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Returning my Whoop band... Change my mind

Anna C

Level 9 Valued Member
Team Leader Certified Instructor
Elite Certified Instructor
Sinister
I have about 5 days left of my initial 30 days of purchase to return this Whoop band I got talked into getting from a weightlifting friend. It's interesting, but I really don't find it very useful. Maybe I'm not understanding how to read or use the data.

Who has one, and finds it useful? What am I missing?
 
not a woop band, but I spent several years with a Oura ring. It is essentially the same concept.

I didn’t really notice a behavior difference after getting rid of it.

IMO if you aren’t using it for a specific goal, they don’t hold much value.
 
I have about 5 days left of my initial 30 days of purchase to return this Whoop band I got talked into getting from a weightlifting friend. It's interesting, but I really don't find it very useful. Maybe I'm not understanding how to read or use the data.

Who has one, and finds it useful? What am I missing?
It can have several benefits:
  1. More awareness of your baseline recovery, baseline fitness, and sleep patterns
  2. The ability to see subtle changes over time (HRV or RHR improvements)
  3. More accountability: Do you prioritize sleep enough, do you train enough?
  4. Being extra careful, when recovery is not up to par (data to show your coach, for example)
  5. Being able to make small experiments: Do I recover better when I eat vegan, or eat a late meal, use an Omega3 supplement, read in bed, etc.
The awareness and accountability part will not be that relevant to you. I know people who don't use the log feature, but the daily reminder of their fitness levels keeps them motivated. And seeing RHR decrease over time can help to make the habit of fitness stick. But after years of cycling you will probably not have much to improve here.

Point 5 would be the most useful feature for analytically minded people like you. I have run a couple of mini experiments over the course of 8 months and, after cancelling my subscription, sticked to my newfound habits and insights. Actually, I think whoop should focus more on this feature and improve it (the ability to run useful calculations is very limited).

For example, I sleep better when I eat dinner a little earlier, but then eat half a banana before going to bed. Reading in bed and using a sleep mask improve recovery noticeably. And drinking up to 2 glasses of alcohol actually increases my recovery (and goes south after 4 drinks).
 
It can have several benefits:
  1. More awareness of your baseline recovery, baseline fitness, and sleep patterns
  2. The ability to see subtle changes over time (HRV or RHR improvements)
  3. More accountability: Do you prioritize sleep enough, do you train enough?
  4. Being extra careful, when recovery is not up to par (data to show your coach, for example)
  5. Being able to make small experiments: Do I recover better when I eat vegan, or eat a late meal, use an Omega3 supplement, read in bed, etc.
The awareness and accountability part will not be that relevant to you. I know people who don't use the log feature, but the daily reminder of their fitness levels keeps them motivated. And seeing RHR decrease over time can help to make the habit of fitness stick. But after years of cycling you will probably not have much to improve here.

Point 5 would be the most useful feature for analytically minded people like you. I have run a couple of mini experiments over the course of 8 months and, after cancelling my subscription, sticked to my newfound habits and insights. Actually, I think whoop should focus more on this feature and improve it (the ability to run useful calculations is very limited).

For example, I sleep better when I eat dinner a little earlier, but then eat half a banana before going to bed. Reading in bed and using a sleep mask improve recovery noticeably. And drinking up to 2 glasses of alcohol actually increases my recovery (and goes south after 4 drinks).
This is really interesting and makes lots of sense. I don’t have a whoop but a Fitbit and mainly use the HR in my S&S sessions as well as the sleep tracking to monitor recovery. I’m wondering if what you refer to (mini experiments) is a whoop specific feature or something I could try with my Fitbit?
 
This is really interesting and makes lots of sense. I don’t have a whoop but a Fitbit and mainly use the HR in my S&S sessions as well as the sleep tracking to monitor recovery. I’m wondering if what you refer to (mini experiments) is a whoop specific feature or something I could try with my Fitbit?
Whoop has a log feature built in, and gives you some basic statistics in your monthly report, and sometimes as a notification inbetween.

You can log things like "When was your last meal?" and choose a lot of questions that clearly come from a certain type of biohacking way of thinking ("blue light blocking glasses", etc.).

However, you cannot customize your questions, and the analytics are limited. (I have a background in statistics and would like to run analyses like multiple regression or ANOVAs). That being said, it can still br usefull if (!) you log your days reliably.

The Elite HRV app lets you create your own items, but the measuring is more awkward.
 
I had a Whoop for about a year. Didn't do anything for 'weighttraining'. It measures everything via bloodcirculation, so with tension on your wrist the reading is off. Everytime I did one-arm Swings, my heart rate on the Whoop side was ~30 beats per minute lower. With rowing, I used the Whoop and my Garmin Cheststrap, wasn't even close, heartrate wise.

The HRV was nice, but if I have to train, I would train, I can't do other days, so it wasn't a huge impact. And because the biggest part of my traininglife is kettlebells, the data was awful and not useful at all.

I would suggest the Whoop for busy CEO's, endurance athletes, football, basketbal, icehockey, sports where there is plenty of heartrate but less usage of weights.
 
Obviously there is a progression in technology. But when considering any purchase I ask myself a few questions;

- How did I make it through life this long without this product, and if I don't buy it how would it negatively affect my quality of life?
(This eliminates a TON of purchases right off the bat for me)

- What is price of n product and what is the anticipated life of n product? And if I didn't buy this where would I funnel the funds instead?
(In this case buy-in is $399 for two years? :oops: That's an awful lot of kettlebell or barbell plates, or 5k registrations, or lean meat for protein...just sayin' )

- In the case of health or wellness; Will this augment my physical or mental well being, or will this become a "crutch" in life?
(Modern tech amenities are molly-coddling people into a sedentary lifestyle. Likewise, with some tech people are driving themselves insane with "monitoring" and statistics data and expending more energy into "looking at the data" than investing in "just do it". )
 

Also, screw subscription pricing.
That article accurately sums up my impression and experience with it :)
 
It can have several benefits:
  1. More awareness of your baseline recovery, baseline fitness, and sleep patterns
  2. The ability to see subtle changes over time (HRV or RHR improvements)
  3. More accountability: Do you prioritize sleep enough, do you train enough?
  4. Being extra careful, when recovery is not up to par (data to show your coach, for example)
  5. Being able to make small experiments: Do I recover better when I eat vegan, or eat a late meal, use an Omega3 supplement, read in bed, etc.
The awareness and accountability part will not be that relevant to you. I know people who don't use the log feature, but the daily reminder of their fitness levels keeps them motivated. And seeing RHR decrease over time can help to make the habit of fitness stick. But after years of cycling you will probably not have much to improve here.

Point 5 would be the most useful feature for analytically minded people like you. I have run a couple of mini experiments over the course of 8 months and, after cancelling my subscription, sticked to my newfound habits and insights. Actually, I think whoop should focus more on this feature and improve it (the ability to run useful calculations is very limited).

For example, I sleep better when I eat dinner a little earlier, but then eat half a banana before going to bed. Reading in bed and using a sleep mask improve recovery noticeably. And drinking up to 2 glasses of alcohol actually increases my recovery (and goes south after 4 drinks).

Good thoughts, thank you @Bauer.

I think one thing that these are spot on and I did get these benefits when I first started tracking HRV in 2015 in the early days of my Training Log. I noticed that sleep made quite a difference in recovery and HRV. I also noticed that resting HR being extra low was a sign of needing more recovery. And it was fun to try tweaking small things and see if I could see a difference. I felt like the Elite HRV was pretty accurate in HRV readings. Doing some breathing practice and watching the results there was also fun.

However my HRV readings just don't seem very useful with the Whoop. But that could be several things -- 1) the Whoop vs. EliteHRV, 2) my actual age being 8 years older now (HRV decreases with age), and perhaps most likely, 3) my training activities being more towards traditional weightlifting now as opposed to endurance and kettlebell (mostly strength endurance/A+A at the time) before.
 
I have about 5 days left of my initial 30 days of purchase to return this Whoop band I got talked into getting from a weightlifting friend. It's interesting, but I really don't find it very useful. Maybe I'm not understanding how to read or use the data.

Who has one, and finds it useful? What am I missing?
Fitness trackers are fun in general but I find they don't offer much beyond that. They aren't a magic pill to fitness or whatever. In my opinion it's better to have a smart watch with some fitness/ health features for more practicality.
 
I have about 5 days left of my initial 30 days of purchase to return this Whoop band I got talked into getting from a weightlifting friend. It's interesting, but I really don't find it very useful. Maybe I'm not understanding how to read or use the data.

Who has one, and finds it useful? What am I missing?

An old school weightlifting coach of mine said that men can easily monitor their recovery via the same methods to assess ED while sleeping:

Put a band of tape around their male unit and if it breaks while sleeping due to erections while sleeping, you're good to go.

I don't know what the female equivalent is.
 
Fitbit and mainly use the HR in my S&S sessions as well as the sleep tracking

My fitbit was absolute pants at any intensity other than none. For resting heart it's very good....a friend of mine has a pacemaker and tests all gadgets for the British heat foundation. She can compare directly to her pacemaker data. For rhr it is the best, well was a couple years ago. Maybe different now, I'll have to ask her.
Everything else, not so much.

Put a band of tape around their male unit and if it breaks while sleeping due to erections while sleeping, you're good to go.

That's marketable. Hard ons, fitness and health sells.

Different graded tape. Industrial strength gaffer tape = excellent sleep. Post your pics on Insta. What could go wrong...
 
Marketable, I'm sure. The could call it a Whoopie! band. ROFL

The whole idea of a fitness tracking device makes more sense if one is autoregulating their training. But if one has a coach, as I do, I'm going to do what he tells me, unless I can't, in which case he'll make appropriate adjustments. I guess I need to ask my weightlifting friend who recommended it (who is also being coached) what she gets out of it.
 
Lol, that’s plain silly. Would you reschedule mediation or a board meeting over whoop scores? Seems like a marketing ploy
I remember 15maybe even 20 years ago when there was a lot of initial interest in HRV for assessing recovery and deciding whether or not you would do a hard day or n easy day training. Suunto with the T6 and the Pod were big on the idea and a rowing coach called Eddie Fletcher was writing papers but it all seemed to fizzle out ?

Found him ...... Heart Rate Variability

Does anybody know what happened to that school of thought ?

I get the impression it is far less useful than first expected because you cannot say to anyone ( your employer, coach, Olympic Committee )

"Sorry cannot compete today because HRV isn't right"

Is it still used to assess recovery and for example decide whether or not to put a previously injured professional soccer player on the field today or wait until next week ?
 
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