Good question. Believe it or not it hadn’t occurred to me!!
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I did it once just to switch. I can’t see any impact, after all the heart is the very same.
I’m on my first week of Whoop usage, seeing strange activity strain if I’m honest which I think is down to inaccurate HR measurement on my wrist.
I’ve always though hr measurment through my apple watch to be pretty accurate and whenever compared to a wahoo hr strap during workout has been within a handful of bpm.
On Saturday I did Bondcliff -2 that has a tss of 85 and Whoop gave it a strain of 12.8.
On Sunday I did Wright Peak -5 that has a tss of 113 and Whoop gave it a strain of 10.7.
Looking at the data the Sunday workout seems to have a much lower HR for the first 30 minute interval. I’m considering moving my whoop to the same wrist I would wear my Apple Watch to see if it makes any difference, I do prefer having a watch on my left wrist though and don’t really want to start wearing that on my right wrist.
Should there be any difference between wrists in HR detection? I’ve quite a pasty complexion and not got hairy arms or tattoos to interfere with reading so thought the Whoop would work as well as my watch has previously.
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Some reason I thought motion affected strain calculation.
You could try the arm band instead. For my workouts, the arm band provides an average heart rate reading within 3 bpm compared to my TICKR. I do have a sleeve tattoo on one arm, although not much hair and light skin, but it doesn’t seem to matter as I switch arms every workout.
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Good to know, thanks.
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I had a similar issue mowing my grass (really just mulching leaves) on a riding mower a few weeks ago. It is one of the Zero-Turn mowers, and it moves pretty quickly (I bought one of the fastest models that wasn’t for commercial use because I have a lot of grass to cut). Whoop picked it up as an activity, I guess because of the accelerometers. It gave me 11 strain points. My HR was higher than normal too, because I was actively using my arms to steer the mower, turn the mower, back the mower, etc. I deleted the activity also, but it still measured the strain points. I guess in the future, I will just take my Whoop off when cutting the grass. Yes, it’s an activity, but it’s not a strenuous one, and it’s not going to make me any fitter. So I’d rather have a gap in data than to have erroneous data.
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Interesting, but this is one of the reasons why I got a Whoop. I want to measure the “strain” that occurs in my life when I’m not working out. There are some days at work where I’m on my feet for many hours, climbing stairs intermittently, walking many steps, but this “strain” was never accounted for in my data. Similarly, yard work is not that taxing, but provides some strain. With your heart rate going up, clearly some strain was being generated and it is cool that Whoop is detecting this and then including it in the algorithms. I suspect the elevated heart rate had more to do with this then the motion, but I’m not 100% certain. I wouldn’t take it off during the lawn mowing, rather let Whoop take the strain into account when measuring things. This to me is one of the benefits of wearing the Whoop 24/7.
Listening to some of the older Whoop podcasts, they made the point that strain doesn’t always report or trigger an activity, but that heart rate changes are monitored continuously. If I do an hour of easy yoga, my heart rate doesn’t get consistently elevated enough to trigger an activity, but any rises during the activity are factored into my Strain Score for the day. I usually don’t worry about flagging the time as an activity, but rather just let Whoop do its thing in the background.
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I get your point, but doesn’t an hour of strenuous yoga put more strain on your body than an hour of riding a lawn mower or playing a guitar? If I do an hour of yoga, it MAYBE adds 1 strain point. Sitting in a chair and playing the guitar added 11. There’s just no way that is correct.
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The guitar playing is interesting and it would be helpful to hear from Whoop directly what is going on with that one and how it fits into the overall algorithm. Assuming your heart rate is not elevated, then just the motion must be the trigger.
Now if you played guitar like this…
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I just had a very similar experience a couple days ago. I normally wear the armband, but I’d switched to the wristband out of curiosity. The first thing I noticed was my recovery score was way down (usually in the 60-80% range, but dropped to 22%) the first night (Thursday). Friday was a rest day. I noticed Friday night, that my strain score was 14 for the day, even though I’d done nothing but sit at a desk at work all day and work on my bike when I got home. There was a ~90min block of time where my HR showed in the 120-150 range and registered “elevated HR”. This corresponded with the exact time I had been using my hands a lot whilst working on my bike. I cross referenced my Apple watch HR data, and during the same timeframe it showed that my HR never broke 90. Once I swapped back to the armband, my recovery score went back up to 80+. It seems that the Whoop doesn’t deal well with wrist movement while you’re wearing the wristband. I’ve got a couple teammates that have had similar experiences.
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I’ve heard that for strenuous activities with high wrist engagement, that the bicep position is far more suitable for readings. And with the sleeve they offer its even more stable. That what I’m planning on should it turn out to be the case for me that it’s hard to get solid readings during activities.
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I’ve been in the same position. I’m only interested in accurate tracking of sleep. I gave up caffeine to improve sleep, so I’m going to wear it to bed only for 6 wks, then start drinking coffee for the next 6 wks for comparison. I have no intention to use it long term.
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I gave up caffeine to improve sleep
I can only imagine that doing so was really, really terrible. Cold turkey or slow decrease? Have there been other effects you’ve noticed?
We have a fantastic manual coffee machine at work, like baristas use at good cafés, and there are days I’m there 4-5 times to make myself a cappuccino or Caffè latte. I’d like to decrease this, but find it someone daunting.
I’d say there’s nothing wrong with drinking caffeine but 4-5 lattes might be a bit much. Especially if 1 or 2 of them are coming in the afternoon where it might still be in your system when you are trying to sleep. Maybe try cutting it back to 2-3 and having a cut off time of around 1-2 pm for the last one to start.
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I never used caffeine until my mid 50’s. Went through college, medical school and 11 years of post graduate training without any caffeine. My coffee intake was at most 1 or 2 cups in the morning. I just went cold turkey. I had a headache for a couple of days, no more than that. If you have a big coffee habit, it might be interesting to quit, either taper or direct for 6 weeks to see what life is like without the stimulant.
I agree. I was quite amazed that my HR was as high as it was just riding on a lawnmower. It was probably higher than tempo, but lower than sweet spot. I’ve also noticed that my HR goes up while driving to work. So maybe a solution to this is just to do a comparable bike ride in the same day as yard work, which will lower the impact the yard work has on my day strain. If I do two cyclocross races in a day, I might get a strain for each activity that’s in excess of 18-19. But obviously the strain doesn’t go higher than 21 and apparently no one has ever achieved a strain score of 21.
Something else I’ve noticed as an athlete and a coach (because my clients have reported this to me as well) is that standing up ALL DAY the day before a race will destroy your legs. It’s a bad idea. If you want to ruin your chances in a race, or even a tough group ride, stand up ALL DAY LONG the day before. Your legs will be toast. But this will have a marginal effect on your day strain. I’d like to experiment with this more, but I try not to stand up all day long. It’s hard on my legs and my back (because of a previous run in with a motor vehicle while riding).
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This is the biggest benefit in my opinion. The WHOOP will not tell you if you’re going to have magic legs on race day or predict with 100% certainty whether you’ll fail or nail your workout. It’s an exceptional tool for monitoring trends over time and keeping training and life in balance. I don’t even look at it on race day or before a hard workout, because it doesn’t matter at that point.
I’m really struggling with understanding how people think It’s correctly reporting that riding a lawnmower or playing a guitar would add more strain than an hour of over unders.
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I don’t think anyone has said that they consider that correct reporting. I certainly don’t.
I’ve been using WHOOP for almost a year and haven’t seen anything similar, and I do a lot of mowing. Probably worth contacting support.