michael yuen

WHOOP there it is!

2025-11-13

Written by: my

I decided to try the “WHOOP”, which is a device that tracks biometrics. This post will document my journey and experience.

Background

Recently I found myself wanting to change my habits. This is a cycle I’ve found myself going through every so often throughout my life, undulating between lack-of-structure and discipline. This time, I haven’t been living poorly or with bad habits, so rather than “correct” myself I simply want to do better. My daily routine leaves me with little time to pursue interests or hobbies; I basically just go through the motions. And that’s okay, but it’s not enough.

Day 1

Good morning! Today I woke up at ~7:11am ET. Not quite my 7am goal, but that’s great! I noticed the WHOOP was vibrating on my wrist, but also my phone’s alarm was going off. I’m not sure which actually woke me up — I think the alarm. I had a passing thought that the vibration didn’t seem like something that would really wake me up. Said differently: I’m not sure I could rely on it alone, without an alarm. But hey, it’s Day 1. If I can really stick to these habits I’m trying to reshape then maybe it will become easier and easier.

I did “snooze” a little while. Now that I think about it, I was probably awoken at 7 which is what my first alarm is set to, then snoozed until I was able to muster the motivation to get up about 11 minutes later. Not too bad.

As I got up, I told myself to be patient because I remembered reading a review about WHOOP that it takes some time for your data to be synced before it will show up in the app. But to my surprise and delight, there was a notification waiting for me after using the bathroom: “WHOOP has officially tracked your first night of sleep. Head to the Sleep Tab for insights.” Exciting!!!

Evening

As I was wrapping up my work day at around 5pm ET, I got a notification for “Daily Stress Summary”. Interesting! Arriving home from work, once I got settled down I checked it out. The app took me through a little guide about this section. WHOOP apparently measures stress on a scale of 0.0 - 3.0. 0 to 1 is considered low, 1 to 2 is considered medium, and 2 to 3 is considered high. The value is derived from some calculatin of heart rate measures. There’s an info screen I should add a photo of.

Basically, the page has a dial with your current stress score for the day, and below that there’s a chart that shows how it has changed over the course of the day.

Workout

Today was a workout day, so I was interested to see how this might be incorporated into WHOOP. Basically, I opened the WHOOP app and selected “Start Activity”, not really knowing what it is or how it worked. Then I opened the Strong app I use for tracking workouts and got to work. Right away, I noticed a live activity for WHOOP on my phone’s home screen. It kind of appeared like it was intended to track a run because there were little sections for distance and pace. But most promitent were the heart rate monitor and a little slider for the heart rate zones (1 through 5) that would move in coordination with my heart rate.

I didn’t know what to make of it, but I figured it may become more clear later. Experimenting is part of the fun, so I just let it run. My workout consisted of:

Day 2

Good morning! Today I got up at 7:08am ET. The alarms went off and I was more aware of them today, but then I felt it was harder to pull myself out of bed. I definitely wanted to snooze and had the passing thought of “what do I really even need to be up for?”. I’m happy that I was able to resist.

Again, used the bathroom and by the time I was finished the notification was there about my night’s sleep. I love that! Today it was “You spent more time awake. You might feel more tired today, even after sufficient rest. Plan for a relaxed day or sneek in a nap to recharge.”

Reflection

It’s really interesting how using the WHOOP has already caused a shift in my mindset towards “gamifying” my biometrics. For example, I’ve checked my resting heart rate numerous times and have been more actively thinking about my breathing because I want to keep it low. A little silly, but an interesting observation nonetheless! I’ve also weighed myself and tracked my calories through another app (MyNetDiary) and seen how they automatically get integrated into WHOOP (through Apple Health I think). The question is, will I sustain this? I don’t know, but for day 2 it is fun so far.

Day 3

Morning

Today I ran on the treadmill in the morning and used the activity feature again. I’m realizing that I don’t exactly know the best way to use it, but I’m learning as I go. I say this because I asked the little AI chatbot how to track a run on a treadmill and it told me to select the type of activity before starting it — so I realized yesterday I should have chosen weightlifting. Anyway, I was interested to try it specifically with running since I knew it would track which “heart rate zone” I was in via a Live Activity. I enjoyed this a lot. I ran 3 miles while frequently checking which zone I was in. For the most part, I aimed to stay in zone 2 and 3, but twice I sped up to hit zone 4 and 5 briefly before slowing down again. In the past, there was a time when I ran more frequently to the point I used a heart rate monitor and tried to use this as a guide for training. This is definitely a motivator for me to run more frequently again, and I’m even curious to try other workouts while cross-referencing with the heart rate monitor.

Afternoon

I left to meet my girlfriend Surbhi in Manhattan after her workout. Later on, upon checking the app I noticed it automatically detected and tracked an activity as “Commuting”. Interesting!

Day 4

Today I unlocked the “personalized Recovery Score”. Exciting! While it’s still going to take time to adjust and learn from, I’d say this is one of the main selling points I was interested in. Coincidentally, I expected that today’s data should reflect a greater need for recovery due to what I did yesterday and it seems to reflect exactly that.

Yesterday I ran on the treadmill in the morning, as I mentioned. I wasn’t exactly sure how this would impact the data. It’s not something I do commonly enough that I’d expect no impact, but I also didn’t feel it acutely. However, later in the day we went to one of Surbhi’s favorite bars schmuck. and had several cocktails. I definitely expected that to have an impact. That’s a no brainer, but I was curious to see how it would be represented by WHOOP. My sleep performance was rated as 80% compared to my previous three nights being 86%, 83%, and 91%. Another difference is that I have the app set so I’ll get better sleep on Saturdays and Sundays, so despite that my sleep was still evidently worse, with less recovery.

Additionally, as I unlocked the Recovery Score today, it paints a pretty clear picture there too. My recover was rated as 42% compared to my previous three days being 57%, 58%, and 75%. Outlier measurements can be seen for Heart Rate Variability, Resting Heart Rate, and Respitory Rate too.

What does this mean? I think WHOOP is adding data insights to what is generally accepted and pretty intuitive — if you exercise and drink, you’ll have worse recovery the following day. I think alcohol is much more of a negative factor. More broadly, I only have four days worth of data so while this is fun to consider, I’ll need to accumulate more over time to the point where I can use higher-level trends as directional guidance for my training and lifestyle choices.

Day 6

Good morning! The time is 8:06am ET. A little later than the past five days. I feel a little bad about that, but I just need to do better today and keep being consistent.

But first, it’s good to mention positive events! Yesterday I woke up fairly early. Or on time? Heh. I remember I was kind of shambling around like “ok what do I do”. Anyway, I ended up running on the treadmill! It was only ~1 mile from like ~7:40 - 8, but that was great!

Then, I had a busy day at work. Every other Monday is like this, because I’ve scheduled all of my team’s one-on-ones that day. It’s good for knocking them out, but it does take a lot out of me and means that I won’t have much time for anything else. Beyond that, there are other thing cropping up with the project I’m working on as well as annual reviews. All in all, I felt pretty overwhelmed.

Anyway, this led to me choosing to work in the evening. After walking the dogs and having dinner, I sat down and did so. It ended up taking me until past 11 and I remember getting into bed at about 11:50pm. I figured this would have an impact on the sleep report I’d get the following morning and sure enough it did!

To my surprise, the data didn’t show anything for “High Sleep Stress” or like patterns of wakefulness. I remember having a little difficulty getting to sleep because my mind was still active, but otherwise I slept great throughout the night and didn’t even need to get up to use the bathroom. I only remember waking up one time to guzzle some water. Beyond that, I did get a worse rating for overall sleep performance, with worse overall sleep time and sleep consistency. My REM was below the threshold considered to be typical. All that is to say, I guess it tracks.

Day 7

One week. Woo-hoo! At this point I completed the first major milestones, “7 logged sleeps”, and today unlocked the Health Monitor. I thought it would be a little more exciting. 🤷‍♂️

Yesterday I worked out. It was a decent session. I feel some fatigue this morning and my right shoulder is a little more painful than usual when I move my arm in certain ways. Seems about right. I went to sleep at a good time (~11) and woke up a little after 7:30, but I didn’t have a great sleep. The sleep monitor kind of showed this. I was hoping it would be like a >90% score, but it was 83%. Not bad, but just okay. I also had a bad dream that I remember some of, and whenever that happens it seems to have knock-on effects.

Day 8

Not a great morning! Last night we went to our friend’s stand up comedy show. That was fun, but we didn’t realize how late it would go. So we weren’t home until after 11 when I should have been sleeping. Also there was a two drink minimum, so I had a couple beers. Surely that didn’t help. All in all, I ended up going to bed close to 1am after eating and admittedly watching tv longer than I should have. I’m definitely feeling it this morning, and the Whoop sleep analysis showed it too.

Day 11

I think this is day 11? No matter. I’ve felt a little off ever since Wednesday after going to the comedy show. That threw me off my sleep routine a little, but I’m not sure how much of a contributing factor it is. Since then, I’ve been pretty good about course correcting, but I think the biggest change from the first week is that I’ve tried to allow myself more sleep to account for the “sleep debt” Whoop says I’ve accrued. I kind of wonder if trying to naively course-correct caused more issues. Rather than waking up fairly easily at 7-7:30, I’ve notice if I’m trying to sleep in until 8 or 9 then I feel like I’m in the middle of a cycle because I’m actively dreaming and then suddenly woken up by an alarm or some other stimulus. Overall, I know that 10 days is still a blink in reference to the longer-term trends and habits I’d like to form, so I don’t want to overanalyze too much but I think the reflection is healthy.

Today, I made the active choice to sleep in to pay off sleep debt. But I also made the active choice to stay up later watching tv. Ugh. I knew I would kind of regret it, but I knew what I was doing. So I think it did help somewhat, but at the same time I still need to get back to the routine I want to keep.

The other consequence of sleeping later is, of course, waking up later. And waking up later, I have less time available in the mornings to accomplish parts of the routine I want like writing, reading, and even (eventually) exercising. With less time, these things ever get deferred to later or skipped entirely. I shouldn’t feel so bad because this is essentially the status quo I’ve had for a while now. But I’ve started to have a taste of how sleeping and waking early can enable these activities and I don’t want to go back!

With today hopefully setting up a good opportunity to reset going into next week, I think I will try to stick to the alarm schedule I set up previously and not try to think or worry too much about the so-called sleep debt. If I feel good, then I feel good!

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