The Whoop 4.0 Wants to Be Your Always-On Personal Trainer
Health and sleep trackers have been around for longer than you’d think, but they’ve only recently become truly worth our time. Gone are the days of a simple pedometer: Now, if the wristband you’re attached to doesn’t tell you your heart rate, VO2 max, and whether you should’ve had that last Krispy Kreme, it’s positively Stone Age technology.
With the rapid development in the sector comes detail, and lots of it. We’ve all signed our lives away to various social media giants and dive bars that have WiFi anyway, so we might as well get some benefits from our personal information floating about in the internet ether. Whoop 4.0 provides them in spades, with some of the most in-depth health analysis on the market. It’s seriously impressive: just be careful what you wish for.
So… what actually is Whoop?
The whole premise of Whoop as a company is that it brings analysis and personal insight to your everyday life. And lo and behold, the Whoop 4.0 delivers strongly on this, with three major metrics used to help you get and stay healthier for longer. Connected to the Whoop app via your phone’s Bluetooth, the system monitors daily strain, nightly sleep, and post-rest recovery, to give you a score out of 21.
To be very clear, this is not a smartwatch. There’s no screen, for starters, and don’t expect to be able to tell the weather or pay for your trendy overpriced cortado. What you will get, however, are intricate readings of your heart, sleep, physical exertion, and recovery, along with useful guidance on how to improve or sustain your status. The latest update also added VO2 max sensor capabilities, something that keeps Whoop up to date with, say, a Garmin.
The bespoke nature of Whoop is a major attraction, and consistently works: I hardly questioned its findings, and if I did, I was told why I, for instance, had experienced my worst daily recovery for a month (more on that later). You can also create personal fitness goals, with daily journals keeping you on the straight and narrow. Any exercise is automatically logged, and there’s the option to fine-tune upon finishing: tweaking the time, choosing the specific workout you did, and so on. Whoop will also let you know when you can push on or need to sit back. Basically, if you’re ready for someone to check in on your progress every hour of the day, the Whoop is the best choice.
There’s little wonder that it’s become a popular thing to own amongst plenty of high-flyers, from business leaders to athletes including Virgil Van Dijk, Beth Mead, and Sha’Carri Richardson. Rory McIlroy wore one during his recent win at golf’s Players Championship, revealing that it showed his heart rate drop directly before the decisive putt.
Sweet dreams
One of Whoop’s biggest assets is undoubtedly its impressive sleep tracking, providing detailed advice on the effect of different sleep patterns and focusing on sleep consistency rather than hours in bed. Advice is provided on the app, but also in longer form emails sent periodically—seemingly when the app has sensed a trend in sleep or fitness.
