Whoop and fitness trackers: The Good, the Bad and the Obsessive

Every couple of years, HRV (Heart rate Variability) trackers get a little bit better, and re-emerge onto the health and fitness scene. But what are they actually measuring and who are they useful for?

The latest fitness trackers measure what is called HRV. This is a measure of the variance in your heart rate. HRV, or Heart Rate Variability, is the measure of the variation in time between each heartbeat. This variation is controlled by the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which works behind the scenes to regulate our heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and digestion, among other key bodily processes.

The hard thing for many to understand is that you cannot compare one persons HRV to another persons HRV. Each person will have an individual baseline and therefore can only be comparable to their previous baseline.

So is this useful for me?

This is ultimately the question most people want to know.

Whoop measures your HRV and then gives you a metric of Strain and recovery. The higher your strain, the more you have effectively varied your HRV and elevated your Heart rate. A lower HRV is going to be indicative of your body being under more strain in comparison to your baseline, whilst an HRV that is higher is more indicative of your body being more relaxed compared to normal.

Whoop and Aura ring both provide the users with immense amount of data collected over time. Below is an idea of how my recovery is affected based on multiple entries. You can see how much sleep ultimately affects my recovery and therefore my performance.

I love whoop for this feature and it’s really enlightening how many journal entries you can make and how that patterns out to data over time. Ultimately data is why makes Whoop such a valuable company.

So if you’re looking to shine a light on how your daily habits affect your ability to operate and function optimally. This is great.

So what don’t you like?

Simply put, I’m not a huge fan of the measure of strain.

It encourages people to work out harder in order to get the highest strain results. More is not better in many ways and a high strain is okay if you can recover from it. However the recovery element is something that most people need a huge amount of work on.

Whoop does give recommendations and it does have Whoop Coach which has got a lot better in the recent years, a step in the right direction.

I will say that when I first used whoop it became an obsessive trend for me to maximise my strain and forgo social activities in order to get the highest recovery score. My fitness was great, but I burnt some relationships and was always opening up my app.

So do I buy one?

The price of Whoop is really quite reasonable. My recommendation is to give it a go, you can start on a monthly subscription and if you don’t like it after 12 weeks (the amount of time i’d recommend giving it a go so you can fully build out the data) then can it. If you like it, you’ll probably end up upgrading the strap colour, and making it a part of your life.

The reality is that whoop is making people think about their activity and their recovery, but is it only making people who are already into their fitness focus on it or is it encouraging people with no fitness to take a look under the hood. Only time will tell.