The Whoop 4.0 is a secret weapon for business people who are seeking to better their business travel wellness. The Whoop 4.0 allows you to track important metrics about your body & lifestyle and then see how to improve your mental and physical wellbeing.
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Why should you believe me about the Whoop and business travel?
I’ve been wearing a Whoop (both the 3.0 and 4.0) for the past two years. During that time, I’ve worked in various executive roles and traveled a ton for work. Between my work responsibilities, I try to increase my wellness through fitness and a new focus on mindfulness. I’ve been thoughtful about trying different features on the Whoop and have tried to use it as a tool to make me smarter about my body and habits.
Overview of the Whoop 4.0
The Whoop 4.0 is a system that consists of a body monitor (and external battery), smartphone app, and backend data processing. The system is utilized by numerous professional athletes (cyclists, NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes) to assist with maximizing their athletic performance. While many “fitness trackers” are focused on the working out portion of wellness, the Whoop dials up the focus on rest and recovery. The body monitor is designed to be worn 24/7 and is charged with a slide over battery so that you don’t lose a minute of data.
See this article for a most thorough review of the Whoop 4.0
Why do frequent business travelers struggle with wellness?
Business travelers often struggle with wellness due to the unique challenges and demands of their workstyle, which can make it difficult to maintain a healthy and balanced routine. Some of the key reasons include:
- Travel Impact on Schedules: Frequent flyers are constantly on the move, which can disrupt their regular routines. Frequent travel, especially across different time zones, can lead to jet lag, sleep disturbances, and an irregular eating schedule, making it challenging to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
- Long Hours and Work Pressure: Business trips often involve long working hours and high-pressure situations. This can lead to stress, fatigue, and a lack of time for self-care activities like exercise and relaxation.
- Unhealthy Food Options: While traveling, individuals may have limited access to healthy food options. Airport terminals and hotels may offer primarily fast food or less nutritious choices, making it difficult to maintain a balanced diet.
- Lack of Exercise: Business travelers may find it challenging to stick to their regular exercise routines while on the road. Hotel gyms may not always be well-equipped, and overloaded schedules can leave little time for physical activity.
- Social and Networking Activities: Business trips often involve socializing and networking, which can lead to overindulgence in food and alcohol. These activities can disrupt sleep quality.
- Sleep Disruptions: Changes in time zones, unfamiliar hotel rooms, and work-related stress can interfere with sleep quality. Poor sleep can negatively impact overall wellness.
- Mental Health Challenges: The constant demands of business travel, including being away from family and dealing with work-related stressors, can take a toll on mental health, leading to anxiety and burnout.
Figuring out which of these are impacting your wellness as a frequent business traveler is essential to making healthy changes to your travel routine. The Whoop 4.0 can help you increase wellness despite the above stressors from travel.
In the fall and winter months, getting enough sunlight and workouts can be an increased challenge. Employing some tricks and tools, business travelers can maintain or increase their fitness regimen during the cooler months.
4 Secret Weapons of the Whoop 4.0 for Business Travelers to increase wellness
Secret #1 – Vibration alarm for better wake ups
The vibration alarm is one of my favorite features of the new Whoop (wasn’t included on the 3.0) as it makes it easy to schedule your wakeup. I find this is super useful for slipping out of the house to make an early flight without waking my wife, but the secret comes from integrating with the Sleep Coach. This integration means that the Whoop accounts for your strain and recovery when recommending a wake time for the next day. You can obviously take this advice or modify it to your needs.
I use the vibration almost everyday (on the road or at home) to schedule an early wake up to workout. This takes away one excuse for not working out or getting some ‘me’ time in.
Secret #2 – Track impact of lifestyle on recovery with Whoop analytics
Business people know that it’s hard to seek root causes of issues without good data. The Whoop 4.0’s aggregation of body metrics (like skin temperature, heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and heart rate variability) with lifestyle journaling allows real insights and recovery is the super KPI on the Whoop. The monitor is constantly gathering data and sending it back to the backend to analyze.
For lifestyle impacts, the Whoop’s journal feature provides over 200 different aspects that you can track each day. When you wake up, the Whoop will queue you to log answers about your previous day through an easy to use menu. This takes less than a minute to record the features that you’ve selected. For business travelers, a couple aspects of the Journal are super relevant:
- Airplane travel – Flying is hard on the body. From lower ambient pressure to salty snacks to lack of movement, it’s important to understand how this type of travel impacts our recovery.
- Worked late – Many of us have demanding hours and it can be impactful to understand what these 10+ hour work days do to our bodies.
- Alcohol consumption – Drinking alcohol isn’t good for our bodies but it can be great for social events. Logging how much we drank and at what time we stopped drinking can help us better understand it’s impact on us.
- Hydration – Many of us don’t drink enough water each day, especially when we’re flying. Understanding the negative impact of not drinking enough water can influence dietary choices on planes or in airports.
Once you start tracking daily Whoop Journal items, the smartphone app or weekly/monthly reports will tell you how these different lifestyle aspects impact your recovery. This has been really important for me in making some small changes to my business travel routine to increase recovery. For example, seeing the impact of alcohol has causes me to avoid mid-week drinks whenever possible (though I still partake during a team or client dinner). Additionally, understanding the importance of hydration has causes me to pack and use a water bottle in my briefcase.
Secret #3 – track sleep to increase wellness
Sleep is when our bodies rebuild and our mind resets itself from the previous day. Our mind and body’s ability to perform these tasks well is greatly impacted by the quantity and quality of our sleep. Because you wear the Whoop 4.0 at night, it is able to gather accurate data on your sleep.
This data includes how much time you spend in various phases of sleep (awake, light, Deep [SWS], and REM). The data visualization built into the app and website allow you to understand which days you have better sleep and recovery. Additionally, Whoop’s analytic engine performs the statistical association of the Journal behaviors with the quality of your sleep & recovery so you can see the impacts.
Secret #4 – Use the stress monitor to understand impact of travel on your wellness
The Whoop Stress Monitor is a relatively new feature on the platform but provides really insightful feedback. It uses your body stats to identify and log when you are in elevated stress states. It then calculates a “Daily Stress Score” which can help you identify which days you are more stressed than others.
For me, knowing how deadlines, late night flights, and difficult situations impacts my stress levels has allowed me to be more mindful and better control this stress. Stress impacts us all differently but knowing when we are stressed is the first step to managing it.
Whoop 4.0 Fitness Tracker
Fitness tracker that provides real time feedback on strain, recovery and sleep to maximize your day
- 5 sensors to measure multiple bodily functions
- Waterproof design
- Bluetooth connectivity to your smartphone
- Slip over battery charger design
- Powerful analytics to uncover impact of habits
BONUS: Whoop body monitor is TSA friendly
I’ve been through at least 100 TSA metal detectors with my Whoop 4.0 body monitor on and it’s never set anything off. You can wear your Whoop with confidence that it won’t (further) delay you as you navigate busy airports.
FAQ for Whoop & Business Travel
No! (Unless directed to by a security officer) I’ve been through hundreds of security checkpoints and have never had to take my Whoop off
You absolutely can, but the Whoop Battery Charger can be charged with any USB-C cable.
On it’s own, the Whoop will only track and report your health statistics. But if you take these seriously and start to unpack what’s making you unhealthy, the Whoop can absolutely impact your wellness and fitness in a very positive manner.
No! Obviously your Whoop won’t be transmitting data back while your phone is in airplane mode, but once you reconnect it will go through “catch up.” This will upload all of the data that your device and phone have stored in the interim.
