular fatigue or hormonal fatigue. Having said that, it is important that you also take into account your subjective feeling and draw a conclusion combining both pieces of information (objective and subjective). This approach will allow you to make the smartest decision for your upcoming training and recovery. Generally it is important to not rely on one single marker for your decision making.

The numbers signify two distinct energy systems in the body. On the aerobic efficiency index, we represent the development of your aerobic efficiency. Meaning that the higher it is, the more you can do while your body remains producing energy with the aerobic energy system. This obviously happens in the low ranges of your hear rate zones. Once you start pushing your body more, the anaerobic energy system kicks into gear. There is always a balance between the energy systems, but depending on which zone you exercise, you use one system more than the other. The idea to place them side by side is to give you a solid and clear representation on how your energy systems are co-functioning, and what system was used the most last time you exercised, and which one is improving better in terms of efficiency. We have built the scales based on our own science and they should only be seen in dynamics. Having said that, there will be times where your anaerobic energy efficiency might go below your aerobic efficiency. This is when you have depleted your body’s ability to produce anaerobic energy efficiently. Those days you should not push your body too much. Light recovery runs, walks or cycling rides should do it!

Portal

In our new portal you can sign in with your OTO credentials (the same credentials as on the OTO app). You will find access to your profile information in the bottom of the menu, you'll be able to manage your personal details, subscription, orders, and payments.

Once you have signed up and purchased a subscription you will receive an email with an activation link. Please follow it, set up a password and activate your account. If you already did this and you can't log in, please contact us at info@oto.coach.

You can change your personal details (height, weight, Date of birth, name, etc.) by logging in to the portal or in your OTO application on your mobile device. To change your account details in the portal, please go to the bottom part of the menu where your name appear together with the view profile label and click through. In the app you will find edit profile in the main menu.

You can update your credit card details in the Payment Methods section in the Portal. The credit card you set as default becomes the card used for billing your subscription.

Your subscription is automatically renewed based on the period selected when purchased. If you wish to keep your subscription active there is no action needed.

You may cancel your recurring subscription at any time. Once you cancel, the subscription will remain valid until the next scheduled billing date, when the subscription will expire. You can cancel the subscription in the portal, in your personal account area under the subscriptions tab. You will find a "cancel" button, please press this button and your subscription will be cancelled.