I also talked to WHOOP customer service about variations in HR data. The recommendation was that cyclists should wear the band on your bicep. So I ordered the bicep band and have since not experienced any major variations or anomalies. Based on my research, the wrist HR monitors are prone to variations in data readout due to hand and arm movement, and the complexity of the wrist, tendons, etc.
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Cyclists should use the bicep band…I got this recommendation directly from WHOOP.
More on this. Here is a study that shows favorable results in cyclist who used HRV data to guide their training load, etc. vs, using traditional periodization, etc.
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With regards to the Whoop’s sleep monitor… there’s a school of thought that tracking sleep can actually cause sleep issues.
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I also heard there is a new disorder when people are obsess with eating healthy. I think somebody makes this stuff up for a specific purpose rather than a scientific one
Yup, and while in the business of making up disorders, heck, all of us here are absolutely effed up and wrecked given our obsession with cycling and training. I’m addicted to TrainingPeaks and WKO4 and the data. Imagine being addicted to something that actually makes you fit and in excellent shape! LOL
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Those people who want to be healthier to train more and get faster on the bike must be crazy. LOL.
I don’t care what an article says, if they want to diagnose me with a disorder for eating healthy and wanting to improve my sleep, then so be it.
I want to be healthier and sleep more
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It’s this drive to sleep better that can be the issue for some people though.
You want to sleep better so you track your sleep → every morning you analyse your sleep data → stressing about the sleep data becomes a slight source of anxiety → worse sleep.
I guess it depends on your personality type for if you’d be affected. I tend to over-analyse things, so I keep away from sleep tracking 
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But in all seriousness here, despite the article cited above, this is basically about self moderation and balance. That a person gets obsessed with an app and spends too much time stressing over the data, looking at it, worrying about it, etc, is not an issue with the app or any reflection of the benefit of the app, rather this is an issue with the person! It’s backwards logic to victimize the app. It’s just an app. The person is to blame. I can say with 100% confidence that since using WHOOP my sleep quality and consistency have improved. I pay attention more to when I go to bed, what drink and eat before bed, how much computer time I allow myself before bed, when I drink coffee, or have a beer or glass of wine, etc. It keeps me accountable, and the daily coaching that it provides is very helpful, not just with sleep, but with my stress state and readiness to take on a heavy training load. And the most import part is the outcome here, which is that my higher quality of sleep makes me feel better all day long and more motivated to train. This is a win-win for everyone - me, the people around me of don’t have to listen to me complain, the training apps (e.g. TR) that benefit from me being more motivated to train and use their apps and programs, etc.
And this aside, the research on sleep coming out is just mind blowing. Sleep quality could very well be THE most important factor now in terms of recovery and the ability to adapt physiologically to training load, next to nutrition. Sleep quality is being tied not to just this, but receptivity to disease, mental well being, pain receptivity/tolerance, age reversal, immunity, and the list goes on and on. No doubt, sleep, especially deep sleep, is worth its weight in gold. If you want to train harder and feel better, focus on good sleep! That’s when all that awesome sh*t happens that restores your body and mind – human growth hormone release, for instance.
So, you want to hack your physiology the natural way? Get more sleep and focus on a routine that allows you to get good high quality sleep early on, because it is the early part of your sleep time that deep sleep occurs and when human growth hormone and other restorative hormones are released…and it’s 100% legal! LOL
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Schell I am with you about everything you said. I’ve had it since v1, before it was publicly available (long story there).
Their current pricing scheme is ridiculous. If for some reason I had to go with the monthly plan instead of just owning it outright, I would bail.
The strain score is not worth looking at if you already own a device like say, a powermeter.
The sleep is where the value is for me. Same as schell, the heart rate is vastly different if alcohol is ingested, and it has helped me focus on the other 23 hours of the day.
If anyone has any questions about the whoop, happy to answer. Have had it for more than 2 years.
This is a very interesting study; one that I’d like to see corroborated with additional studies. I’m curious to know the methodology behind the HRV data collection, and how it prescribed training protocol. E.g. were the high HRV days does with extra duration, or higher intensity? How did the baseline HRV-G and TRAD plans compare? Was it more like a sieler 80/20 approach, or TR Sweet Spot approach? So many questions…
This stuff seems so ripe for the TR folks to be doing R&D on, but they seem so stuck on “HR being too variable, and unreliable” and glued to “power being the best way to train”. Their method has certainly proven effective; but I don’t just want effective, I need the best and for it to be optimized …
I have a feeling we are going to start seeing a lot more data and research on HRV, RHR, sleep quality and consistency, and how it relates to training strain, workout plans, recovery strategies, etc. One reason is that WHOOP, as we speak, is beta testing integration of their data with TrainingPeaks. I just joined the beta program by requesting from the software engineer. If any of you are using both WHOOP and TrainingPeaks, let me know. I can connect you and get you on the beta. I now have a lot of my WHOOP data showing up automatically in my TP daily data. Second, WKO4 has short term plans to start syncing metrics from TrainingPeaks, which means only one thing…we’re going to get a ton of really cool and useful new WKO4 reports that correlate HRV and RHR, sleep quality and consistency, etc, with other power based metrics, like TSS, CTL, CTL, TSB, etc. This is going to open a Pandora’s Box of new data that may impact training plans. This is going to transform the athletic world, and it already has in some non-cycling sports. WHOOP was being used by coaches and teams in the NFL and NBA a long time before it was released to the public last year. This sort of data is not just some new trendy things to look at with pretty charts that mean nothing. HRV and RHR, if measured correctly, are clear indicators of what is going on with the autonomic nervous system, both the parasympathetic and sympathetic systems, which are tied to bodily recovery, strain, the flight or fight response, and many other physiological functions that impact training, recovery, competition and so on.
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@krispenhartung if TP and Whoop have a beta program going and are looking for users of both to test, I would love to participate. I’ve just been noting Strain and Recovery in the notes each day but have no way to create any metric charts to track against performance and integration would be awesome.
Thanks
Just sent you a pm.
I too would like to give it a try if possible, I have been adding my recovery and strain manually but it would be cool to see it integrated automatically.
Just got an email from WHOOP. Looks like any iOS user who has recorded a cycling workout now has an invite for the TP feature.
krispenhartung
I would love if you could connect me to the guy at WHOOP who can get me on the beta team to integrate whoop into TP.
Thanks!
Just have to update your app and go into settings.
I think it’s only for iPhone currently but I can confirm it works perfectly.
Yup, no need to send the request to them now, since they just officially announced it for cyclists. I can’t wait when they back fill the historical data…should be a few weeks. And especially when WKO4 starts pulling metrics from TrainingPeaks, which is when the really cool analytics will start.
I ended up renewing Whoop for 18 months. They offered a special pay-in-advance deal that brought the monthly cost down to $18/month. I really like the “always on” functionality of the device, and my wife appreciates that I don’t immediately get on my phone and start answering the Restwise questions each morning. She prefers to be acknowledged before the phone.
I’m testing this out right now. Some “sickness” invaded my body on Monday night. I finished SSBMV1 on Saturday, rested on Sunday and took a 20-minute FTP test on Monday.
I had a 90% recovery score on the day of the test. I worked hard, and then my recovery has been in the stuck in the mid-30s since then. I have a sore throat, a hefty cough and a dull headache. I had been around a hacking coughing child on Sunday, so I suspect that the hard effort gave whatever I was exposed to a foothold, or maybe my allergies kicked in.
Either way, what’s interesting to see is that my recovery score hasn’t changed a bit in the past three days despite tons of nap time and extended sleep time. My HRV fell off a cliff on Monday night and has continued to decline slightly each subsequent day. My RHR has been climbing consistently since Saturday, two days before the FTP test, and took a huge jump on Tuesday night.
Depending on how my HRV and RHR respond the next few days, I suspect I’ll be taking this week as a rest week and postponing the start of SSBMV2 until I’m done resting. This is not what I would have been doing, if I didn’t have this data to counteract the voice in my head saying “I’m probably recovered enough to work out.”
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