Podcast No. 54: Year on WHOOP

What You Can Learn from a Year of WHOOP Data.

Happy New Year, everyone! On today’s podcast we explore what you can learn about your body from a year on WHOOP. Mike Lombardi and Emily Capodilupo break down the data from the first-ever Annual Performance Assessment we just sent out to all our members--a summary of your year on WHOOP. Mike and Emily talk about things like: What day of the week are people the most recovered? What days do they usually take on the most strain? How much does the average WHOOP member actually sleep per night, and what behaviors affect their sleep the most? Plus, what can you discover by examining your training patterns and the impact they have on your body over the course of an entire year? For WHOOP members, this podcast will give you some amazing insight into the data you’ve just received. And even if you’re not on WHOOP, there’s a lot you can learn here about human behavior and how the body responds to the choices we make.

Show Notes:

2:32 - Holiday Gift to our Members. “We wanted to give you a chance to look at the whole year and see all that you’ve accomplished.” 3:44 - How to See Your Annual Performance Assessment. Go to app.whoop.com/2019 4:07 - Yearly Averages & Comparisons. “Compare yourself to your communities, and age and gender demographics.” Plus, what day of the week are people most recovered? Sleep the longest? Take on the most strain? 5:54 - Strenuous Saturdays. “Globally across WHOOP, Saturday is the highest strain day.” And Sunday is the lowest. 6:19 - Recovery Mondays. “Recovery gets progressively worse throughout the week.” Extra sleep on the weekend may play a roll, Mike notes. 7:15 - Heat Maps for a Year of Data. “See by month and by day of week how these different values changed.” 8:15 - Seasonal Strain. “People take on the most strain in July and August.” 9:24 - Humans Hibernate? “January through March people were sleeping a half hour more per night than in the summer.” Mike adds, “The take is how much sunlight is in the day. When it’s dark at 4 pm it makes it very easy to go to bed.” 11:05 - Learnings From Daily Sleep Surveys in the App. “All of this data is 100% personalized to each member, so if they haven’t been answering those surveys it’s going to be kind of sad and blank looking. … You can see personally how doing or not doing these various things affects your physiology.” 12:18 - What Alcohol Does to Sleep. “Resting heart rate goes up by 6 beats per minute, HRV goes down by 15 milliseconds, recovery goes down by 16%.” 13:08 - Caffeine Within 4 Hours of Bed. “Increases RHR by 2 beats per minute, lowers HRV by 6 milliseconds, decreases recovery by 7.5%.” 13:45 - Use Survey Data to Make Informed Decisions. “Use it for self experimentation so you know what affects you.” Check out the Holiday Hacks podcast if you missed it. 16:27 - Training Behavior. “How you trained throughout the year, and how your body physically responded to that.” The first part is an adaptation of your Weekly Performance Assessment. 17:45 - Physiological Response. “You can see, during this time where I was training less than what I was capable of doing, were my HRV and resting heart rate improving?” 18:10 - Functional Overreaching vs Non-Functional. “Maybe your metrics get worse during the overreaching period, but if right after they improve, that’s what’s called functional overreaching.” 20:35 - Average Stats for All WHOOP Members. “The average sleep duration is 6:55, that’s actual sleep, not time in bed, which is closer to 7.5 hours. The average recovery is 58%, and the average Day Strain is 12.4, but those numbers all vary a ton by demographic, goal, fitness level, etc.”