I got a cold this week and of course Covid panicked about the symptoms. My respiratory rate actually went down slightly while I was sick. They’ve talked on the podcast before about how good RR is for detecting Covid since colds and flus are upper tract infections while Covid is a lower tract infection. An upper tract infection won’t actually increase your respiratory rate.
See that’s what I’m kinda thinking too because the night before I was right on my average and almost always am below 14.2. Definitely keeping a monitor on the situation but man that’s some coincidence that they just posted that.
Does anyone else have extremely high levels of REM and SWS? My averages are 35% of REM and 23% SWS per night. Whoop says I might be catching up on a lack of restorative sleep, but every night I have had the whoop I have had a shit ton of restorative sleep.
I usually wake up feeling really groggy regardless.
Quick update. RR was back down to 13.9 which is relieving. Small scare yesterday seeing that type of jump.
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How long you have your whoop strap?
Off the top of my end, try to get to sleep earlier? If possible.
Cut down on screen time, try cold shower before bed, etc.
Use the journal feature and may help you catch something.
Almost two weeks.
I’m getting 7:40-8:30 each night. Definitely need to stop the phone in bed thing though.
I wouldn’t worry too much until a month or so.
But use the journal and try a few things.
I’d offer some ideas; but I have a new born and don’t know what sleep is lol
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Built up a 12 strain yesterday, fell asleep right away last night. Got over 8 hours of sleep and woke up with 37% recovery. Wild stuff.
Almost same situation happened to me last week. Soon after that I woke up with a cold and was in the red. Green, yellow, yellow, red, red, yellow, green (today)
Drink plenty of water today and take it easy.
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I was in the green all week and then boom, 37%. Despite the yellow recovery, I pushed it super hard with a 30 minute cardio workout. A smooth 12.5 strain. Need to drink a bunch of water today.
Slept in my Los Angeles bed last night (which has a traditional mattress) for the first time since I’ve gotten this thing. Had been in Las Vegas where we have a Casper.
I think only the second time I’ve been in he green for recovery (80%), and the first time I’ve gotten 100% of the sleep called for. Obviously too many variables to draw conclusions after one night, but will definitely be keeping an eye on it.
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Quick question: if the bicep strap didn’t arrive, should I wait (for the first four days of data) until it does, or should I just wear it on my wrist if I can tolerate it, and then switch to the bicep when that strap arrives?
The data shouldn’t be different (but I think I’ve read that it is). Will wearing it for a week on my wrist mess up the “baseline”?
If could be different. But not enough, unless your golfing lol.
Wear it and start a baseline if you can.
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Thanks.
Figured I’d post some data for anyone curious about accuracy etc.
Went with the wife to a Orange Theory class and they gave me a supplied OT HRM that was a bicep band. I also had my Apple Watch on (non dominate wrist) and whoop (dominate wrist).
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OT’s bicep band info. This is the “accurate” tracked time at roughly 1 hour.
Whoops wrist band. Was spot on for peak HR. Slightly off for average. Could be due to auto tracking not ending the same as others. But not awful.
Apples. The shortest time, thus throwing off a few numbers. But again. Pretty close.
I can dig into the whoop and Apple numbers if anyone cares. But just posting to show for anyone who cared
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That’s not very accurate for Whoop, which is common for a lot of wrist based OHRMs. The OTF is made by Scosche, which is very high quality. I bet if you put the Whoop on the other bicep it would be pretty much spot on with the Scosche.
I wear my Whoop my left bicep and I wear a Polar chest strap when exercising. They are always within a beat of each other except when outdoor cycling, which is a known issue for all OHRM due to the bumps on roads and trails.
A lot of people, myself included, struggle with OHRMs on the wrist because you need some flesh to make them work the best, and I’m a 5’10" 150lb runner…there’s not a lot of flesh on my wrist. YMMV there.
Here’s my peloton ride today on my whoop and on my polar chest strap
Polar:
Whoop
Averages are slightly off but the max is the same. Main reason the avg is off are the spinups in the first 10 minutes. Optical HRMs are slower to respond to quick changes in effort. Once I was past the spinups the charts are identical
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Part of the low HR on the whoop is my cool down getting counted. I turned off both other sensors before that and let Whoop auto detect. But yes. Wrist is obviously YMMV.
But honestly at the end of the day. It’s good enough for me to keep myself motivated and laugh when I pound beers.
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Been wearing Whoop for just over a month and woke up today to my first recovery in the red. It was a good run.
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19% today 
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