Bumping to keep this up near the top. I just saw my first ad for one, and am intrigued, but it will take some convincing to get me to plunk down that kind of cash on a glorified FitBit.

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The plural of anecdote is not data. :-)
- Andrew Coggan

It sounded interesting, but after getting the code today to get into the store, and seeing the price tag, I figured that it was going to take a pretty stellar DCR review of the product, and a cost of far less than $500 to get me to bite.

I figure that for that price, I can get my 920xt to work as an activity and sleep tracker, and use the apps to measure HRV. TrainingPeaks does a decent job of tracking stress/recovery/fitness as well. I like the concept of the integrated data collection and analysis, but need to have it validated as a tool before considering it.

Besides, I don't need a $500 fitbit telling me that I should drink less alcohol before bed...

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Cheers,
Sam

I agree. I took a look at it and got a code to unlock the store and I'm pretty underwhelmed. If the only advice it can offer is sleep more and drink less alcohol I'm not understanding how that is worth $500. As previous poster mentioned, newer Garmin paired with training peaks can pretty much cover everything that this gadget seems to do.

Is this the latest post on whoop?

Anyone have this?

fitness tracker craze has come and gone... I barely see anybody wearing them anymore....

Could be seasonal...but I doubt they will come back.

Huh? Judging by the number of devices out there and new ones coming out all the time, I'm not sure you're correct. And I actually see lots of people wearing them. That's just anecdotal evidence though.

2 years later...

I am seeing these being heavily advertised this summer. Mainly from pro Mountain Bikers and Cyclists. Anyone have one yet?
Whoop vs Training Peaks? Anything? From anyone?

WHOOP

It's not a fitness tracker. It doesn't count steps. It doesn't have GPS so it doesn't track movement.

It's a recovery monitoring/measuring platform (device and app). All it measures is HR, HRV and sleep. It doesn't have a display. The wrist monitor itself is pretty simple - I find the strap design to be rather hokey but it works. The app is well done.

Training Peaks and other power-based software rely on power data and algorithms to advise you as to your load and recovery state. Devices like Whoop use physiological measurement. Power meters look outside the body, Whoop looks within. A powermeter and related software are without a doubt powerful training tools. Whoop and others like it may be as well.

Sure you can say "just sleep more and drink alcohol less," but we all know the adage "that which is measured gets improved." I find it interesting data to see how my RHR and HRV change throughout my training cycle.

Pricing has changed from $500 to $30/mo with a 6-month minimum. There is at least one competitor - the Oura ring. I may check that one out. For me, the biggest downside of the Whoop is that if I want to wear my Apple Watch, I have bands on both wrists, which for me feels odd. One of the reasons I may check out the Oura ring, but similar issue there - will need to wear rings on both hands because I don't think the wife would let me ditch my wedding ring in favor of this one. Oura ring is pretty chunky too, unless you've won a Super Bowl and are already used to wearing a big ring like that.

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Amateur recreational hobbyist cyclist
https://www.strava.com/athletes/337152
https://vimeo.com/user11846099

I do not think we are the target audience.

From when I spoke to them they were much more interested in the team sports space. They wanted to solve managing the effort and recovery for players who aren't paying attention to any metrics at all. A good use case would be a college basketball team where the coach doesn't know what non-team workouts (or other sports) are being done. Are the players are sleeping enough? Was the workout harder/easier than they thought. Are they recovered enough to do X....

Most of us use tools that are already quite a bit better and care a lot about the topic.

I'm reviving this thread because Black Friday is around the corner and we may see another deal on Whoop like we did last year (although they have changed their pricing model since then so I'm not sure if they will do another sale).

I have pure runner friends that swear by their whoop, but have yet so see someone that bikes and (more importantly) swims attest to it (aside from paid promotions).

I'm not sold on Whoop, but like the idea. I know there is also the ring option, and apparently another company called Biostrap, but haven't gotten a good enough idea of how they all compare.

Id love to use my Garmin FirstBeat metrics, but I've found those to be untrustworthy and spotty at best. I also hate having multiple workout files for indoor bike rides in order to get a training/recovery reading. Garmin recently introduced the Body Battery on the Vivosmart 4. I know there has been talk about that making its way to the 935, but nada yet. Also concerns about reliability and accuracy.

I've been using WHOOP for about 3 months right now. I wanted to have it to guide my decision making while returning to training after extended illness (Epstein-Barr), and it's been good for that. I wear it 24/7, including in the pool. My observation has been that it seems to overstate my HR/ the work I'm doing in the pool, and understate trainer riding. Sleep tracking, RHR, HRV all seem mostly spot on, with my only observation being that sometimes if I'm awake for an extended period of time in the middle of the night, but not moving a ton, it detects me as in a state of light sleep and possibly gives an inflated sleep score.

I'm not the biggest data person and have not made massive adjustments to my training based on the recovery scores I'm getting -- really, there have only been a couple times when I've adjusted workouts due to WHOOP feedback and that was when I had recovery scores under 15%. But i do think it's been good for incentivizing good recovery habits, improving general sleep, and identifying patterns, and it gives me some peace of mind as I'm returning from EBV.

I am not certain this device adds anything to what the Polar Vantage V can offer.

The Vantage has:

- all day heart rate monitoring (you can see trends through the day),
- overnight heart rate monitoring (trends through the night, including lowest HR) and
- an orthostatic test to check HRV ( I do this most mornings).

The other option might be a sleep monitor. For reasons I cannot recall, I purchased an EMFIT QS device, and it turned out to be an excellent purchase. It sits under the mattress and measures sleep time, HR and HRV. The website (no app) then displays this information in the morning, with your HRV differential (between falling asleep and waking) giving an indication of recovery. Obviously this works only while you are in bed, but my understanding is that this is the time when most of your recovery is supposed to occur. I saw it at USD250 on Amazon recently.

Very interesting. Looking at the hardware, there is no reason every fitness watch can't do this. I think between my watch and hrv4Training app for my phone, I get most of this information.

Whoop is now buy 2 for the price of 1 if anyone is interested in splitting...

Can you just buy the actual tracker anymore? Just checked the website and only saw 2 for 1 option on the monthly membership option. Looks like you pay $30 a month for a minimum of 6 months and they send you the tracker to use, as long as you are paying your $30 a month. I’m not interested in leasing a fitness tracker. I’m guessing they had trouble with people buying into it for $500.

You pay 6 months in advance ($180). My read is that after that, the hardware is yours (similar to your phone). To take advantage of the metrics, however, you pay the $30 / month. Basically, they had people paying $500 dollars, using it for maybe a couple of weeks or even months, and then not using it anymore.

I have been a Oura customer since day 1. I tried the first ring (the big chunky one) and now just got the v2 (much slimmer and looks like an actual ring rather than a superbowl thing).

I bought it to exclusively monitor my recovery while training. Right now training is pretty low and yes it sounds obvious that alcohol sleep etc... will influence recovery. but i wanna see whats the impact of big training blocks. I am 10000% sure that when I trained for my last IM peaking at 25h a week it was a super dumb move and that i showed up to the race over trained and tired. I didnt have any tools like oura at the time.

The key metrics of the ring are: HRV + sleep + body temp + respiratory rate = recovery index, given everyday (how ready you are). Garmin and other trackers do give you a similar KPi but i dont think it is as granular as what oura provides.

Whoop sounds great on paper but i've read (cant find the article tho) that accuracy wasnt good. Oura has been around for longer than whoop i think so i stick to oura but will be eventually tempted by whoop when the customer base is less of a niche and the tracker is more widely adopted.

It's hard for me to know if the Whoop numbers are accurate or not, since I don't have another trusted measurement device. I can say that the Whoop band "seems" to give accurate numbers, in that sleep tracks extremely well IME and the HRV and resting HR numbers do seem to move as expected in response to training, stress, and rest. Not to engage in a "my device is better than yours" debate, but I am not seeing any of the wonky results that seem to be reported at a high rate in the Oura FB group.

One other note: I no longer wear Whoop 24/7 like I did the first few months. I don't really need it to measure my daily "Strain" - my bike's PM does that just fine and I think the "Strain" functionality is more for sports where you can't directly measure your exertion, e.g. basketball, track, etc. Now, I just wear it before I go to sleep and use it to monitor recovery.

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Amateur recreational hobbyist cyclist
https://www.strava.com/athletes/337152
https://vimeo.com/user11846099

With whoop, you aren't really buying hardware, you're buying analysis.
This is often more important than hardware itself, but I make no judgement to the validity of their analysis.

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I talk a lot - Give it a listen: http://www.fasttalklabs.com/category/fast-talk
I also give Training Advice via http://www.ForeverEndurance.com

The above poster has eschewed traditional employment and is currently undertaking the ill-conceived task of launching his own hardgoods company. Statements are not made on behalf of nor reflective of anything in any manner... unless they're good, then they count.
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