I’ve had a Whoop strap for 2.5 years – since before they switched to a monthly service business model.
Things I like:
– It forces you to pay much more attention to your sleep. I’ve made changes to improve my sleep and my sleep is now much more efficient (lower RHR, higher % time actually asleep, more “deep sleep” (supposedly good)). I’m now getting more sleep and making much better choices related to sleep – having minute by minute HR data for a couple years of your life makes it harder to ignore that you aren’t getting enough sleep or that you aren’t sleeping well.
– It makes the impact of alcohol much more clear. I know from a couple years of experience that any night I have 2+ drinks I’ll significantly compromise the quality of my sleep (RHR 15-20% higher for the bulk of the time I am asleep) and next day performance.
– The overall concept of Recovery seems to be pretty accurate in my experience. I haven’t experienced much of anything that felt like a false positive (where it says train, I do and it turns out to have been a bad idea). I have felt terrible and it has said I’m actually recovered so I train anyways despite not feeling like it and I end up performing well. More than once I have ignored it and trained when it said I was doing terrible and should rest – both times I promptly got sick for 1 week +.
Things I don’t like:
– The definition of Strain seems very HR/cardio-focused. It basically doesn’t “count” lifting sessions as having done any work. So I can push myself with weights 3x/wk and it will tell me I’m undertraining.
Net, it sounds like from the above post it may not be great for tracking HR-specific training. However, I think the value of having “always-on” HR data is pretty high and a pretty unique thing the Whoop offers. You charge it while wearing it so effectively never have to remove it.