Heart Rate During Pair and Solo Performances in Competitive Standard Dancing: Within-Subjects Dataset

This dataset contains heart rate (HR) data from 16 competitive Standard dancers (8 men and 8 women forming 8 established couples; performance class A or S, Slovak Dance Sport Federation) recorded in May 2026 during simulated competition finals performed solo and with the regular competitive partner. Protocol. Each dancer completed two simulated competition finals one week apart, both starting at 17:30: the solo session first and the pair session one week later (condition is therefore fully confounded with session order). Each final consisted of Waltz, Tango, Viennese Waltz, Slow Foxtrot, and Quickstep in a fixed order, each danced for 90 s at the tempo prescribed by the WDSF competition rules, with 30 s of rest between dances. All dancers performed simultaneously on the same floor; in the solo session, each dancer performed their own part of the couple’s choreography while maintaining the arm position of the closed hold. HR was recorded continuously with Polar H10 chest-strap sensors paired with the Polar Team application. Variables. For each dancer, condition, and dance, the dataset provides mean HR (HR_mean; calculated by the Polar Team software over the 90-s dance) and peak HR (HR_peak; the highest value of the HR series exported at 5-s intervals, i.e. a sampled peak). Participants are pseudonymized (P01–P16; couples C01–C08). The main file is in tidy format (160 rows: 16 dancers × 2 conditions × 5 dances) and is provided as CSV and Excel files, together with a codebook. Additional files. Analysis-ready files (long and wide formats, couple-level means, pair − solo differences); the jamovi output (PDF) of the analyses reported in the article (repeated-measures ANOVA, paired t tests, and linear mixed models accounting for dependence within couples); Python scripts that reproduce all results from the data file, including the analyses added in the second revision (Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, exploratory Condition × Sex comparison, and partner correlation), with their output; a README describing data processing; and a changelog. Versions. Version 3: the data are identical to version 2; the README now cites the correct DOI, and the analyses added in the second revision of the article were added. Version 2 corrected data-entry errors for participants P16 and P15 present in version 1 (all changed values are listed in changes_v1_to_v2.csv and CHANGELOG.md) and renamed HR_max to HR_peak. All results in the associated article are based on these verified data. The dataset accompanies the article “Heart Rate Responses to Pair Versus Solo Performance in Elite Standard Dancers: A Within-Subjects Study” (Chren M., Špánik M., Kis T.K., Kuliś S.; Journal of Clinical Medicine, under review). The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport, Comenius University in Bratislava (No. 4/2024), was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and all participants provided written informed consent.