The Whoop Strap is a wearable piece of fitness technology that is changing the way people work out, eat, sleep, and live. Unlike other types of wearables, which pride themselves on big-face screens and countless frills, the Whoop Strap focuses exclusively on health-measuring things like your sleep quality, Heart Rate Variability, workout performance, and more.

What Is the Whoop Strap?

As the name suggests, the Whoop Strap is, well, a strap. It's incredibly lightweight, durable, and made to wear all the time. The Whoop Strap even has a removable battery, so you literally never have to take it off. This is especially important when you consider the fact that the quality of our sleep is such an important part of our overall health.

The Whoop Strap has five monitors built into the inside of the band. These ensure accurate measurements and readings, which you can view on the Whoop App. You, the wearer, can use the app to see all types of insights that you can actually use. Rather than burying you in data, the Whoop Strap focuses on a few key things, all of which have a real, practical impact on how you live and feel.

What Does the Whoop Strap Measure?

When it comes to wearables, it not just about measuring everything; it's about measuring the right things. So, what are the right things?

Cardiovascular Strain

How much strain your heart may or may not be under during certain exercises is dependent on a number of factors. These include (naturally) your heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), ambient temperature, and skin conductivity. All of these elements are measured and calculated by your Whoop Strap.

The thing to realize when it comes to exercise is that in order to make gains, it's incredibly important to consistently push yourself beyond what you've been able to do before. Acute stress is what it's called, and it turns out that putting your body under regular acute stress can result in some incredible benefits. These include weight loss, muscle gain, strength gain, anxiety reduction, and more.

Daily Recovery

Your daily recovery, or lack thereof, is an invaluable part of understanding your overall health. This is especially true for professional athletes who may rely heavily on marginal differences of only seconds or inches, which make the difference between winning and losing.

If you push yourself hard and often, it's important to know when you are fully recovered before trying to do so again the next day. The reason this matter is because if you are going to make the greatest possible gains, you can only do so by making incremental improvements on top of what you were able to do the last time you were fully rested. Think about it. Let's say you are at 100% capacity-your body is fully recovered, and you are ready to go. Let's say you run your fastest mile ever at 6:30 flat. Okay, that's great. But the fact is that to make that mile time; you had to push yourself 100%. You can't just roll out of bed the next day and expect to have the same or better performance. It's simply not going to happen.

The more often you can hit your peak potential on a weekly or monthly basis, the better you will become over time. Athletes beware: Do not underestimate the importance of daily recovery.

Whoop Strap Training Potential

Training potential relates closely to daily recovery. The Whoop Strap, though, uses one especially good indicator of your training potential: Heart Rate Variability.

Unlike traditional heart rate, which is a fairly good but not especially accurate metric, your Heart Rate Variability (HRV) rate tells you not just about the health of your heart but also your body's overall ability to perform.

In short, a low Heart Rate Variability indicates that you are either fatigued, not fully recovered, or that you may be coming down with some sort of sickness. A high HRV rate tells you that you are good-to-go.

One of the great things about using a wearable like the Whoop Strap to give you quick and easy insights into Heart Rate Variability is it gives you no room to make excuses. It's amazing what the mind can do to the body, and there plenty of times that all of us wake up and simply don't feel like going for that early morning jog, or maybe we would rather skip that post-work visit to the gym. "Take the day off," we tell ourselves, "you need it." But do we, in fact, need it? Or are we just being lazy because we don't feel like doing whatever we don't want to do? The Whoop Strap takes guessing out of the equation and gives you an empirical measure of whether or not your body is rested and ready or if you need either a day off or, perhaps, an easier day of exercise.

The other side of the coin has to do with the fact that some of us (athletes especially) tend to regularly overdue things-putting undue stress on our body that, over the long-term-has negative consequences which reduce performance. In this instance, too, knowing your HRV rate can be tremendously valuable. Should you go and hit the gym for the second time in one day? Perhaps just down some highly caffeinated pre-workout and get to it?! Well, let's take a look at your HRV rate. If it's low, then no, you should not go for that second workout. You would be much better off getting an extra hour or two of sleep or, if you're truly a glutton for punishment, head to the supermarket, get yourself a few bags of ice, and make yourself a painfully healthy ice bath. The point is that knowing when to push yourself and when to kick back and relax should not be a matter of your mood-it should be based on what your body really needs or requires.

Sleep Quality

The Whoop Strap does not measure sleep in a black-and-white number of hours slept. Instead, it gives you data on your disturbances, latency, efficiency, and, of course, time in bed. All of this happens automatically without you doing anything differently from your normal routine. The Whoop Strap is so minimal and comfortable you won't even realize you have it on.

Sleep quality matters more than anything, and the variables mentioned above combine to give users a much better sense of how good a night's rest they are getting. Many are aware of the sleep rule-of-thumb that you should get seven hours or more of sleep every night. While there is nothing wrong with thinking about sleep this way, the fact is that for some people, even eight hours or more sleep every night might not be enough because they are dealing with so many disturbances. On the other hand, there are some (those lucky ones who sleep like logs) who may be able to get away with even less than seven hours. The key is understanding what works best for you and the most efficient way to do that is with an objective wearable like the Whoop Strap.

In today's world, sleep has taken on an interesting role as business owners and (particularly) entrepreneurs have started priding themselves on how little sleep they "need." In some cases, it may be true that this person or that person only needs five hours of sleep per night, but the question is, are they truly operating at their full potential? Having metrics to monitor how your body operates enables you to be honest with yourself, so you can truly meet your full potential.

Conclusion

The Whoop Strap is a fantastic piece of wearable technology that offers a solution to professional athletes and weekend warriors alike. If you want to get smarter about your fitness, your sleep, and your daily performance, check out the Whoop Strap.