FMP 066 • Strain vs Recovery – What I Learned After Using Whoop 4.0 This Month

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“Data rich does not mean useful, only interesting.”

Is The Whoop 4.0 For You?

Are you thinking about getting the Whoop 4.0? Have you seen mixed reviews of the product and don’t know where to land? I dove in and made the six month financial commitment to give the wearable a try. In today’s episode, I share my experience and try to answer who the Whoop 4.0 is for. I break down what I love, and what leaves me ‘almost’ certain I will not renew once my commitment is finished.

Episode Outline

Welcome to Episode 66: Whoop 4.0 Strain vs. Recovery

1. What We Do:
   • Behavioural Medicine and Health Psychology
   • Providing easily accessible content designed to help you design your own transformative experience.
2. Today:
   • Reflections on my experience using the Whoop 4.0 over the past month.
   • Shifting focus from strain and adaptation to recovery.

Why Whoop 4.0?

1. I’m a data nut!
   • Can easily keep track of strain, recovery, and sleep.
   • Five LED (three green, one red, and one infrared), four photodiodes, and fine tuned algorithms to track heart rate.
   • Core metrics include:
     • Respiratory Rate
     • Blood Oxygen
     • RHR
     • HRV
     • Skin Temp.
2. How to Use:
   • Wear 24/7
   • Tracks above metrics.
   • Each day you complete a journal.
   • Each day your strain, recovery, and sleep scores are provided.
     • e.g., Bad sleep equals poor recovery.
     • e.g., Monitors HRV.
   • Over time you get reports correlating your journal entries to heart rate data.
     • e.g., Caffeine consumption and recovery scores.
3. Benefits of Using Whoop 4.0:
   • Data rich metrics useful that keep me coming back.
   • Shifting focus from strain – rest -repeat, to rest-strain-repeat.
     • This is a massive shift designed to improve performance for endurance athletes.
4. What I don’t like about Whoop 4.0:
   • Battery lasts three days.
   • I look goofy wearing a Garmin Epix on one wrist and the Whoop on the other.
   • Once the lessons are learned, there is no point.
   • Claims that it will tell you have COVID-19 are irritating and ridiculous, but interesting.
   • Does not focus on the casual wearable community enough.
   • If you don’t narrow down your journal morning journal experience, it will be off-putting spending so much time completing the survey.
   • Band a bit uncomfortable day-in and day-out.
   • More metrics do not always mean better (lose focus).
5. Will I continue after 6 month commitment?
   1. Nope – Once lessons are learned, there is not much use.