Ive been eyeing a whoop or Oura for a bit, but wonder how much there really is to benefit for me…
Sleep tracking… My sleep sucks. 50+ hour a week career, 3 kids under 5. I workout at night once the kids have gone to bed. Typically have an 1-1.5 hours an evening. By the time Im showered, wrap up loose ends for work, its 11pm. Up at 530 to get the kids ready and off to work. Not sure I have much to gain by having a device tell me I only slept 5-6 hours?
HRV - Sounds like the idea of this is to know when your rested vs need rest. I can pretty confidently say Ive known within 30 seconds of starting a failed workout that it wasnt going to happen. Im perfectly capable of realizing when Im tired and need to do a Z2 or take the night off vs intervals. Back to point 1…I know im not sleeping enough. My options are sleep more or workout, not both. Same goes for booze…Dont need a device to tell me I got shit sleep and Im hungover…my headache does a fine job at telling me that! haha
Im intrigued by the calorie estimate to help guide nutrition. How accurate is this?
So knowing the above, am I missing something that one of these wearables could be helping me with? I have a garmin fenix that can do most of what the smaller wearables do, but I hate sleeping in it and I prefer a real watch at work, so I really only wear it on the weekends or when working out. Has anoyone gone into one of these devices with the same grumpy old man attitude I have and been converted?
I’m going to say no. You have a lot of low hanging fruit to capture there (like getting in bed earlier) before you need an app to tell you to do the obvious.
I’m amazed that you have the energy to train at night and do it on 5-6 hours of sleep!
WHOOP is going to encourage you to sleep more than 5-6 hours per night. It will likely encourage you to aim for somewhere between 7-8 hours per night, assuming you’re a typical human.
Barring that – what it’s going to try to encourage you to do is to be as CONSISTENT as possible with those 5-6 hours per night you do get. Meaning go to bed and wake up at exactly the same time every night of the week. Because the only thing worse for your circadian rhythm than getting only 5-6 hours per night is to do it very inconsistently from night to night.
The metrics are kinda fun. I’ve worn a WHOOP for so long that I feel some FOMO if I can’t review my numbers in the AM after I wake up.
I think it’s a great ‘wear it all the time’ tracker. It’s surprisingly comfortable to sleep with. I can’t speak to its calorie counting accuracy. DC Rainmaker dings it for activity tracking – due in part to the limitations of its optical sensor.
This is the big one for me. If you are motivated by data then a Whoop or Oura might be helpful. It is a double edge sword as you might ultimately become discouraged by it and having a device becomes counterintuitive.
I kinda want to prove myself wrong. Im pretty sure theres a 30 day trial. Maybe I give it a few weeks and see if it gives me anything meaninful or just makes me grumpy seeing data that I cant really fix.
It sucks knowing theres easy improvements, just not realistic most days for me to change.
I would say no. The whoop is beneficial to identify habits that supposedly effect recovery. So drinking alcohol, lack of sleep, caffeine, etc. sounds like youve already identified some areas to improve. If you want a tracker to tell you to improve the stuff you already need to improve on, then pay them some money and get it. But its not really gonna tell you much that you dont know. HRV is not black and white you are recovered or not. I actually prefer resting hr over hrv after 2 years of paying attention to both.
For me, its a nope for truly benefiting. In full disclosure, I have a garmin watch that gives me this info. It is interesting, and I check fairly often, but can’t say that it really benefits me.
I would say no specifically to Whoop - seems like the value prop is not there for this product. I would look for a watch or activity tracker that provides these metrics and more.
Try a Garmin Vivosmart - its a very good Band, relatively inexpensive and unobtrusive - I wear one on my right wrist and normal watches on the left - and just “works”. It’ll track all the basics you need / are referring to.
It doesn’t have the Whoop subscription which’d be overkill for your use IMHO.
I don’t think these health trackers tell you anything you don’t know really. But seeing it in “numbers” makes it easier for many people to actually act on. It creates some sort of outside accountability.
You get used to the Fenix. I wear it all the time and the body battery and HR measurements correlate well with my actual state. Ive used a Whoop in the past for a year and gave up on it as it isnt doing anything that my Fenix doesnt do. And get more sleep - it’s a wonder drug.
I’d politely disagree. Garmins Body Battery is very good for understanding underlying ilness when your performance has suddenly and surprisingly declined and you don’t know why, or understanding fatigue.
So the issue with the Whoop and all others in the category is that they just tell you what you pretty much already know.
If you sleep less than 7-8 hours, you are tired, you stress a lot, you drink alcohol often, etc, it’s going to show in the app.
That’s it.
It’s not like you put it on and then you magically start doing things better…
Is it fun? Sure, the first few days are. Then it’s a hassle to keep things charged, you check it first thing in the morning, you start to stress if it doesn’t show green, you might feel good but it shows red, should you skip a workout then?
Etc etc.
Start with the basics: sleep, nutrition listening to the body and you’ll get x100 more than any app or wearable can give you!