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

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.

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.