You are quite right about different returns for different bodies. I also have light skin and very little hair, and probably a low body fat (12%-ish in my case) helps, too. The Whoop definitely helps me pay much more attention to the regularity and quality of my sleep, and just that would warrant the investment.
I’ve used the whoop for a couple weeks. I like that it’s very light, low profile and it’s not an issue to bang it around. I recently strained my neck, so it’s been recovery for me, I ordered before this happened and it showed up when my neck was at it’s worse. That said, not much training with it at all, just getting used to the data. Calorie is really high according to whoop but it could still be the learning curve. The band fits really well but if you were running, I could see where the bicep band would be the best option. Last couple of weeks, I’ve really been thinking about long term use and would this be useful. I like what it does and it has potential but costs just keeps coming up. Even at 18 a month is 216 a year to keep it. I have Scosche Rhythm24 which works great with hrv4training which is a lot of similar information but a cheaper option. The Rhythm does not replace the chest strap for accuracy, I still use the dual band garmin with electrolytic gel. The dual band has always worked with no drop outs. I say all of this cause I don’t see the whoop replacing the chest strap for running or cycling which would be nice if it did. I’m sending the whoop back, sticking with Garmin 245 for running, 1030 for cycling and dual band chest strap for heart rate. I did try the new Garmin 245 for sleep, it does give you light sleep, rem and deep sleep but not as in depth as the whoop.
Wore my garmin chest strap and whoop today on a mountain bike ride.
Whoop max hr - 192
Chest strap max hr - 157
That’s an insane difference. My hr never goes over 180. The spike on the whoop was on a decent again. I’d say it’s completely unreliable as an hr monitor. The vibration causes it to bug out for some reason.
Thanks for sharing. You’ve definitely made me glad I bought the biceps band and justified the additional cost!
I use a regular stretchy bicep band with the whoop and it gets the gist of the HR during a workout. With the whoop 3 broadcasting HR it could be tempting to ditch the strap, but since I already have it and it doesn’t take any effort to strap on with the rest of the kit… why bother I guess? If I didn’t have a strap already I would be satisfied with the Whoop as an HR source as I don’t train by HR - good enough is good enough!
Here’s a comparison of my last workout, note the Y-axis has a different scale between the two graphs and effectively smooths the Whoop graph but you can tell they capture pretty similarly.
Whoop: Max 175, avg 154 vs H10 174/158
I have almost ordered a Whoop at least 5 times now. I am trying to not just buy stuff. But I think for me the big question is, is heart rate variability a good indicator of recovery? And how effective is team Whoop’s algorithm? Not drinking, getting into better sleep habits, these are all actions I can take without getting a new thing.
On the other hand, $180 to take it for a spin for 6 months isn’t going to kill me.
Anyway, I am still on the fence even after reading this entire thread.
One of my main justifications for purchasing it initially, and renewing my subscription about 3 weeks ago, was to help prevent illnesses. I work in a middle school, and occasionally have to visit elementary schools, plus I have 3 kids of my own at home, so I’m around kids almost all day long. So fighting off illnesses is a constant battle. Just between January and May this year, I got sick 4x and each time I was throwing up in the toilet and running a fever. I thought, “This is RIDICULOUS!!!”
Since the human body uses the immune system to recover from exercise, it is really put under some serious strain when you do a hard workout and you’re fighting off an illness you don’t know about yet. So I am trying to use Whoop to prevent illnesses, so I can continue to train. I’ve been in the yellow and red every single day since September 10th (school started the day after Labor Day). I feel like I’ve been fighting off something, but I haven’t gotten full blown sick yet. This happens every year when school starts back up, and I’m sick of constantly getting sick! Not only does it suck to feel like crap, but it also limits my training time. Seems like September-October is always a spike in illnesses in my family, and then again around January-February.
I’ve learned that if I don’t push myself on red days, I can usually fend off an illness. That being said, I did two cyclocross races on a day where my recovery score was 24% and I felt like absolute garbage the next day and it took a few days to get back into the yellow again. But I didn’t get sick. But barely. Took a lot of black elderberry and Zicam.
Any suggestions for something that’s similar to a whoop but perhaps without the monthly charge?
There are several HRV apps on which you track HRV and give you a recovery score (e.g. iThlete and several others). They’re not free but cheaper than a Whoop. I think there are sleep tracking apps too but I don’t know anything about them
The issue I had an HrV app is they require taking a manual reading, first thing in the morning is best. I used iThlete for a while and was generally impressed but, i hated putting on a heart rate strap and spending my first several minutes every morning after getting out of bed sitting still to take a reading so I dropped it.
I’m not a Whoop user but am seriously considering it. It appears to me the advantage of Whoop is automatic HRV readings, better measures of stress since its on all day and the big one - sleep monitoring.
But, you can get some decent recovery/stress info with an HRV app.
Whoop will automatically tracking your sleep and naps but it will notify you of sleep, you still have to tell it to calculate (click a button to calculate). Once it calculates, you still have to answer questions about the night before. It’s still not a fire and forget option. That’s been my experience for the couple weeks owning it.
I am currently using an Apple Watch with the AutoSleep app and Breathe app in the morning for my HRV and sleep monitoring. It means I have to charge during the day, but if you have an Apple Watch already, this is a good cheap option.
I have a Whoop on the way, so will be comparing the two.
It’s not absolutely necessary to hit the “Process Now” button on the app to calculate your sleep. It will do it if you’re up and moving around for several minutes. But I generally use the “Process Now” option just to get my recovery score quicker. On this note, sometime I will wake up and find that it thought I woke up at 1:37 AM, even though I did not… or maybe I just got up to go the bathroom. When it does that, I just edit the sleep hours so that it reflects when my alarm went off. It’s a little trickier on the weekends, as I don’t normally get out of bed right away when I wake up. And sometimes I lay there halfway between sleep and awake, but really not sleeping. Of course this complication is usually solved by a couple kids jumping on me at 7 AM (or earlier) to get me out of bed.
Will be interesting to see your comparison here. I’m a long time Apple Watch wearer and am generally satisfied with it. That said, I’m quite curious of HRV and recovery scores. It is unfortunate that the AW seems to collect all of the necessary data but doesn’t do anything to compile and present the data in any meaningful way.
Will you be wearing both at the same time? I suppose the Whoop could be hidden with the bicep band under the sleeve but am generally unsupportive of wearing two devices.
Yes, will be wearing both. I have a lot of historical AW/Sleep/Breathe data, so should make for good a comparison.
I’m not looking forward to having to wear both. I work in a dress shirt environment, so it’s going to have to be biceps band, I think.
I think WHOOP’s selling point is it’s simplicity and general effectiveness. It’s a 24hr a day product and now that it’s works as an hrm with Bluetooth I don’t need any other devices (I don’t wear watches).
That said, it doesn’t track HR as perfectly as a chest strap, and I don’t like wearing a bicep band or changing straps so I put up with the occasional spike or dip in my data. I do have a thin wrist, darker skin, veins, and tattoos that all conspire against the wrist worn device. I’m also not a huge data nerd so I don’t particularly care.
I’d say that if you aren’t working yourself pretty damn hard or having issues managing your training it’s not worth the $$$. If I were training less and/or had less day to day strain and didn’t live with four little germ farms (kids) I probably wouldn’t use it.
As it stands, I feel like WHOOP has helped me manage 10-17hr training weeks this year and that’s with farm chores, day job, kid chasing keeping me upwards of 6000cal/day average weeks in my bigger training blocks. 4-5000cal on down weeks. $30/month doesn’t seem so bad for my use case and I don’t see cancelling anytime soon.
Yep, same situation here with work. Although I’ve been rebelling against the tie I still wear a suit on many days.
Trying to balance between getting the data that I’m interested in and becoming a cyborg.
You don’t need to edit your sleep when this happens. If you just leave it usually it will connect the dots and then process the whole night’s sleep as one. It usually does this within an hour of waking. Unless you were actually awake for more than 45 minutes and then it will pick it up as a nap.
Noticed there was a firmware update that pushed out to be today to update my 3.0 strap. Mine updated fine but I haven’t been able to find any patch notes to know what it is supposed to address.
I just got mine yesterday. Is it normal for it to take like 20 minutes to synch one night’s sleep? That happened to me this morning.
I did a synch today that was only a couple hours of data and it took 5+ minutes.
Am I going to be spending an hour a day trying to keep my phone awake to synch?
I think it does most or all of the processing on the strap itself since the 3.0 hardware, so I’m not sure why it wouldn’t sync in data when you pull-down refresh in the app. It does seem to do the sleep processing more delayed when I have broken sleep, sometimes the result is it figures it out, other times it’s sleep+nap. Generally I just check in when I get the notification that sleep has processed. Are you sure it’s paired up in the phone settings via Bluetooth and showing as connected to the phone, before trying the in-app stuff?