I’m approaching 6 months usage of Whoop so here’s my thoughts.
Background - im 50+ year old amateur cyclist of no great standard but train 4-6 times a week, nearly all on the bike and a mix of weekday trainer rides and longer weekend rides. Busy job but not manual so spend days either at a desk or driving.
Whoop was priced at 30 euros per month inc tax for a 6 month subscription. I just received a Black Friday offer today with 25% disc if I renewed for a another year, with payment up front.
Reason I got the Whoop was due to constantly being tired and struggling to make any improvements. Wasn’t sure if I wasn’t training enough or maybe too much. Was also coming down with regular colds. I’d used TSS score previously which is a reasonable measure and train with power and hr.
I have a general interest in fitness and I guess this was a self experiment to see what difference if any a Whoop band makes.
I’m using the version 3.0 which I believe fixed a number of bugs from the 2.0 version. It arrived attractively packaged and relatively easy to set up. I use a Samsung S7 but initially loaded the app onto an iphone5 as iphone was the recomended platform. I had quite a few issues initially with signal drop and contacted customer services who were very helpful. (it may have been caused by my iphone rather than Whoop) Fortunately an update was released in about June '19 and this solved the drop out problem and it stays well connected to the Samsung. The device also stores data so even when there is a drop out, it still records and catches up when next connected which is also a bonus if you just dont want to take the phone with you everywhere.
Battery life is as promised, easy 5 days and the recharging method without having to remove the strap is well thought out.
Based on the measurements of HRV, HR, Sleep and possibly temperature it’s algorhthms do their thing and give me a % recovery score and a target strain for the day.
Like earlier posts, sometimes its hard to see any pattern in recovery score. After a long, hard workout, the next day can pop up with ‘hey you’re fully recovered 90%’, while I’m crawling out of bed. However, this may be due to a delay in the body reacting to fatigue as the red light comes on a few days later.
I’ve tried to trust what Whoop recomends, no point buying the thing if I just continued doing what I did before. So when it says go for it, I put in a hard session and when it says easy, I take the day off or wind back training. This is quite different to previous when I’d basically try to follow a pre planned schedule, now it’s much more day by day based.
The workout strain gauge is purely based on HR so short intervals which may be high power but have a delay in HR don’t factor. I can go for a 3 hour easy ride and get a score of 18 (21 is max), while a one hour eye balls out may only score a 14 and have much more affect on next day feeling.
Whoop also provide a weekly personal analysis however, it not particulalry personal it’s more generic message based on scores. This may improve in the future and give more comparisons to similar ‘atheletes’.
The App and the PC interface is easy to understand and well laid out. The strap itself has no visual readings. Instructions were to ensure a tight fit to get accurate readings. I took this too literal and was in danger of cutting circulation off so after a few days backed off on the tension and it seems ok.
The strain gauge gives a Target for ‘optimal performance’ but I’m unsure if this means to maintain existing fitness or to make optimal increases. I’d be interested to see how other cyclists used this Target, or do they just ignore it, and how often is ‘over reaching’ necessary to make improvments.
I’m undecided whether to continue after the 6 month initial sign up, it’s certainly been a worthwhile experiment but I see a number of other HRV options which are not subscription based. I believe the iwatch collects similar data, it just doesnt interpret it in the way Whoop does which is the big tie in as the Whoop strap has no use without the App.
Am I any fitter from using it? Based on 20 minute power, No, but that’s probably more down to my ability than using Whoop. I train indoors often and do find that I’m not dropping out of workouts on as many days. I’m less fatigued and less stressed, just by being aware of strain, recovery and sleep it has meant i’ve adjusted lifestyle slightly and feel in a better place than the hole I’d dug myself earlier in the year.
I’ve only been using mine since October 1, 2019, but will say I agree with most everything you stated.
One of the key selling points to the Whoop is tracking trends over time, and so far, I feel that they fail at this. A few examples:
- I tend to wake up to approx 4.0 stress on a daily basis. It was that way for about 7 weeks. Every. Single. Day. But then I woke up one day to 0.0. Throughout the day, nothing registered (it was a rest day). The next day, I started a workout in an attempt to “kick start” the process. It recorded my workout, but only my workout. The rest of the day had almost no strain recorded. At that point I contacted Support, and it took a few days of back and forth to establish that I was wearing the strap correctly. I went online and found other users who suggested I reboot the strap, and that I un-pair and re-pair. Support never told me to do this. Someone else noticed that my Max HR had re-set itself to a value far too high, and suggested that this might be the problem. You can’t re-set that value yourself, so I had to write Support and ask them to re-set it. After a day of watching, this still didn’t seem to fix the issue. At that point I got an email asking me to rate their customer support, and I rated it low. They replied to my response that they had reset my max HR. I replied that this didn’t fix the problem and I was getting frustrated because at this point, all of my historical tracking is completely destroyed due to those 0.0 or extremely low days. Again, you could argue that on a rest day I should have very low strain, but this was not the case historically. They then responded and asked me to email them a support data file. I did that a few days ago and have not heard back…but now i am waking up to approx 4.0 stress again.
- I have a friend who had extremely accurate HR tracking, with the Whoop tracking almost identical to their HR chest strap for months. Suddenly, it went way off track and is totally unreliable, not even close to the chest strap readings.
- Apparently there was a software update recently and several have mentioned that it completely changed their calorie readings.
Final thought - they need some official form of communication. When they change their algorithms, we should know about this in advance and be able to provide feedback or ask for help. There should be a users manual. There should be a moderated place with “common issues and how to fix them” (reboot, delete and re-add, check the max HR, etc.). I shouldn’t have to learn these things in a non-sanctioned users forum.
It feels like this product is still in Beta and we are helping them to write their algorithms and test their products. I understand that’s normal with anything, but when you’re paying $30 a month for accurate tracking and trending, this is very disappointing. Even if the numbers were inaccurate, if they were consistent, I think I could argue in their favor, but at this point, I don’t feel I could recommend the product or will extend my subscription. It works GREAT…right up until it doesn’t and then it’s just an extremely expensive HRM (that may be totally inaccurate).
Seems I’ve always had at least that at the start of the day. More recently, I’ve woken up with strain in the 12-14 range for no known reasons. I would think that has to screw with the suggested sleep.
I have a few months left with it but I’m leaning towards not continuing service. It’s nice to track HRV and plan sleep although I think I’m getting the hang of what influences those things.
They do have an official form of communication though - the emails they send to members as well as blog posts. I received an email about the upcoming change to the calorie calculation algorithm along with a link to a blog post about the update (here). They also covered it briefly in Episode 47 of their podcast.
What I find most interesting is the spread of experience. I’ve had mine several months now and it works like a finely tuned clock. It matches my Wahoo Tickr (which I still use to record my HR data during workouts) and the recovery/strain score match my personal experience pretty closely. I dont doubt others had and continue to have issues but I’d be most interested in seeing why it’s some users and not others.
EDIT TO ADD: I agree it’d be useful to have a forum where users could share experiences and get questions answered but that’s definitely a feature that goes above and beyond. I dont know about you but there are things I pay a lot more money for per month than my Whoop membership (looking at you, Verizon) that dont have terribly helpful customer service staff. Doesn’t make it right by any means, just a little perspective that it can be (unfortunately) par for the course
What was the title of that email? They spam my inbox almost daily, so I rarely read them.
Also, how did you find this blog? I’ve never seen it before. Didn’t even know they had one. I guess I need to read email. (Cycling Tips is going through this too. They want to disseminate news through email rather than their traditional website approach, and everyone is screaming). Ugh.
The email was called “Tomorrow: An Update to Our Calorie Algorithm” and the blog is called “The Locker”
I only found out about the blog and podcast from the emails, otherwise I dont hit up their website. I’m with you though, I dont open most of the emails.
Thanks for the help!
I have been a Whoop user for 2.5 years, off and on. This includes Whoop 2.0 and 3.0, so the experience has improved dramatically. It was quite buggy / inconsistent in the beginning! It has been a helpful product from some perspectives, but I will be selling mine off and moving on.
It does help you correlate when you feel worn down vs when you actually are with recovery. That said, I can pretty closely predict my recovery before I look at it.
It does help you get isolate sleep related issues and focus on improving them.
Things it doesnt do well:
-Poor at wrist based HR. I am sure a bicep strap is better but the convenience of wrist based is the draw for me.
-Poor at calorie calculations
-Still get some inconsistency in strain / recovery scores that is not well substantiated
I have recently picked up a Garmin Forerunner 945 and it seems noticeably better at wrist based HR, and has its own ‘body battery’ measurement which seems quite comparable to the Whoop recovery metrics. Combined with better HR reading, I am finding it to be more accurate. Plus, I am happier only having to charge one watch to record HR, ‘strain’, outdoor rides, runs, etc - for me it has condensed a few devices. It also seems like Garmin is closing (or has closed) the gap for recovery measurement, HRV, etc.
I still think many people can benefit from using Whoop for a few months to learn how to improve their recovery trends. But, long term, I see diminishing returns unless you are making other significant life changes.
I’m 3 weeks into my usage and at the minute I’ll be honest I’m just wearing it to try and get a good baseline.
I will agree that I see better recovery scores the day after harder workouts. This invariably then falls on a recovery day when I’m expecting less strain but whoop is saying I should push on and train.
So right now I’m unsure on future usage. Should I trust the TrainerRoad plans and days in the schedule to train, or put bigger workouts on days when whoop says recovery is high? If I’m not going to do the latter why have the subscription?
I’ve had one day where I went most of the day with zero strain. I read this is because my hr hasn’t hit a certain % of max - I can’t remember the exact calc but something like 30% of difference between resting and max hr. I couldn’t find anywhere that a) said what my max hr was or b) how they calculate what my max hr is. Perhaps I need to dig about in my profile on website as I’ve only been using the app really.
Especially if only 3 weeks in, I would not let the whoop dictate my training plan unless it were remarkably low. Like in the 20% or lower range. It gets this low either when I am getting sick, or if I had too many beers. Other than that the variability in wrist based HR, its algorithm, etc - accounts for a pretty substantial potential differential in actual recovery vs the whoop metric.
I would say the whoop is more helpful to understand your trends in behavior over time. For example, if you change sleep patterns, it should recognize that and reflect a different score. Or, if you stop drinking as many beers as I do, that also reflects a different score. So it is a tool to fine tune what works vs what doesn’t work in terms of your behavior, but I wouldn’t use it to necessarily set my training schedule.
For your Max HR, in the app, click the menu (top left), then click your member name, this will take you to the “overview screen” with your strain, recovery, and sleep score. Swipe right, and you will see your profile with age and location. Below that, you’ll see it’s showing your “Last 30 days”. To the right of that, click “All time” and you will see your Max HR.
Not to get off topic… but I have no idea what Cyclingtips is thinking with this daily email. The new podcasts are fun though 
Ah ok, thanks. I do remember seeing that and thinking it was the highest recorded hr during a workout.
Not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but the new calorie algorithm is way off for me on aerobic days. They just changed it to address the issues people were having with lower intensity activities over recording.
I’m guessing it’s great for the general public or an athlete doing HIIT or cross fit, but for a strong endurance athlete doing a lot of Z2/3 it’s an issue. My 3h endurance ride today was basically 1000cal off.
Still really like the WHOOP overall, but wish they hadn’t changed the algorithm. It’s now more accurate for the average person but less for those of us capable of putting in a lot of work.
I ended up taking mine off. They could not explain the change or fix the problem, and just stopped replying. I don’t see the point in wearing a device meant to track trends if you can’t rely on accurate trending. Now I get to keep paying for it for another 9 months. Live and learn. It’s far from the most expensive cycling mistake I’ve ever made 
Customer service just got back to me. They’re aware of the issue and have an update in the works for folks in a similar situation.
I can imagine it’s tough to have the algorithm work for a strength athlete and well trained endurance athletes as well. I know cyclists that have zero issues, but I guess I’m an outlier.
Been using a whoop 3.0 wrist strap since August, about 5 months. My conclusion is that the data it is providing is unreliable.
I’ve mentioned a few things before on this thread but I’ll recap here as well as add additional info.
1. As a HR monitor
- I’d give it a 5 out of 10. Meaning it seems to be reliable about 50% of the time.
- on a mountain bike decent, nose breathing, I looked down and see I have an HR over 200. I’ve been using an HR strap for years and rarely hit 180. I figured it was the vibrations inherent to mountain biking that was causing the inaccurate readings but…
- here’s a ride I did last night indoors on the trainer. No vibrations. The HR is all over the place. Never overestimated but wildly underestimated and erratic in this case.
- I haven’t looked into this but I don’t think an optical HR monitor is capable of providing reliable data.
- I stopped using the whoop HR data on my rides and went back to using a HR chest strap a while ago.
2. Sickness
- From Whoop’s blog. “HRV emerges from the competing interests of the autonomic nervous system’s two branches” … “the parasympathetic and sympathetic. Parasympathetic stimulation reflects inputs from internal organs, like the need to digest after eating a meal, and causes a decrease in heart rate. Sympathetic activation is a response to stress, exercise, and disease, and causes an increase in heart rate…”
- I’ve been sick since the 1st of Jan., now 4 days with congestion, fever, mild headache and just generally weak. Yesterday I had a recovery score of 97%. From the app “Your body is ready to absorb high strain.” My body could barely handle a 1.5 hour endurance ride. This is not the only time I’ve seen this. I’d say the relationship between sickness and your recovery score is unreliable.
3. Alcohol consumption.
- alcohol has a massive impact on resting heart rate (RHR) and heart rate variability (HRV). If I drink I will always have a very low recovery score. BUT that score is no indicator into the condition of the muscle fibers in my legs. I’ve had great days on the bike with extremely low whoop recovery scores.
In the end, the device just doesn’t record HR accurately. Considering that all of the data whoop offers is a byproduct of HR I find it hard to trust any of it. If the HR data is inaccurate then the HRV data is inaccurate, which means the strain data is inaccurate, which means the sleep data is most likely inaccurate, which means the recovery score is inaccurate, which means all the information I’m getting is inaccurate.
I’m using Whoop strictly to evaluate sleep. I plan to stop after the initial 3 months. I’ve been caffeine free for about 6 months in an effort to improve sleep. The first 6 weeks of the three months is caffeine free, and the next 6 weeks I will resume coffee in the morning. At the end I plan to discontinue Whoop use. I hope the coffee will continue. I’ll report my results.