I agree, the fundamental philosophy is flawed by basing it on wrist HR and not allowing you to connect any straps…
However, wrist HR is quite individual and it happens to work well enough (same average HR and general trends) for 90% of my workouts, and 99% of the rest of my time. Even if I don’t trust the recovery score absolutely, I do trust the RHR and HRV scores, and get a lot from having them available to me first thing in the day. The convenience of those measurements is a huge positive with WHOOP, if it works on your wrist.
I don’t know if it was me in particular or just a military thing, but I always wore my watches and Garmin Fenix watches on the inside of my wrist. Never really counted on them to be as accurate as my chest strap. If their data says top of the wrist is best and that’s how they’re engineering things, who am I to argue? It’s not like I have data to counter thier suggestion. I just let it do its thing, log my day in the morning and take it from there. IMHO it’s interesting data collection from the device plus that journaling thing I wouldn’t otherwise be doing.
I recently bought a whoop bicep strap because I was tired of comparing my chest HR strap (wahoo tickr) to the whoop wrist strap and seeing some glaring differences. This is even with ensuring both were charged to 100%/having a new battery in the tickr chest strap. It always seemed the chest strap was more accurate. Now with the bicep band, the whoop is more accurate and at times seems better than the chest strap. The bicep band was $30 but I now use the bicep band on my wrist too. Sizing is just small/big enough to make it work. I definitely recommend people trying the bicep band if they are having monitor issues.
I started using a whoop 1 month ago. I’m still yet to decide whether it’s insight is worth the cost to me.
However, despite being skeptical of wrist-based HR, I’ve found it to be incredibly accurate and track very well with my chest strap, even during harder TR workouts.
same…i love the insight, i also find it tracks me HR well compared to my wahoo chest strap. I now just use my whoop for TR work outs as m chest strap seems to cut out at times.
mine works, (kinda) it just sometimes think my HR is 89 bpm during a 3 min vo2 effort LOL. I have even tighten the strap since loosing some weight, still the same issue.
Back to whoop though - I was very 50/50 about it at first mainly for the subscription, and it’s “another” thing to wear on m wrist. Having said that I do enjoy the way they interpret data, whoop is basically a glorified HR strap, its what they do with the data (and their algos) that is worth the money.
I have noticed on days when im in the yellow, i really do struggle to push myself harder than normal, where as when I am in green i am guns blazing.
I use it on my upper arm and its better than on the wrist, but I’ll still get times where it clearly is way off. Inside on the trainer, I find that going from sitting to standing often completely throws off HR. For example, I’ll be cruising along at a steady HR in the saddle, then stand to do a short burst and the HR plummets 30 beats instead of rising.
Seen this many times and sent message to my coach that I promise I didn’t quit!
The problem is I still have yet to find a “perfect” HR strap. Wahoo Tickr’s are about the best, but even those after a few months start to give me erratic readings.
I’ve found that the best way to “wake up” your Whoop in the beginning of a workout is to move it up from your wrist. I always manually begin workouts in the app (using “Spin”) and move it up about 2" from my wrist bone. That usually gets it within a couple BPM of my Tickr.
Also, I’ve noticed a lot of people talking about issues with sleep auto detection. My little guy is approaching the Terrible Two’s way too early, so I would get these four- and five-hour “Sleep” instances. Because the two- and three-hour “naps” don’t count toward recovery, my Recovery scores were slammed. I reached out to Support about it and they suggested manually beginning and ending Sleep as an activity. No problems since then.
I started using electrode gel with my TICKR and it helped quite a bit. Mine is 3 years old (got a new strap last year) and it was stumbling a bit when I’d start my rides (changed battery just in case) took a while to even out. Using the gel really helped.
I have no clue about the Whoop, it seems to have creeped up on me but since I’ve started consuming more cycling media I see it all the time.
Do they “sponsor” people or something?
I’m curious about the sleep tracking. I have severe sleep apnea and my machine “tracks” my sleep but it doesn’t seem to jive with how I feel sometimes.
Sleep tracking was the main reason that brought me to the Whoop in the first place. I knew I already used heart rate data, but also had my power data to really analyze workouts. Stress/strain on myself throughout the day and sleep tracking was something I had no idea about. I really enjoy this part of the whoop. Something I enjoy now is seeing how different supplement and diet choices affect my recovery score. This is something I wasn’t completely thinking about being a big reason for buying a whoop before, but has proved to be valuable to me. Just my opinions and experience, but I hope this helps!
Yes. They’re one of those companies that grew fast due to sponsored viral marketing. Amp Human, PowerDot, and Athletic Brewing are other examples. Side note: I love Upside Dawn from AB!
So i just got the whoop this week, and i have seen everyone say the HR data was off. I have done 2 rides with it now, one work out on the trainer and one outdoor ride, and the whoop matched my Chest strap perfectly. I seen VC posted last night about this too and said he thinks there may have been an update or something because he said same thing its never been that close to his HR strap. Anyone else notices this? I was about to return it if the data was way off, its the reason i switched from the Garmin watch, but thus far the data is accurate.
I found it was pretty good for normal rides, especially with the bicep strap, but struggled with wide swings, like VO2 intervals or HIIT workouts off the bike.
Moved the strap an inch further up my wrist for today’s ride. For the first time ever, the HR more or less matched my chest strap beat for beat. Amazing, I’ve had Whoop for over a year and never figured this out till now…
I just started using Whoop back in November, primarily for sleep & HRV tracking. I love the analytics, but I hate the price (bought in at the maximum length of subscription to try and make it worthwhile). Long term, it’s just a run of the mill quality HR sensor with really great software and analytics - no reason this level of analytics couldn’t eventually be fully baked in an Apple Watch (one future day, when their battery life allows you to sleep in it and you can charge it on-wrist), or a Garmin device. I’d love to NOT be wearing a device on both wrists, but I am a data nerd through and through.
HR accuracy seems to be right on what my other devices read on my wrist, but still not quite as accurate in HIIT intervals versus chest strap. As others have said, sometimes it misses big jumps when changing interval power. All my riding HR is generated from chest strap for max accuracy.
Question for those who have been training with it. How does the Whoop recovery score impact your training when going by a TSS based plan like on TR? I’m jumping back into training after a long period of recovery from injury and wondering how I would use Whoop with a plan already structured around TSS and recovery, e.g., Trainer Road. Outside it would be easy to take a bit easier than normal when Whoop is in the red, but inside on ERG, that seems impossible, especially with how much some of the TR workouts hates my legs.
I think it’s generally quite good, but dont, i REPEAT don’t let the recovery score get into your head. There have been times where I was yellow, and i didnt complete a work out. I was like meh, I. wasn’t fully primed blah blah.
But on the flip side today i was 50% recovered, and gain 18 watts on my FTP this morning with a ramp test. So i guess…use it as a marker but dont use it as gospel.
One think the recovery does do though. For me personally, say I have a 2hr sweet spot work out, and i’m in the yellow or closer to red, i can use that to make the decision about dialling the work out down to say a 90 / 60 min instead of bailing and not completing a work out and feeling shit because i bailed on it.
