I purchased a Whoop 3.0 strap back in April 2020 during the Covid crisis. I have never worn a heart monitor and not paid much attention to it until I read more and decided to try it out. I believe the Whoop strap is one of the single best investments in my health that I have made in 20 years. I will tell you why in this article and you can make the best decision for your health.
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As an older athlete – recovery is very important to me. Training at a high level puts extra strain on your mind and body.
Whoop monitors your strain (workout) along with your sleep and actual recovery. That way you get direct feedback on what you need to do to optimize your performance.
RECOVER FASTER
The Whoop strap analyzes your key metrics like heart rate variability (HRV) and resting heart rate to determine a daily recovery score, and shows you how specific lifestyle and training behaviors affect your recovery. The device then quantifies how your body is adapting to stress and your readiness for the day. The more recovered you are, the more you can achieve with your performance.
Check out the screenshot below after a good quality sleep I went out for a mountain bike ride for 8 hours and hit max strain. The manual labor is from me loading up my bike and dog and gear into my truck earlier that morning.
I am able to get direct insight into key biometrics such as your heart rate variability, resting heart rate, and sleep performance. That way you have better information and know when your body is ready to perform and when it needs rest on a scale of 0 to 100%.
GREEN
The name of the game is staying on green. This range indicates your body is well recovered and ready to perform. Whether it’s at work, at home, or the gym, your body is signaling it can handle a strenuous day.
YELLOW
This range indicates your body is maintaining health. Your body may not need rest and can still handle a moderate strenuous day.
RED
This range indicates your body is working hard to recover. Whether you’re in a heavy training phase, falling ill, or just stressed, it’s suggested to make time for rest and active recovery.
KNOW YOUR BODY’S READINESS
By monitoring recovery with WHOOP, you’ll have an insider look into how your body is adapting to things like stress, work, nutrition, and training.
RECOVERY
Your daily recovery defines how prepared your body is to take on the day. You get the data you need to let you know if your recovered and ready to take on todays activity.
HEART RATE VARIABILITY (HRV)
The nuanced time difference between each heartbeat; a key indicator of training adaptation and overall health.
RESTING HEART RATE (RHR)
Measured every night during deep sleep for consistency.
RESPIRATORY RATE
A deviation from baseline could indicate a variety of physiological changes.
GET WEEKLY AND MONTHLY PERFORMANCE REPORTS
The art of recovery is trial and error. Fine-tune your training and recovery by seeing how your lifestyle behaviors directly impact performance using the WHOOP Journal. At the end of each month, your Monthly Performance Assessment will show you what’s detracting from your performance, and what’s improving your overall well-being.
TRAIN SMARTER
WHOOP measures and accumulates your training activities and daily effort with a Strain score that helps you understand when to rest or push.
SLEEP BETTER
WHOOP monitors your sleep cycles, debt, performance, and quality, to help you know how much sleep you need every night.
WHOOP SLEEP
Accurately track your sleep with in-depth sleep performance monitoring and track how much sleep you need with our in-app sleep coach feature.
IN-DEPTH SLEEP MONITORING
Sleep is one of the most important things you can do to improve recovery, boost the immune system, and make fitness gains. WHOOP recommends hours of sleep needed for optimal recovery and tracks sleep stages, disturbances, respiratory rate, and more.
TRACK YOUR SLEEP STAGES
WHOOP tracks all 4 sleep stages with precise accuracy: slow wave sleep (SWS), REM, light, and awake. Each stage serves a different function of your recovery.
AWAKE
Even if you’re in bed, you still may have a period of being awake. See how much time you spend awake throughout the night.
LIGHT SLEEP
The physiological stage of sleep that allows you to transition to deep sleep.
SWS (DEEP)
The physically restorative sleep stage where your body restores muscular, cellular, and skeletal systems.
REM SLEEP
The mentally restorative sleep stage where your body consolidates memory and learning.
MONITOR HOW MUCH SLEEP YOU NEED
You don’t just need 8 hours of sleep. How much sleep your body needs is unique to you based on how you’ve been sleeping and how strenuous your day is. Get insight into how much sleep your body really needs with WHOOP.
BASELINE
We all need different amounts of sleep based on our physiology. Based on your profile and trends WHOOP will determine your baseline sleep need.
RECENT STRAIN
When we have strenuous days our body requires more sleep to recover. See how much additional sleep you need based on your WHOOP Strain.
SLEEP DEBT
When we don’t sleep well the side effects can stay with us until we can make up for lost sleep. WHOOP monitors your sleep trends and will let you know how much sleep you’ve missed so you can aim to course correct.
RECENT NAPS
Taking naps can help reduce how much sleep we need at night and allow for short bursts of needed recovery. WHOOP automatically tracks naps which will subtract from your total sleep need for the night.
TRACK YOUR SLEEP PERFORMANCE
You know you need sleep, but how much do you need to recover and improve health? Quality of sleep is just as important as quantity. Track everything you’d need to know about your sleep with WHOOP from sleep stages, cycles, disturbances, and more.
WAKE EVENTS
Whether we toss and turn, share a bed, have a newborn, or have a bad night of sleep, our rest doesn’t always go undisturbed. Track how many wake events you had while sleeping and see if your sleep was interrupted too often.
EFFICIENCY
Are you asleep when you’re in bed? Sometimes we periodically wake-up and have restless nights of sleep. With WHOOP you can track how efficient your sleep was.
RESPIRATORY RATE
Track your breathing while you sleep based on the numbers of breaths you take per minute. Shifts in this metric can signal changes in health.
YOUR PERSONAL SLEEP COACH
Get personalized sleep suggestions based on how strenuous your day is and when you need to wake up the following day. Set target performance goals so the sleep coach can adjust your sleep need suggestions so you can perform on days you need to be at your best and get by on days you can recover.
PEAK
Get 100% of your sleep need to be your best self.
PERFORM
Get 85% of your sleep need for adequate recovery.
GET BY
Get 70% of your sleep need, just enough to help you get by.
VIEW YOUR SLEEP TRENDS
Track your weekly sleep performance to see how well you’ve been sleeping.
PERFORMANCE
Track how much sleep you got compared to how much you needed based on insights from WHOOP.
HOURS VS. NEED
See how many hours of sleep you got compared to what you needed to see if you’re trending in the right or wrong direction.
TIME IN BED
Monitor the consistency of when you go to bed and wake up to better understand your circadian rhythm.
Dont be overwhelmed by all the data. Whoop makes it easy and interesting – not boring and hard to read. I started with Whoop 3.0 and then upgraded later to 4.0. It was worth it as the 4.0 gives you a training log/journal and the batteries holds a charge much better than the previous verson.
CONCLUSION:
I have used the Whoop strap for over 3 years during very stressful times (Covid) where I was working on the front line and flying across country every week for work. At the same time I was training for an endurance mountain bike race. I was trying to stay healthy and not run my body down. So it was critical to have the information that Whoop was able to provide. I think that Whoop may be the best single investment in my fitness and health in 20 years.
Get a free WHOOP 4.0 and one month free when you join here: https://join.whoop.com/70020D
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