Apple Watch Ultra 2 Heart Rate tracking issues auto-pausing workouts.

I've been having an issue since around Sept 2025 where my Ultra 2 suddenly has a very hard time finding my HR while working out. This was not an issue for the six months before Sept, and I can't tell if it's update related or not.

This happens during all of my strength training workouts, the HR field on my watch during the workout grays out and spins as it can't seem to read my HR and then that causes the watch to automatically pause my workout. This happens anywhere from 10 to 50+ times during an hour workout. It's maddening unpausing the watch so many times, and it has to be really messing up my stats like calories burned and VO2 with endless interruptions and tracking issues. My watch is always up to date on updates as soon as they're available.

My questions are: Why did my watch suddenly begin having problems HR tracking during exercise, and is there a fix? Is there a way to turn off automatic pausing when it can't find my HR?