Weekly Spark #223: My Experience with Whoop

Earlier this year, I opted to get the Whoop 4.0 fitness tracker. Having seen many friends enjoy their experience and the actionable insights it provides, I saw a deal and decided to give it a try for a year. I know quite a few people reading this who are avid Whoop fans, and have been for many years, who are part of the inspiration for my purchase. I’m sure there are others who have seen Whoop and said “I don’t want that, that will never help me” or even have never heard of Whoop and have no idea what I’m even talking about. Regardless of camp, but particularly for the latter, my experience illuminates that Whoop can be useful for anyone interested in making improvements to their general health and wellbeing.

Simply put, Whoop is a fitness wearable that tracks cardiovascular strain, recovery, and sleep. The small, wrist-based sensor gathers a wide range of physiological data, focused on Strain, Recovery, and Sleep. Strain measures perceived exertion based on amount of time spent in elevated heart rate zones. Recovery is tracked by a combination of four metrics: Resting Heart Rate (RHR), Heart Rate Variability (HRV), Respiratory Rate, and Sleep Performance. Recovery can be impacted by stress, alcohol, caffeine, exercise, diet, illness, and can provide useful insights into when you might be overtraining or on the brink of getting sick. Interestingly enough, people hear about the detrimental effects that even a drink or two has on sleep, but the data in Whoop accentuate that drinking absolutely destroys your sleep and can cause a multi-day lag in recovery. The most detailed and what I find most useful is the extremely detailed sleep analysis, including duration, performance, efficiency, consistency, stages, and much more. For additional detail, refer to the Whoop website on the device and its functionality.

My experience? I’ve really enjoyed having Whoop. As someone who pays a lot of attention to health and wellness, I’m highly attuned to how my body feels and focus on the foundation of sleep, diet, exercise, mental work. Diet? Easy to track. I know when I’m eating the way that promotes my best performance and doesn’t; no tracker will help with that. Mental work? I generally have a sense for what I need to do and when in order to be at my peak. Sleep and exercise? These benefit from more detailed and analytical insights.

Enter Whoop. With Whoop, I can now analyze my sleep performance on a much more insightful level. Every morning when I wake up, I can see various metrics on the duration and quality of my sleep, which I find very useful. In addition to the data, I find it’s a helpful accountability partner; because I know that my sleep will be logged and I’ll analyze it the next morning, I pay much more attention to my sleep habits. This has contributed to much better sleep hygiene, which I’ve honed throughout the year. Knowing that having a phone in bed, eating too close to bedtime, disturbances before bed, staying up late for no reason, or skipping journaling/reading prior to bed will negatively impact my sleep quality, I try to avoid these things. My sleep has benefited greatly from Whoop.

As far as exercise, I’ve gained some helpful insights into the quality of my workouts. Some of the first workouts I logged were intense hikes throughout the Austrian alps and I can say that even intense Peloton intervals or tennis matches haven’t logged quite the strain, which is a testament to the challenge of those workouts. Whoop is heavily tilted towards cardio work, but if you use it for what it’s made for, it’s highly useful. While weightlifters will certainly benefit from the sleep and recovery metrics, they won’t find it as helpful for the lifting. The most useful component is the heart rate tracking, which is widely known to be one of the more accurate among wearables. Whether it’s tracking zone 2 cardio or intervals, I find it very useful to know how hard I’m really working, as dictated by my heart rate. Before, similar to sleep, it was kind of a guess based on how I felt, but now I have data to push me to work even harder, which is helpful. My exercise discipline and intentionality has benefited greatly from Whoop.

The negatives? I wouldn’t say there are that many to note. As someone who always enjoys tracking myself, you can get a little obsessive (perhaps in an almost unhealthy manner) with some of the metrics. For example, if you feel rested but the Whoop says you had poor sleep and a low recovery score, does that dictate that you will have a bad day? In itself, recovery can be a little wonky which is why I mainly look at sleep performance. It’s a little pricy ($240 per year) but you can’t put a price tag on good health so that’s easy to rationalize. It doesn’t do a great job of tracking or accounting for strength training; if you went and crushed a lift in the gym, it wouldn’t note that you worked as hard as 30 minutes on the bike just because it’s based on heart rate. Strength training and cardio work are both staples in a well-balanced exercise routine and Whoop doesn’t do a great job of recognizing the role of the former. These are the few things that I don’t like about it.

All in all, whether it’s for the detailed and analytical insights, or the accountability mechanism to hone your sleep, diet, exercise, and mental routines, Whoop has a high return on investment and I highly recommend at least giving it a try on your wellness journey. With a free month trial, you can always give it a shot and send it back if you don’t like. It’s helped me round out some of the more nuanced areas of my health profile, and I’m really enjoying it thus far. I have no skin in the game other than wanting everyone to be at their best, so feel free to give it a shot. If you have any questions or suggestions, I’m all ears.

Mental Diet

The holiday season is always a great opportunity and excuse to reach out to people. This week I encourage you to reach out to people who you are grateful for. It could be people you talk to frequently, or people you only talk to on birthdays and holidays, or haven’t talked to in years. As you think back through the course of your life, think of the people who have impacted your development and contributed to the story of who you are today. Have you ever told them or thanked them? Maybe now is the time for a simple text, call, email, conversation, or even a written letter. No matter how distant or awkward it may seem, it will mean a lot to the person on the other end. You know how good it feels to hear from people that you don’t regularly hear from; it can make your day. You have the power to do that for others. All it takes is a little thoughtfulness. And perhaps you will inspire them to do the same for others in their life; talk about a virtuous cycle of gratitude and connection.

Quote of the Week:

“True wealth is having your health and knowledge of self.” Benjamin Franklin

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏

Nathan