The Whoop 4.0 is an incredible tool for tracking fitness and more importantly recovery. While this might sound specific to athletes, busy executives and consultants can use these features to maximize their performance and lifestyle.
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What qualifies me to review this fitness tracker?
In the years since I left the Army and joined the business world, I’ve strived to maintain a healthy balance between my professional performance / commitment and my personal wellbeing & physical fitness. This journey has taken me all over the world as a consultant and as a private equity executive and for the past 2 years, I’ve been using the Whoop to track my fitness and recovery. I started using the Whoop 3.0 and upgraded after about 6 months to the Whoop 4.0.
This device has been an extension of my body ever since. In that time, I’ve traveled for work over 100 times as well as participated in the Grand Traverse, two trail Ragnars, and summited 10+ 14,000 ft mountains. In short, I’ve put this device through it’s paces as a staple in my business and recreational lives.
Overview of the Whoop 4.0 device
Everything about the Whoop 4.0 feels ultra high quality out of the box. It’s clear that the Whoop team has put a ton of focus on product design and removing anything that’s unnecessary – resulting in a tight, minimalist fitness tracker.
- SuperKnit band & clasp – the band is the starting point for holding your Whoop against your skin. It’s adjustable for different body types and extremely comfortable (which is great because it’s designed to be worn 24/7). Whoop sells a wide variety of different band styles, so you can update your look in the future.
- Fitness tracker – The tracker is the heart of the Whoop 4.0 system, housing five difference sensors as well as it’s internal battery and Bluetooth (to communicate back to your smart phone). The Whoop 4.0 tracker constantly collects data from your body and then transmits this to the cloud so that you can get insights about your wellness through the Whoop App or in weekly / monthly reports.
- Battery – The Whoop 4.0 charging battery is a separate item to the internal battery on the fitness tracker. This is extremely deliberate so that you can keep the Whoop 4.0 fitness tracker on your body while charging it (eliminating any data loss). It’s not fully waterproof, but the only time you need to worry about that is while charging.
- Charging cable – the package includes a short USB to USB-C cable to charge the Whoop battery. I really like that the cable is short and it generally stays in my Tumi bag for travel. You can also use any other USB-C cable, so you aren’t limited to just the included charging cable.
Whoop App – The app obviously doesn’t come in the box, but it’s a key part of the Whoop ecosystem. Once you own the device, downloading the app is free through the Apple App Store or Google Android Play Store.
What does the Whoop 4.0 track?
The Whoop 4.0 fitness tracker in jammed packed with sensors to maximize the data points available to measure strain, sleep, and recovery.
Whoop 4.0 features sensors that measure:
- Skin temperature
- Heart rate
- HRV
- Blood oxygen
- Respiratory rate
The Journal feature allows the user to log daily habits, actions, or feelings each day. While this initially seems like low impact, the Whoop backend does the statistical analysis to associate the behaviors with your daily recovery score. Overtime, this gives the Whoop the ability to assess the impact of specific habits on recovery. These insights are ultra powerful and allow you to see the positive or negative impact of certain activities. As a personal example, after seeing the negative impact of drinking alcohol on my weekday recoveries, I began to curtail having an evening beer.
How does the Whoop 4.0 work?
At a high level, the Whoop 4.0 ecosystem works by the fitness tracker constantly collecting data with it’s five sensors and then transmitting that information to your phone. Then your phone uploads the data to the Whoop cloud for storage and analysis. Additionally, users can select activities (e.g., swimming, running, sleeping) to associate with a specific time to further define what the user was doing during a period of data.
Each day the user is presented with a daily journal to log behaviors (don’t worry, I track ~20 behaviors and it takes me less than a minute to fill out), which is processed in the cloud to associate recovery scores with behaviors.
Each week and month, Whoop compiles a personal report for you with trends on your sleep, fitness activities, and recoveries. It also provides insights around how tracked behaviors impact your recovery score (e.g., reading a non-backlit book before bed improves your recovery score by X%).
How does the fitness tracker fit into business attire?
The Whoop 4.0 blends right into modern business attire (at least in the opinion of this writer). The minimalist design is small enough to fit under a well tailored dress shirt cuff. The standard black Superknit band that comes with the Whoop 4.0 does not stick out at all and many other colors are available to meet your stylistic needs.
I have personally seen dozens of executives wearing Whoops and the seemingly the only people who notice are other Whoop users.
Additionally, Whoop offers a number of other garments (e.g., underwear, swimsuits, shorts, shirts, sports bras) that can hold the fitness tracker. This can allow the user to find more comfortable or stylish ways to wear their Whoop 4.0 (fun fact: Patrick Mahomes wore a Whoop 4.0 throughout his 2022/23 championship season).
To make your Whoop 4.0 fit into business attire, you need to keep it clean. Learn more about how to clean your Whoop and SuperKnit Strap.
How can business people use the Whoop 4.0 to improve their lifestyle?
To start a change in either business or wellness, one must first collect data. This applies in business situations just as much as making a lifestyle change. The Whoop 4.0 provides both the data collection device as well as the platform for analyzing and visualizing data to help business people transform their life.
Whoop 4.0 daily journal data points applicable to business people:
- Daily stress
- Alcohol consumption
- Flight
- Work from home
- Commute time
- Work late
- Sleep at altitude
- Sleep in usual bed
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
Summary of the Whoop 4.0 for business people
Bottom line – the Whoop 4.0 is an absolute game charger for executives and consultants who want to improve their physical / mental wellbeing. The combination of the data collection and real time recovery analytics provides the nudge needed to improve wellbeing.
