I have been using Whoop for just over one month now, and it is one of the best purchases I have made. Here's my review.
My motivation for trying Whoop mainly came from the fact that I kept getting ill. I knew I was doing something wrong, but I was not sure what - was it my diet? Too much exercise? Not enough exercise? Sleep? Beer? I was tired of just guessing, and I felt that Whoop might help me to get some answers.
I opted for the one-year subscription, which was £229 with a free month thanks to my friend Adam. This works out at just under £20 per month - not insignificant. I also bought the Bicep sleeve (to use it during jiujitsu) and a spare wristband, in camo, because camo.
Firstly, the product itself. It feels very premium, the packaging and design are on point, so I did feel like it was money well spent from that perspective. Setup is easy, similar to any kind of modern smart device. The device - and software - starts working immediately but needs about a week to begin to calibrate itself to you, and a good month to get to really understand you. I was very ill when I first started using it, and the device knew it already. My scores were all very low, with everything in the red. It knew I was ill, which was a good start.
Whoop uses certain metrics such as respiratory rate, blood oxygen, resting heart rate, heart rate variability (which it places a lot of weight on), and skin temperature to make its measurements and recommendations, then combines those with sleep and activity monitoring to give you a pretty comprehensive picture of your health. If you want to, you can deep dive into all their metrics, with plenty of videos and texts by way of explanation. I read up on HRV simply because I had never heard of it, but if I could summarise, I would say that a higher (or gradually increasing over time) HRV is healthy because it shows that your body varies from being in a stressful state (ie exercise) to a relaxed state regularly. Too much of one state (ie low variability) is not desirable - you are either too stressed, or too inactive.
I watched my numbers gradually creep up from red into - whatever the next colour was (I am colourblind) as my recovery slowly increased and my illness passed. Once everything was in the green, I returned to jiujitsu and was excited to try it out. It's a simple process to pop the Whoop out of the wrist strap and slide it into the bicep sleeve, where I forgot about it for the session. Although Whoop can auto track activities if strenuous enough (it doesn't always notice my daily dog walks, even though my heart rate definitely increases), I prefer to manually start the activity. Open the app, Start Activity - Jiujitsu. Yeah, jiujitsu exists already on the app so that is awesome. The results tallied up with exactly how I was feeling - fucked. I was blasting out at my max HR for 25 minutes at a time - Great! But once the activity was done, I started to get the information I really wanted. First, it recommends a bed time based on what your goals are for the next day, how much strain you gave out, and what time you want to wake up. All things that we understand instinctually, but much harder to ignore when written down in front of you. This was the first positive from having a Whoop - I became much more conscious of my sleep requirements, which were higher even that I suspected, although I have long thought that I needed more sleep than most.
If you meet the sleep goal - great, you are on track to perform again the next day. If you don't, you will get a low recovery score and can use this as a way to make decisions the next day - such as taking a rest day. Whoop also allows you to tailor a daily questionnaire to you, so that you can keep track of the things you do and how they affect you. It takes its time gathering this information, but eventually builds up a picture of things such as whether high strain is good or bad for you, whether reading at night helps or hinders, what alcohol does, what reading in bed does, what taking a rest day does, etc.
The next lesson I learned was just how bad alcohol is for your body. I went on a medium sized drinking session and woke up to metaphorical alarm bells on the Whoop. Five pints of cider had apparently ruined me. Everything was in the red - resting heart rate, respiratory rate, blood oxygen, sleep quality, everything had tanked. It was a real wake up call, one of the strongest I have had around alcohol. A quick snoop around the Whoop reddit showed me a number of people had similar experiences. I particularly loved one comment, where someone pointed out that, uh, yeah, if you were taking meth or coke you wouldn't wake up shocked that your body did not like it. Alcohol is just another drug, but one that is legal. It's really, really bad for you. Lesson number two - alcohol bad.
The last major lesson or insight I have learned from my Whoop is that, if sufficiently recovered - ie in a normal state - I need to exercise more. I consider myself an active person, doing jiujitsu twice a week and working out at home at least twice a week, with daily walks. But Whoop pushes you to do more, in a good way. When I am feeling rested but taking it easy, Whoop reminds me that I can comfortably do more without taxing my system too badly. Whether it's another walk, a quick workout or stretch - it's a reminder to be active every day, even on off days.
One more bonus takeaway - my focus on "health" has switched almost entirely from diet, to rest and exercise. Before, when I thought about getting healthy, the first thing I would do is cut down on what I perceived to be "extra calories." Now - within reason - I eat what I like, but I focus on making sure I get enough rest and enough exercise, and I feel much healthier for it. I wonder if, in hindsight, by reducing calories and increasing athletic output in the past, I was actually weakening my immune system, which explains why I kept getting ill? In either case, I no longer care about having a six pack, and care more about being stronger and better rested.
If you want to try Whoop, please use my referral code!
Get a free WHOOP 4.0 and one month free when you join with my link: https://join.whoop.com/0660A7