Have been wearing the whoop since mid July now. I've only ever taken it off for a few minutes at a time to change the strap. I t has been fine in airports and have only been asked to take it off once in an airport and once going in to Trump tower. In terms of presentation, I have had no problems wearing the strap in any outfit, smart or casual. Occasionally someone will ask what it is but most seem to just assume that it is a Fitbit or something similar. There is a strap that allows it to attach to your bicep area which would hide it in most situations if you felt that was necessary. The charging process is pretty easy. You get a little battery pack thingy with the strap that you charge and, once every five days, you just clip it over the strap for an hour or two and you are good to go. The unit is waterproof and I have used it swimming in icy seas, showering, bathing, in the sauna etc with no stress. The only thing I did was get a couple of extra straps so that I can change them and wash them occasionally. The unit can broadcast HR as well if you choose, so it has been useful as an occasional stand-in for my HR strap when travelling or on my Kickr when my strap ran out of battery once. However, a lot of machines don't seem to recognise it. Might be a BT v Ant+ issue I suppose. I have a couple of ways of monitoring sleep (Autosleep App using Apple Watch as well as the whoop) in order to make a comparison. In addition, I use the Heartwatch App as well as the generic Apple Health App for keeping up too date with HRV, RHR etc etc. When exercising, I use a chest strap linked to my Garmin. The point being that I have a few ways to compare the whoop service to others. The key daily metrics that the whoop strap gives are Recovery, sleep and strain. Each morning you need to answer a few quick questions related to your recovery and your sleep. It takes maybe ten seconds for each, so is not onerous at all. Over time, the analytics start to identify trends i.r.o. what impact different things have on your recovery eg. having alcohol, sharing your bed, reading, using a screened device. For example, I have had alcohol 9 times since getting the app and it has had a 17% impact on my sleep quality and a 30% impact on my recovery. The other useful daily metric is a recommendation on how hard you should train on a day, based on your recovery. Now, generally this is fairly obvious eg I am feeling *** so don't need someone to tell me I shouldn't be training. However, where I have found it really useful is when I am feeling NAAFI and the app tells me I am primed for high strain. This generally motivates me to get out and ride on days where I otherwise might give it a skip. When you do exercise which results in your heart rate being elevated for a period of time, the app prompts you to record the type of exercise and applies a strain score between 1 and 21. As I have got fitter, I have found that the same level of exercise results in less strain, which I suppose is fairly obvious. The weekly analytics are quite cool (see pics below) and mainly serve to act as a record of how close you stayed to where your body told you to etc. You can really get into the detail on the website if you wish and there is a strain coach function on the app which is also pretty cool. I really like the strap and the functionality, but am not convinced that I am getting full value for the £25 or thereabouts that it costs me per month. A mate recently got a Garmin Watch and the Garmin App seems to give a lot of similar metrics. I have an Apple Watch, which I use mostly just for the Vitality points, and when hiking or running, and, with some of the great apps like Heartwatch and Autosleep, I think I will probably end up not renewing my whoop subscription after the 6 month period and using the cash to help pay for a new bike. I love gadgets, but don't think I am really using the strap to its full potential. Could write a lot more. Have compared accuracy when training etc etc, but will stop now and am happy to answer any specific q's anyone may have.
