I’ve mostly seen negative reviews of Whoop on this forum and in cycling usage in general. I just got the free trial for Whoop a couple weeks ago, and have liked it so far (mostly due to having complete data around my sleep and activity -14 day battery- vs apple watch which I would wear so inconsistently that it was worthless). I haven’t looked closely at my heart rate readings for rides yet, and haven’t done anything super high intensity. But from what I read, most people find Whoop inaccurate, do you agree?
For those who have had success with Whoop, what are best practices? Should I be wearing my garmin HR sensor while I bike, and will that HR data be used instead of Whoop during those activities? Or is the Whoop HR working fine for you? Should I be wearing it on my arm instead of my wrist?
Best practice is to get the bicep band and wear it on your bicep during workouts. The heart rate is grossly inaccurate if you wear it on your wrist during workouts. I wrote about it on the Whoop subreddit a while back, with some data from DCR’s fit file analysis tool comparing Whoop’s heart rate to my HRM band’s: Reddit - The heart of the internet
What I like about Whoop is that its sleep tracking is far more accurate that Garmin’s, and that makes the recovery score track more closely with how I feel, as long as the heart rate (and therefore the strain) is captured accurately, which is why it’s frustrating that the heart rate during activities is so unreliable and inconsistent. People have asked Whoop for years to allow pairing an external HRM to Whoop, or allow importing the heart rate when importing an activity, but so far they’ve been reluctant to implement either of those things.
Awesome, thanks for your reply! Just looked at your DCR analysis - amazing how bad it is on the wrist, and how good it is on the bicep. So how does it work in practice then, do you just keep it on your bicep at all times? Or do you switch from the wrist strap to bicep strap every time you ride (which seems inconvenient)? If that’s the case, I’d rather just keep Whoop on my wrist at all times and add my Garmin chest HRM during my rides (but it sounds like the Garmin would not override the Whoop in that case).
I don’t find it terribly inconvenient to swap bands before a workout, I simply keep the bicep band next to my bike accessories and swap it quickly when I’m getting ready to work out, and then I can shower with it to rinse off the sweat before swapping back to the wrist band, which stays clean and dry.
Correct, Garmin’s HR reading won’t override Whoop’s HR reading even if you import the activity into Whoop. The problem with keeping the Whoop on your wrist is that if the HR is wrong, then the strain score is wrong, then the sleep need metric is wrong, then the sleep and recovery metric will likely be wrong. I find that far more annoying than swapping bands.
Awesome, yeah I just looked into how to swap the bands and will be ordering the bicep band. Doesn’t seem too bad and this also avoids having to put a cold chest strap on which is always the worst! Thanks for your advice.
I would still recommend using a chest strap for TrainerRoad. Technically you can broadcast Whoop’s HR and pair it to TR, but I don’t know how it’d impact TR’s AI model if the HR happens to be way off.
Agreed! This feature on XCO races drove me insane. The rider is pinned going all out up a steep climb and Whoop live is showing them in Zone 3, and the commentators are like “he’s still got something in the tank”.
Yeah and then they would show the cumulative strain score and try and play it off like it could actually show who had more to give.
It also happened in the DH world cup, some racers 4 min deep into a finals run would have a zone 2 HR and they would still show it like it was accurate.
I just noticed this new firmware specifically addresses heart rate issues. I won’t get my hopes up yet, but everyone let us know if you see any improvements!
