WHOOP is unavoidable at this point. If you haven't heard an ad on a podcast, seen a friend rock'n their WHOOP, or passed by somebody on a run tracking their life through a WHOOP, you must live under a rock.
I know the peer pressure of sitting at a table and missing out on a conversation as friends talk about their sleep score and their day's strain was foreign to me, yet I was the only one at the table without it. So, I wanted to give it a try, to see if the buzz was worth it.
To do this, I tracked my daily thoughts about my life with a WHOOP.
Day One:
Out of the box and onto my wrist, my initial question is, "Why is this not a watch?" The look is clean, and the strap is nice, but, now, I need to wear two things on my wrist all of the time. Is that going to look weird? I thought to myself at the kitchen table.
But, do I? I already have my phone which is almost always with me, so a watch is mostly a status symbol. I will see what life will be like without a watch.
While still at the table, I quickly set up my account, fit the strap to my wrist (this took me longer than it should have), charged it up a little bit, then headed to bed.
Day Two:
I am first to admit, I do not like to sleep with anything besides the bed sheets. A quick story:
When I was in college (this is never a good way to start a story) I tore my labrum in my shoulder while playing water polo for Santa Clara University and had to be in a sling after having surgery. My body hated it so much, I would take my sling off while sleeping. There was nothing I could do about it. Each morning, for the weeks I needed to be in the sling, my body would take off the sling in the middle of the night.
Fast forward to waking up my first morning, the WHOOP was still on. I was surprised!
After a short while of being up, I got my first sleep score. I now belonged to the club ;-)
That excitement put a smile on my face as I walked around the block in the crisp morning air, without a watch, only my WHOOP.
While sipping coffee, my phone binged, without clicking any tracking info, an activity strain from going for a morning walk was calculated. This is cool! I thought as I started to learn about the features this WHOOP has to offer.
Day Three:
During my lunch break, I looked through the workouts WHOOP has in their database, as well as the hundreds of exercises you can pull from to create your own workout. Since my main goal with WHOOP is to get back in shape and have the data to hold myself accountable, I put together a bodyweight workout that would kick my butt.
To my surprise, stringing together a grouping of familiar workouts was easy. So easy, I made a couple so that I could do three a week. Each workout would be simple, but now I had data to hold myself accountable.
Since it is day three, WHOOP hasn't adjusted to my body yet, so everything I do still has a gray line. Soon, these will unlock and I am excited for that.
Day Four:
I've started to become accustomed to checking my sleep score each morning, the data fascinates me. In addition to the data, there is a journaling feature, called WHOOP journal, that helps me stay accountable.
Within the journal there are simple questions like:
Have any alcoholic drinks?
Spend time stretching?
Consume meat?
Connected with friends and family?
Then, there are more personal questions that caught me off-guard like:
Engage in sexual activity?
Masturbate?
Felt you had control over your life?
Share your bed?
My initial reaction was that these questions overstepped, but then I started to think about it. Why would they ask these questions? How do these contribute to my overall health? Then it clicked as continued to look at the data.
WHOOP isn't just about shedding pounds or lowering your alcohol intake. Until today, I missed the section about stress levels. Turns out, I spend time each day in the high-stress zone. Personally, I did not think this was the case. I am a writer, how stressful can meetings, writing on a computer, working out, and reading really be?
Apparently, it can be high.
In an effort to reduce my stress levels, I laced up my running shoes and headed for a run. This has been the strangest feeling of them all. With only a WHOOP (no tracking watch), vanity metrics are gone. There is no:
Average pace
Best mile
Distance
Elevation gain/loss
Nope, none of the data I have tracked my entire running career (which isn't very long, about 7 years now). I was furious. Why would I not get this data? I thought to myself, I need this data. But, then again, I reflected upon it, do I really need it?
No. My goal is to become a healthier human. I do not race. I do not care how fast I actually run. Besides fireside chats with friends, I don't care to know how many miles a week I run. Really, all I care about is becoming a healthier human. So, do I need the above data? No.
Day Five:
Call me a data-aholic but I don't care. Yes, I was a math nerd in college (yup, that is right, my college degree was in Mathematics because I wasn't a fan of reading and writing... the irony), but having metrics at my fingertips helps me understand what is going on in my life beyond what I can feel, blows me away.
Today is a perfect example:
All day, I have been stressed about a meeting. Yet, I didn't know I was stressed all day until the day was winding down and I looked at my data. Here is what it told me:
Two hours before my big meeting, all of my biometrics went into hyperdrive as I sat behind a computer, planning for the meeting.
As the meeting occurred, my stress level spiked and caused my body a strain level that was on par with doing a short HIIT workout.
After my meeting, my biometrics dropped, but you could see the effects of the strain on my resting heart rate being higher than normal.
This shows me that I should try to do some of the breath work in the WHOOP app when I see my stress levels peaking to keep a collected headspace.
Day Six:
I made a mistake. You know how I said this app has a ton of widgets and gadgets? Well, I laced up my Merrell Skyfire 2 and went for another run, today. Still, watch free and embrace the concept of a minimalist runner.
Ready to strut my stuff loud and proud knowing I wouldn't be collecting vanity metrics, I tossed in my airpods, opened my WHOOP app, and started a new activity; running. Then, on the top right-hand corner, I saw a toggle I could press to track all of the data I had missed on my previous run.
So, what did I do? I caved. I pressed the button. I tracked my vanity metrics for the run.
Day Seven:
As I opened my phone and checked my sleep score from the night before, I got a new notification: "Your Weekly Performance Assessment has been calculated".
What is this? I asked myself as my thumb landed on the notification.
Oh, to my surprise, it was the major data points all wrapped up in a nice report, like a weekly report card, that showed me how I could improve as well as make inferences as to what I didn't that was hurting my daily productivity.
That is why I decided to join the WHOOP club!
What is even more exciting is that for the next 23 days, WHOOP will continue to build a baseline of metrics specific to myself.
If there is one thing that I have learned so far, the data I put in = the more WHOOP can help me live a long life.
Curious about joining the cool kids at the table wearing a WHOOP?
