This October, Sarah, our Founder, gave a WHOOP watch a go for a month to see what she could learn about improving her overall wellbeing on her journey for 1% CALMer.

WHOOP is a wearable that tracks your heart rate variability, resting heart rate, respiratory rate and sleep performance which is claimed are the only metrics scientifically proven to make a significant impact on your physical and mental health.

By tracking the data, you get insights into how your behaviour is impacting on your key performance metrics and it’s unique to you so you can start to draw conclusions as to whether the steps you are taking to help you live well are actually having a positive impact. Or the opposite. Via the app, you can also get direct support from a WHOOP coach who will make tailored recommendations based on your data.

When we shared with the CALM community that Sarah was going ahead with a trial, we had some really positive feedback about the WHOOP experience from some members which also matched Sarah’s experience. 

Here are our key findings:

Awareness is always the first foundation block

When it comes to making change, understanding why we might need or want to change is really important. The WHOOP data not only gives us real time visibility into key insights into our physical performance but starts to drive us to behave in ways which positively impact on the results we can see on the WHOOP dashboard. We naturally focus on what gets measured with our brains and bodies eagerly searching for dopamine rewards! It’s also easy to be able to spot trends and patterns over time.

Heart Rate Variability as a key measure of performance

It was interesting to see the link between our relationship with sleep, recovery and strain on our heart rate variability and how positive or negative changes around these three elements can impact on this measure. 

Controlled by the autonomic nervous system, heart rate variability measures the amount of time between heartbeats in milliseconds which is said to indicate how well your body handles stress.

Highlight known unknowns but also unknown unknowns

Sarah was surprised to discover her sleep was much poorer than she thought. With a breakdown between periods spent in REM, restorative sleep, light sleep and awake, she found time spent in restorative sleep was lower than average which impacted on her heart rate variability. WHOOP’s digital coach then shared advice on how to improve sleep quality over quantity.

Both easy and challenging UX

In some ways Sarah found the user experience easy and in other ways challenging. It was easy to set up and comfortable to wear. The dashboard is engaging and there is a lot of information to review which is well structured into sections. However, as you click through, there was so much information on the app, that at times it felt confusing and a little overwhelming. The dynamic AI recommendations were helpful and actionable but if you already have a lot of wellbeing knowledge, the recommendations can be things you are already aware of. You do need to set aside some time to take in everything the dashboard is telling you – or maybe that was just Sarah 🙂

Calm In A Box partners with businesses, teams and leaders to help them perform well through change.

We have developed our CALM philosophy and toolkit to facilitate focused and proactive work on culture, mindset and behaviour change programmes so leaders and teams can be well, to do well. 

Accelerating successful transformation of all types, we’ve worked with global brands and growing SMEs who are passionate about supporting their people through change for better results.

We provide value in a range of ways through our CALM product ecosystem including consultancy, workshops, coaching and free digital learning on the CALM hub.

If you’d like to chat with us, we’re always up for an online coffee. Get in touch – hello@calminabox.co.uk