Er, so last night we were all subjected to the Love Island heart rate challenge once again. My poor eyes may never recover. However, there was a major difference between the heart rate challenge this year and the game in previous seasons of Love Island, and viewers have a pretty convincing theory as to why.
So, usually the heart rate challenge is played around the fire pit. Er, I suppose the heat from the flames is meant to compensate from the lack of heat felt by viewers at all the cringey dancing. But this year, the set-up for the heart rate challenge was totally different. The contestants were lined up on flimsy-looking chairs, on strange giant red hearts, on the lawn.
N.B. This picture had been strategically cropped to avoid showing Helena’s behind
(Credit: ITV)
The TikTok girlies have a theory for why the heart rate challenge moved location. Remember when on Love Island: All Stars 2025, Curtis Pritchard did a very overly dramatic knee slide across the decking? Apparently he really injured his knees doing that.
@loveisland If you didn’t think he could outdo himself… he did
#LoveIsland #AllStars
He told Cosmopolitan UK: “So, I was going to open it the same, and that’s how I did with my samba. But then I thought to myself, after seeing your performance, ‘I have got to bring out some magic with my hips here. I have got to show them what I can do.’”
He explained the boys peer-pressured him into cranking his performance up a notch, so he decided to do that very dramatic knee slide. “I went into showman mode. I was like, ‘let’s do this.’
“But my knees are scarred. Like, they blistered up.”
Ekin-Su added, ‘Yup, his knees are gone.”
“It ripped all the skin off them,” Curtis explained, “It was scabs for the rest of the whole Love Island Journey.”
Love Island viewers have a theory that the location of the heart rate challenge was moved this year because of Curtis’s injury. Maybe the producers were worried about further damage to Islanders knees, and figured that on the fake-looking grass they’d be able to knee slide and roll around with ease.
ITV hasn’t confirmed this, but it sure makes a lot of sense.
For all the latest Love Island news and gossip, like The Holy Church of Love Island on Facebook.
