Living Well with Whoop: A Conversation on Sleep, Strain, and Recovery

In this week’s episode of the Redefine What’s Possible podcast, Shanon and Kelly Tysland sit down for a conversation about the wearable Whoop device and the undoubted positive impact it has had on their everyday lives as business owners and busy parents of four children.

With Whoop guidance, they are able to use personalized data to balance family life and personal wellness by optimizing sleep, minimizing strain, and maximizing recovery. By receiving daily feedback and guidance, they are able to build connection, adjust habits, and identify how they can best support each other. 

Whoop is able to give them more than just data. It allows them to stay connected and understand where they are at in terms of capacity. Paying attention to their personal metrics not only helps set them up for a better life, but gives them something to connect on that’s moving them forward with their goals, relationship, family, health, and fitness. 

While wearable technology is able to give us powerful data, one of the best benefits it offers is not just the opportunity to do more, but to be smarter with how you use your energy. 

The end goal is not perfect metrics. 

The goal is to live well and show up fully for the life you want to live. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

So most mornings in our house, one of us will ask the other, how did you sleep last night? A couple years ago, that question usually got a pretty simple answer. Good, not great, maybe it was fitful. I woke up a bunch, and that was about it. But over the last couple of years of wearing whoop, that question has turned into a very different conversation. Now we're talking about how many hours we actually got, how much sleep we seem to need, and whether we've been consistent, whether we're carrying some sleep debt or recovery, what HRV is doing. And if you're already thinking, HR what? Don't worry. We'll get there. What's interesting is that this hasn't made us more robotic. It's actually made us more aware and honestly, maybe more connected. So, Kel, what's been the most surprising part of wearing Whoop for you when we're talking about our sleep?

SPEAKER_00 1:06

I think it's mainly just been, to your point, more language and words around describing the nighttime for us. And so uh I didn't have the language like HRV, I didn't have the language for sleep debt. It was just very kind of status quo conversation. And I feel that having that newfound language and having the same foundational points to talk on for the two of us has been really beneficial in terms of holding space for one another, connecting on specific points that we want to empower each other with in terms of our health and our wellness. And kind of like Brene Brown speaks to that percentage quotient of, you know, if you're only running at 50%, like let me pick up some slack for you type phenomenon. And I think it just kind of challenges us as a couple to really look out for each other.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Yes. And I think that's exactly why this episode matters to me. Because this is not really about the gadget that we're wearing on our wrist. It's about paying attention, it's about awareness, and it's about learning to maybe ask better questions. And in our case, it becomes one more way to take care of each other because I love you, Kelly, and I think you love me too. I do. And yeah. Today, Kelly and I want to talk about what Whoop has taught us about sleep, strain, recovery, behavior change, and why a wearable has ended up being a lot more than just fitness. Welcome back to the Redefine What's Possible podcast, where we explore the stories, science, and mindset that help us expand what we believe is possible in our health, our leadership, and our lives. Today's episode is a little different. It's just Kelly and I talking about our own experience with Whoop over the last couple of years. This is not a commercial, it's not a full-on product review, and it's definitely not us pretending we have everything figured out. It's really just an honest conversation about what's been useful, what surprised us, and how this little band has shaped not just how we think about training and recovery, but even some of the conversations we have at home. And maybe the best place to start is with the most basic question. What even is a whoop? Because if you're listening and you've never used one, this whole conversation could feel like we're speaking a different language. At its simplest, whoop is a wearable. It's a device you wear on your body that collects data and sends that information into an app so you can start to understand patterns and things like sleep, strain, stress, and recovery. And I still remember when I first got mine just over two years ago, I looked at it and thought, wait, there isn't even a watch on this thing. It's just a band. No screen, no clock face, no notifications buzzing at you all day. And honestly, I think that's the part of what makes it interesting. It works in the background. It's not really staring at your wrist all day. It's more about gathering information over time and helping you understand how your body is responding. Not just what you did, but how your body responded to what you did. And those are not always the same thing. Two people can do the exact same workout, but if one person is underslept, stressed, not well recovered, hormonally off, or just carrying more life load, that workout can land very differently. So, Cal, what made Whoop feel different to you from other devices, or just from tracking workouts the old way? Pen and paper?

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Yeah, I am of guess old-fashioned in the sense that having a wearable, I really to your point love that it is just a background device. I also like that there's boundaries around, I'm not checking it every hour, I'm not checking it on the go. It's like I have my boundaries of hey, I'm gonna check it on Whoop, and it's a great way for me to use it personally. And I think a couple prongs for me personally was coming from an athletic background where I mentally and emotionally and physically learned to push, and I love the grind, and I love, I just love working out and I love doing it all. Basically, I love doing the mom thing, I love doing the physical exercise thing, I love being a wife, I love being a friend, I love being a daughter. And I was starting to recognize that in these last five years of my life, my recovery wasn't feeling the same, was the first kind of notion that came to me. And I know that I'm getting older, but I also feel like a big kid forever, and I want to play life that way. And I want to just stay in the game and be in the arena and do everything. And the whoop has been really monumental in giving me the feedback of reconnecting with my body. Of course, I can go do the run, I can go do the workout, but I also want to be able to play with my kids the next day, or I want to be able to show up and have energy to do gardening or whatever it is I want to do the next day. And I think this whoop device has really helped me reconnect and bring just awareness, whether I had connection or not, to how my body was responding to whatever those daily stressors were. And it was eye-opening for me in a really good way. And I to use it as kind of just a rhythm device of how am I doing things over time versus a specific snapshot for the day. So it's it's really helped me kind of just as an internal coach.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

I love how you said reconnect and awareness. I think what I appreciate about the Whoop is we go through our day and we might have some stressful moments and we don't even realize it and our strain goes up, which we'll get into. But it gives us information that is so useful that I think we would otherwise turn our head to or not acknowledge the impact that those activities of daily living are having on our life. So I think that's a great distinction. And when we talk about Whoop, Whoop is obviously not the only device in this space. You've got aura rings, Garmin watches, Apple watches, and others. These wearables are different devices, different formats, slightly different angles, but they're all getting at the some version of the same deeper question. How is my body actually doing? And I think that's why this whole category of wearables has gotten so big. People want more than I worked out today. They want to know, how did I sleep? How recovered am I truly? How am I carrying my loads? And what's actually helping me in this game of life? And what I appreciate about Whoop is that it buckets a lot of that into three simple categories our sleep, our strain, and our recovery. Why those three? I think those three categories make a lot of sense because that's kind of life. You rest, you take on a load, and then your body either adapts well or it lets you know it needs something different. That's why I think the framework works. Sleep is your foundation, strain is the load you're putting on your system each day, getting ready for school, getting the kids out the door, doing all the things you do throughout the day. That's your strain. It includes your workouts. And then recovery is a clue about how ready or not ready your system seems to be. How well is your body ready to perform for the day? And one of the biggest shifts for me is that I used to think mostly in terms of output. Did I work out today? How much did I work out? How much did I lift? How high was my heart rate, and for how long? How hard did I go? Now I think of it more in terms of rhythm. Did I get enough sleep? And I think Kelly will attest. In our household, dad needs his sleep. Am I recovered? And what kind of day is this actually going to be? And that feels a little bit wiser to me. I'm curious, Kel, have you felt that same shift from thinking mostly about output to thinking more about rhythm and readiness?

SPEAKER_00 9:08

I think for me, the rhythm piece, they're kind of sneaky in my world, in my space, because to your point, it's like I get up, I have my routine, and it's okay, get my workout in. What's my rate of perceived exertion? And those are the numbers that you always followed, and that determined how my recovery was going to be. And I think what I've learned in this space mostly is it really adds up with okay, I added a new sport to my kids' life, and that's taken our evenings longer or later at night. So we don't have the same structured routine that we did a month ago. So there's a transition. Or now I on Mondays am not going to be able to have a home-cooked meal. It's going to be in the car, on the go, or hey, something's come up in my friend's life. I'm going to be spending more time with them and being their confidant or support system. And these little tidbit and things, but they add up. And those are things to your point weren't in my mind space as stressors. Like I didn't literally even view them as stressors. I view them as like activities that I enjoy and want to pursue. But for my body, I'm learning that I need to honor those as inputs and experiences that my body is taking on and be mindful around when I add on the workouts or add on the fun run or doing these different things. I also need to really pay attention to does this make sense for again my whole week view or my whole month view versus just today? Because when I go day to day, my throttle stays down the whole time. And that is where I get in trouble now is the recovery piece. I don't catch up. And so to your point, having the three big rocks up top of the sleep, the strain, and the recovery are really great catch-alls for a quick sneak peek in the morning of like, hey, where's my baseline today? And what does that mean? And per se, I think it's really important to point out for me also, like my working out, whatever that looks like that day, is honestly my regroup time. Like I feel better if I work out. So if my strain is high and my sleep's not great, that doesn't mean for me that I just don't move my body and I read a book because I will actually sleep better that night if I do move. It just might mean that I tweak that strain or I make a different choice of, you know, instead of taking on, let's say, a Costco run today, I'll be like, I'm gonna put that off till tomorrow because I can't muster the courage to go take on Costco. So it's just making these more intelligent, educated choices around the feedback that I've gotten that morning. And I feel like those are just very simple but real life effects that Whoop has helped me manage.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

And I think for the listeners out there, we have four kiddos. We have one at home, we have a first grader, we have a sixth grader, we have a sophomore in high school. So when you say when we add one more activity, do you want to just give an example of what is a transition we're going through in life right now?

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Yeah, spring sports. So we have a first grader who's doing soccer a couple nights a week, and then we have a sixth grader who joined a mountain bike team for at least a weekend adventure, maybe once a week as well. Plus, he decided he wants to try flag football a couple nights. He's in piano lessons and he's doing track with his school three days a week after school. And then our daughter is doing track in high school, so she has practice every day after school, and the occasional meet on the weekends or an evening night, when our youngest says, Hey, I feel like I really need to get better at swimming. Sure, let's just try to figure out some swim lessons in there. So, and our kids don't get out of school until 4 p.m. So smashing all of that in evenings between four and seven while trying to be a good parent where we sit down and have a family meal and get to bed before nine o'clock, it's just the real life hustle. And I love all of it, and I want to, you know, support our kids in every fashion possible. And I think one of our biggest tricky facets right now is our daughter's not driving yet. So mom is literally trying to manage just their scheduling and getting to all points sort of on time. I'm very much ish in terms of being timely, but um that's the name of the game. It's just like it's layers and it sounds great. And then when you get in the middle of that hot hustle, it's the reality check of going back to maybe my lens is did I, Kelly, get my workout in? Did I, Kelly, have three meals today? Because if I'm not maintaining and managing my own energy, how can I be present and productive for my family? And so I think that's where, yeah, there's just a lot of room for negotiations, but really not negotiations. It's um an awareness of what do I need to do to keep myself above water so that I can facilitate the best for my kiddos.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

That's great. And do you think by wearing the whoop it has made you maybe a little more patient with this process? Like you're running all day long, you're juggling all these things. You're you're sneaking that workout in. You might have it scheduled. You're training for a trail run right now, so you're on your training routine. But I'm curious, how does that wearable, how does that whoop allow you to be more patient or maybe even a little bit more honest with yourself? Or am I missing the essence of being with the wearable?

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yeah, I think where when I hear you ask that question, my mind goes to again your distinction between output and input. It is holding me accountable and coaching me on the recovery and the rest and the, I guess my words are just like honoring what does my body need right now. And because I think in our fast-paced world and again, mom hat of I just want to give, give, give, it keeps me accountable and pretty honest with where am I at. And I can go, but then when am I gonna hit that wall? And I don't want to hit that wall. And so this is helping me learn my body's cadence and learn, you know, like simple things. Hey, my kids have sports until 7:30 tonight. If I eat when I get home, my sleep is gonna turn into junk and then I'm gonna be hooped for tomorrow. And that's something that the whoop has really like honed in for me. So knowing that piece of information for my body, it's really important that I pack my own dinner. Like I might have all the kids' snacks with me, but what about mom? And so it it adds me into the mix of thinking about myself of like, okay, I need to pack myself a dinner because I, Kelly, am also gonna eat in the car with my children versus waiting till I get home so that I can be on track for not eating late, so that I can have a very, you know, restful, deep sleep that night. And I think those are just again simple things, but that has been simple but really huge that the whoop has given me. Because again, it's not, I don't like to use it as a snapshot, like, oh, today I did this, so I'm gonna tweak everything for tomorrow. It's really looking at that pattern, at that rhythm that the wearable gives me to see this is a pattern that I can then have agency in and see what happens. And it just, it's nice real-time feedback. That really resonates.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

And I think that one of the deeper tensions in this whole conversation, wearables can help us become more aware, but only if we use them to support the wisdom. And what I'm hearing is not just feed our obsession with doing more. And I think that's really the underlying thread in this whole episode. So let's start with sleep, because for me, this is really the foundation of the whole thing. Before wearing Whoop, I think I only really noticed sleep when it was obviously bad. Uh, if I had a bad night, I knew it. But beyond that, it was mostly like, yeah, I'm tired. I'm okay. I slept alright. Now I pay attention differently. Not just did I sleep, yes, but did I sleep enough for the life that I'm living right now? And have I been inconsistent or consistent with my sleep? Am I carrying more fatigued? And I think that has been a really meaningful shift for me because sleep isn't just what happens after the important stuff. Sleep is part of the important stuff. And the older I get, the more I realize it. It affects my mood, it affects my energy, it affects my resilience, how I think, how I train, how I show up, and there's a lot there. So, Cal, I'm curious, what has the sleep side of Whoop helped you notice or change the most?

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Well, for the listeners, they need to know that we protect your sleep for sure. As a family of six, we protect Shannon's sleep. Because as you just said, that is like the love language, right? But yeah, I think metrics that give us, again, the language. It's consistent sleep time, a consistent wake time. I mean, we really don't use an alarm at all. And I think that's a beautiful thing. I think that also whoop confirms that rhythm that we've created is what our body is liking, right? It's just like another reassurance. Also, the restorative sleep. I love looking at how deep of a sleep was I actually in. And that is the number that I love to see. And then also, like you said, do we have sleep debt? Like, am I not getting enough sleep? I am also a sleeper. I've always loved my sleep, and I also need to guard that with all that I can. But I also know that you and I even we have different rhythms with that. And so, and I think we do a decent job of doing our best to honor that, but that we both really feel passionate that it's gotta be your foundation and that's where you restore. I mean, even back in the day as athletes, we knew that when you rebuild muscles in your sleep. So if you're doing all this work and crazy fun stuff, if you're not sleeping, like you're kind of just throwing it to the wind. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

I'm curious if we so when we look at our household, our daughter who isn't driving yet, she starts high school at 7.20 in the morning. So part of our routine is I drive my daughter to school each morning. So we try to get out of the house by 6.50. So if we back that up, we're waking up a little before six, quarter to six, get our morning routines in. But then our other kiddos don't start school till 9:20. So Kel brings them to school. So here we're on two different schedules. And when we talk about protecting sleep, I'm curious if I was bringing our first grader and sixth grader to school, and you were bringing our sophomore to school. Do you think it would just be flipped?

SPEAKER_00 19:22

I'd let you know next week when I'm doing all four of them. Yeah, no, right. And I think this is a common scenario for many families out there. The dream of everybody gets out of the house at the same time and we all come home, that's leave it to beavers. I don't know where that exists. I mean, that sounds beautiful, but maybe on a vacation, but even then, I think you have probably people going in four different directions, even when there's only three family members, right? So I think this is very normal, very common. And I think where I go with that is just what are your tendencies? And then where do you need to protect your sleep? Some of us just I get more done at night, you get more done early in the morning. Those are just our natural, like cadence rhythms. And we talk about that. I'm like, hey, if we're gonna pack, I gotta, even if it's 10 o'clock, like if you want me to function, I'm gonna do it now. But if you want to take that over, then by all means get up early and do it. Those are just honest, that's just like cadence. And I think that's where you just work with whatever you have and the environment that you're in. And but again, the whoop going back to the wearable is it will let you know, like, hey, you were your consistency was off. So that might be why you don't feel so good today. Or you know what, you're now in debt because not only did you go to bed at your normal like 9 30, 10 p.m., but for this week when you're bringing your sophomore to high school at 6 50, now you've just cut your sleep by an hour and a half. You need to like make that up somewhere. And intuitively we would have known that, but the whoop is giving us hard numbers, and it just, I think for my brain keeps it very simple because it's literally like a coach saying, You hit this number or you did not hit this number. Great. That's very black and white to me. And I like that.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Yes, and when we talk about numbers on our whoop, they track the hours of sleep you get, the amount of hours you are in, your REM sleep, the amount of sleep debt you had, your sleep consistency. I'm curious which of those variables is most important to you?

SPEAKER_00 21:12

I would say the REM, like in the SMS, like the deep sleeps, I really like to see, because again, that's a rhythm thing. I know when I'm feeling good, I'm in a certain ballpark. And the other thing is the sleep consistency. Like, again, my rhythm. I am a proponent of getting sleep before midnight. I feel like that captures sleep early on is great. But in reality, like I just said, if I'm getting home at 7:30 or 8, or I've done a workout later in the day, my body is not ready to just like restfully fall into a sleep. So I might need a few more hours versus if I would have been home at six o'clock. So it's real life phenomenons, but it's also that consistency of like, okay, I think what I've learned with Whoop is I'm better off going to bed within that half hour window at the same time than being all over the map of okay, I'm at home early, so I'll go to bed at eight, but then the next night going. To bed at 10:30, my body's off. And that's been feedback that I've been able to track over the years with Whoop. And I think that is, again, just a numbers game that's helpful for me because again, I'm different than anybody else. So you might not have that same correlation. I mean, the research does show that consistency is a beautiful thing. And hours before midnight are also really great to capture. But I like knowing what Whoop says for me personally versus a general population. I really like that personalized aspect to a wearable.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Yeah, I think when we look at the Whoop and what it's telling us, like it's increasing awareness, but then the question is it helping us modify or change our behavior? And when I think of sleep for me, one thing that I poo-pooed for many years was I can eat at any time of day and then I can go to bed. Whoop is telling me otherwise. If I eat right before bed, I'm not sleeping good. I'm not getting into that restful sleep. And my HRV, which we'll get into, my heart rate variability stays really muted, which isn't ideal. And so having that awareness of like, whoa, when I eat close to bed, like this is happening, and now create a behavior change of really trying to back up, like, ooh, two hours before I go to sleep, that's when I want my last meal, has been a game changer for me. I'm curious if there's been any behavior change. You mentioned the sleep consistency within 30 minutes each night of bedtime, wake time. Has there been any other behavior change or awareness that showed up for you?

SPEAKER_00 23:36

I would say similar to the not eating late. I think also for me, hydration, I love to drink water, but cutting that off at an hour so that I'm not getting out of bed. And yeah, I would say those would probably be the two biggest ones for me.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

What if you notice? This is a hot topic, alcohol. What do you notice about when you drink alcohol and what happens to your sleep?

SPEAKER_00 23:57

That's interesting. The night right after I drink alcohol seems to not be a factor or it doesn't show up yet, but I definitely have this like leg experience where to your point, the other numbers that we haven't really got into yet, I might show up as I slept decent that night that I drank, but then the next night to three nights, my body's off. Like it's almost like it's trying to catch up with something, and so it's almost this delayed response for me, which is unique. I would not, I guess I would never have like picked up on that. I would always thought, oh, the next day I'm fine, but if I felt fine, but then I see that the playout of like 72 hours is not ideal.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Yeah, and I think everyone is a little bit different, and that's why having the wearable it gives you that unique data. And for me, if I have a glass of wine or a beer that night, my I my sleep is always fitful. And I wake up what we call in the red, and whoop measures your recovery in red, green, or yellow. And alcohol consistently drops my recovery. And I think more research and science is showing there's just really no good amount of alcohol that's gonna have physiologically for your body. There might be some connection points and things with traditions or rituals of hanging out with friends and family where there's that connection and I'm gonna have a drink. But what's been eye-opening for me is just seeing the data for my body when I have alcohol, the impacts that has. That's been pretty profound as well. Anything else showing up for you asleep? No, I don't think so, not that I can think of. Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's talk about strain. And I think this is probably the thing that grabbed me first because strain feels measurable. It feels like work, it feels like effort, it feels like output. And if you're somebody who likes to train, exercise, perform, push, or accomplish, it makes sense that strain would catch your attention. And it did for me. So, how high was my strain today was a question or something that I would like to wake up and look at. How hard did I go? What zones was I in? Did I get to a zone three, a four, a five? Did I push in my workout? But over time, my relationship with strain is changing. I think slowly, and I don't think I see it as a badge anymore. It's just more context, more information, because a high strain day is not automatically a win of the day. I think that there's a better question that can be asked. And was the strain appropriate for the body I brought into that day? Was it supported by my recovery? Was I building capacity, or was I just burying myself? And I think that feels like a much healthier question. And I think the other thing strain has taught me is that load is not just exercise, load is life. Work counts, travel counts, parenting counts, stress. All of this contributes to strain. If I have a stressful day at work and maybe I'm on all day, I'll come home and I'll look at my whoop and my strain is really elevated. I'm like, I didn't even work out today. But my body says I was under strain. And so I think our body is always carrying this strain that we may not be aware of. And so, Kel, I'm curious, how has your view of strain changed over time?

SPEAKER_00 27:15

I'm a solid work in progress on this one, for sure. Lots of awareness, lots of kind of aha moments. I think I alluded to them before, but I want to say the whoop with strain has created a voice for my nervous system. And that has been a beautiful gift because I didn't hear that voice before because it's quiet, it's silent. But the whoop has given me information and knowledge on, like you said, there's so much load going on that again, I would not have really put in the bucket of strain or stress. I just am like, that's just part of life. This is normal. And moms tend to be really good at just like stacking things onto their day with I'm just helping, like this is just what we do. I needed some objective outside input that maybe wasn't my husband telling me what to do, but this wearable just saying, hey, like today's been a day. And yes, Kelly, you can move, but maybe instead of hammering out a run, maybe it's a jog, or maybe instead of going and doing a wad, like a workout of the day, maybe it looks more like a mobility movement session. And I mean, I wish I could give myself that permission just normally, but I'm not very good at that yet. And so that's where I'm a work in progress. And I want to layer in here also that I love using the wearable, and it's really important to still practice listening to your own body because the wearable gives feedback and gives advice. I'm not a data junkie per se at all. So I think I'm fortunate in the sense that I don't just like latch onto numbers and then run down any rabbit hole I can find, which is totally okay if you do, because there's people that will do that, and that is absolutely fair, and this will be your best friend. But I would encourage you to just have awareness and maybe even journal. If you know you really like to collect numbers and data and that excites you, then maybe journal also just on an RP, like your own experience. Like what's what's your feeling in conjunction to the numbers? Because I think that's really been helpful for me with like this just process of like you said, we're just learning. Like I'm very much learning, I'm a work in progress, and I'm using this as an addition, an additive versus telling me what to do. Because there are some days where my strain is wide open and it goes up to 20, and it's like, hey, your body's primed and ready to go, but I feel terrible. And that might be because I'm three days out from starting my menstruation, or that could be because I got a phone call from somebody that was really heavy, and I'm just kind of processing that, and that is not a number tracked. So I really want to encourage and just remind people that this is a device and this is a beautiful addition. End of the day, nothing will ever know your body as well as you do. And I want to just restate that I'm still learning about my body. So it's a constant journey that I feel like, yes, I will always know my body, but my body's forever evolving and changing, and I'm constantly going to be the listener and the learner. And this is helping me just have more resources to do that.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

That was awesome. Okay, a couple things that stood out to me with that. The whoop gives a voice to my nervous system. Someone needs to trademark that because that is fantastic. We operate all day long on sometimes, what do we say? Heart, what is our nervous system? I'm trying to put this into words, and it's how we interpret stress, body interprets stress, and now we actually have some numbers in the form of heart rate variability and strain, where we might think, I didn't do anything today, but that conversation with a friend that was heavy was just so taxing to my system. And now we do, we have this voice for what our nervous system is doing. The other thing that stood out to me is to not forego listening to your body. And I think with all the digital distractions, a whoop could be considered a digital distraction, right? You wake up and you're so concerned with all the metrics and the numbers and all the things that you're not paying attention to how am I really feeling today? And so I really appreciate you naming both of those things, and I think they're equally as important when we're talking about strain. Whew. Yeah, there's a just so well said. And I think that maybe one of the best mindset shifts a wearable can offer is not to just do more, but to be smarter with how you use your effort. Am I listening to my body? And the whoop backing that up. Okay, my strain is high today. I was gonna go out for this long run. Probably not a good idea. Maybe I'm actually not in tune with my body. I'm in tune with my head, and my training plan says I have to do a 10-mile run today. And so I'm thinking I gotta do a 10-mile run today, but in reality, I'm just trash and I should really maybe do a three-mile recovery run. How do you feel about that just internal battle of what the device says and what your mind is maybe thinking?

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Yeah, that's real. I mean, that's very real. Like you said, I'm training for this trail run, and I love having a plan, and I love working the plan. And it is that internal conversation when I get feedback from the whoop, it just asks me to pause and ask a second question of because again, it can be off. It could be on one case saying, Hey, you're great. Go for that 10-mile jog and hit it hard, but I'm not feeling good. So maybe that's where I ask the second question, like, what do I really need right now? And I might not ask that if I didn't almost the whoop telling me to do something where I say, I don't want to do that. Like, that's a good question, right? Or on the flip side, it's like, oh, you know what, your tax, your nervous systems needs to chill out. And I'm like, I feel amazing. I'm asking now a second question. What do I really feel? And that's where pairing it with just that deeper dive. Like one of the best, again, most simple things are the beautiful truths in life. But one of the simple things that I was taught as an athlete was like the body scan. You know, you lay in the savasana and you start from your feet and you just work your way up to the crown of your head. And it's a it's a true like pause, be present, ask your body where it's at as you move through. And that was just a beautiful tool I learned as a teenager. And that is a similar thing that, for example, you could pair with the whoop of like just metric-wise, like, where am I really at? Like, pause for that hot second. What's my body telling me? And then what is the whoop telling me? And now make a choice, like make a decision and go and move forward. And and I just like having that. It's again, just like having a second conversation with an objective source that has my personal data locked in. So it's great.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Fantastic. I think with strain, one more thing I also want to say is like it forces us to be honest with ourselves. At the end of a week, I can look back and be like, yeah, I've I worked out a couple times, I'm good. And then because it tracks how much time you spend each day in each of your heart rate zones, there's five zones. Zone zero is you're just waking up, that's like life. Zone one is when you start to move a little bit, your heart rate elevates. The more you move, the more your heart rate elevates. We get up to that higher zone five. But it tracks how many minutes we spend in each zone, each day. And you can track that over a week, a month, a year, and it gives you really useful data of like, oh, I'm actually not moving my body enough. I'm not training my heart enough. And then you can layer on top of that, you can track your strength training time. And as we age, and at every age, strength training is so important for bone health, muscle health, to have the strength and energy and vitality to do life. So we can actually get honest with ourselves of am I actually strength training? So I also like the whoop listen to your body, but then you can also look back collectively and say, wow, I probably need to be doing a little bit more for my heart or a little bit more for my muscles. And it gives you that data. So for data geeks out there, it is fantastic. So, Kel, let's move on to recovery, which is the third bucket. We have sleep, we have strain, and then we have recovery. And this may be the most interesting part of all of this, because recovery is where the conversation stops being mostly about output and starts becoming more about readiness. And it asks a different question. Not what do I want to do today, but how is my body actually doing today? And that's where people start hearing things like resting heart rate, HRV, readiness, the nervous system, which you mentioned, all that language. So let's try and simplify it for our listeners. What is HRV? HRV stands for heart rate variability. And in simple terms, it's one signal that can give you some insight into how your body is handling stress and recovery. It's not the whole story, and it's definitely not something to obsess over, but it can be useful when you look at it over time and relative to your own baseline. And I think that part really matters. Your baseline, not your partner's baseline, not your coworker's baseline. What is your baseline, your body? No comparison, no competition. This is not some weird game of trying to beat someone else's number. It's just noticing, and again, what you said earlier, Kel, or listening what tends to happen in your body when you rested, or maybe when you're underslept, or stressed, or overloaded, or sick, or doing well. And I think when I think of HRV, it's like your heartbeat. Lob dub, lobdub, lub dub, lub dub. That's a nice steady heart rate. There's no variability. That is a sign that maybe your nervous system is being taxed too much, which is kind of counterintuitive. What you might want is a heart rate that does this lob dub. Lob dub lub dub lub dub lob dub lub dub lub dub. And that's your body being relaxed. Your heart rate is like on a vacation, and there's different frequencies between the beats. That is heart rate variability. We want an elevated heart rate variability that tells us that our nervous system is chilled out. We're having more of what we call our parasympathetic or rest and digest system is activated. We're in a good space. If we're in a heightened state, if our nervous system is activated, our heart rate needs to be consistently loved up, loved up, loved up, loved up. No break, no rest, just going because it's quote unquote on. So think of your heart rate via that. And I think for me, whoop, like this is something that has shed a lot of light on me, if I'm being honest. It's probably one of the most frustrating metrics on the entire device. I'll wake up and be like, why is my HRV so crap today? And I'm trying to like figure out this trend, and it's a conversation that Cal and I are having all the time. So I'm just curious, Cal, what is the recovery data? What has that helped you understand about your body, day-to-day life, frustrations, successes, all the things?

SPEAKER_00 38:44

Yeah, I think real quick on the three rocks, like the recovery and the sleep are two that you're basically, if once you're checking your whoop, these are ones that are just giving you feedback. The strain is where you have agency. That's where you get to like play in the game of whoop. And so the recovery is a piece that is really powerful, I think, because again, like sleep, you can feel it when you wake up, or just like it's not super tricky to unpack like what will make your sleep better and not better. Whereas recovery, it is more tricky. And I think that's why you say, like, this is one that we go around the horn with and like try to figure out, and we're still very much in the emphasis of like which metrics are really affecting this because it sometimes seems so sporadic, and sometimes we feel like we're onto something, and then one change up and it blows that theory up. And I feel like we've gone back and forth on this, and and we might be doing that for a very long time. But I do I've again the whoop for me has been just paramount in that internal, like specifically nervous system component of my life, and specifically in my 30s and now 40s, as my body is changing and my hormones are changing. There is a lot going on in this female body and in all female bodies that is really complex, really beautiful, and all natural, but also tricky. And the whoop is doing its best job to help give us again that language, give us that insight. And I love that I can look back and see the rhythms of okay, how my week stacked up. Seven years ago, I could work out hard seven days a week, and I felt amazing. Current day, if I do three or four hard days in a row, I just got ran over by a bus. Even though I want to and I can and I love keeping up with everybody, but my body is saying, like, that's not the best. And the only way that I truly believe that, because I sometimes still, like I said, I'm a solid work in progress. I still am like, oh, I can go. I'm fine. Because I want to. I want to I want to do it, and I feel better in the moment, but then it catches up to me. And but this recovery piece is where I can look back and, like you said, see the trend and say, this really isn't working. Okay, we're on times, you know, this is the 10th round, Kelly, that you've done it, and it still is coming out as a net zero. So it is that honest coaching, it is that honest internal feedback, and I'm slow to pick it up because I maybe I just don't want to, but I will say by me paying attention to that and like validity in my world, I am experiencing better success. I am seeing, you know, a trend tick in the right direction. Like the needle starts to move and like my HRV numbers will come up when I actually listen and respond to okay, the fluctuation of my weekly routine. Like, I did carry a big stress day. Like, maybe I did all the housework, plus I worked out, plus I did all the grocery shopping, plus we ran around like crazy, bringing our kids everywhere. Okay, tomorrow needs to be different. Tomorrow you can't just keep stacking, even though in my brain I can't. But the whoop just gives you those like really honest baseline numbers. And so that again, it's that objectivity, it's the trending. And then it again helps me connect with my body of like, I didn't feel that, but this is what my body is saying, and I'm slowly picking up those subtleties that my body are saying that I just was either too busy to pay attention to or wasn't aware that, oh, that that is like a signal. Like, for example, waking up without an alarm or just waking up earlier on my own. I'm like, oh, my body is in a great rhythm right now. Whereas I could have just chalked that up to, oh, I slept really hard that night. So great, I got up earlier. But I see that if I'm consistent with my ebb and flows of the output throughout the week, that just naturally is a consistent experience that I have on the waking up side of my day. And yeah, it's helpful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

And I think that might be the favorite part of this whole thing of whoop is what you describe when you wake up in the morning, or when I wake up, it's not only like, how'd you sleep? How was my recovery? What was your HRV hun? Oh wow, mine was like not so good, or it was really good. And then we have this conversation around, wow, I wonder why it was. Like, what's going on? And it's not so much the score as the conversation. Because when one of us says, hey, I didn't sleep so hot last night, or my recovery's low, it's not just information. It becomes a way to understand each other a little bit better. And maybe that means more patience, maybe it means more grace, maybe it means a better question. And I really did not expect that from Whoop. And it's one of the things I love the most about it is having those conversations with you. We're going through life together. We're doing this journey together. We're 20 years deep in our relationship, and we're changing every day. And this gives us an opportunity to get in tune with each other a little bit more. And it's given us language, maybe not perfect language, but some language to continue to understand each other. How do you think that has changed the way we check in with each other andor support each other?

SPEAKER_00 43:53

Yeah, I'm really grateful that we're doing this together. I would be going on this like journey of this like kind of health span. Lifestyles shift. And to do that with you creates just so many layers of connection, which we're probably not even aware of, all of them. But like you said, it is, I mean, we both have our own arenas that we are managing. And it's very easy in this phase of life. I like to call it the great squeeze when you have like your parents aging and your youngsters that you're trying to raise, and we're trying to hang on and like stay connected as a couple in a marriage. And it's very easy to just good morning, I'm good. Simple words, I'm fine, yada yada yada, and carry through. And it's like, oh, how is your workout? Good, great. Okay, have a good day. And this does let us have that language to have a few more metrics to touch in on. And because we're both aware of what those metrics mean and how they play out, it gives us awareness on how we can support each other on many different levels. It could be mental, it could be emotional, and it could be physical. And I think because we both value just being able to do like literally do life together and play for as many years as possible doing this game of life, that we value that. And so this is one of those opportunities for us to support each other, listen to each other, touch bases more than just roommates on the go and passing in the kitchen to just pause and like, where is my husband at? How is he doing today? And based on maybe your feedback, where can I give a little bit or where can I ask for help? Which is one of my weaknesses of all time. But I'm working on it. Actually, by me even just sharing to you, like you said, hey, this was my recovery, this is my feedback. You now hear me say those numbers. So even if I don't do a good job of saying, hey, Shan, I need some help right now, you already know, okay, she's like at this level. So maybe if I do a little extra or I do some dishes or I took out the trash or whatever that is, like you know, you're adding to my bank account versus taking any withdrawals. And I think those are just really subtle nuances, like you said, that the Whoop gives us, but it's a big relational component to keeping us connected and supportive and yeah, just on the same page that we're literally going through this together versus in separate lanes.

SPEAKER_01 46:15

That's beautiful. I just so much want to do this journey of life with you, and that resonates at every single level. We're getting older, and that mortality thing is like every day it's a little closer, and it's I want to soak up every moment with you, I want to soak up every moment with our kids, and this gives us something to connect on that's moving us forward with our goals and relationship and family and health and fitness. And I just love that. And I think the data gives us more than language, it's like love is the point. That's why we're doing this. And I don't know, because the goal here is to be connected, it's not about perfection, it's to become more aware, more connected, less ruled by the metrics, more honest, more compassionate. And that's when I think the Whoop becomes genuinely helpful. Okay, before I close, I just want to say one thing for anyone listening who's brand new to Whoop or really anywhereable. Start simple. You do not need to understand every metric right away. You do not need to obsess over every number, and you definitely do not need one more thing in your life to make you anxious. Start with sleep. That's probably the easiest place to begin. And honestly, it's the one that affects almost everything else. Your energy, your mood, your patience, your training, your clarity, your resilience, just all of it. So just start noticing patterns. What seems to help? What seems to hurt? What happens when you've had a few rough nights in a row? And what happens when you're more consistent? And then from there, look for the trends, not just isolated blips. One weird score is just one weird score. The pattern matters more. Use strain as context, not as a trophy, and use recovery as feedback, not identity. A low recovery score doesn't mean you're broken. It may just mean your body is asking for a little more wisdom that day. And I think that's really the takeaway for me after two years. Whoop hasn't taught us that more data automatically means more wisdom. Is it hasn't taught us that a score can tell the whole story? And it definitely hasn't taught us to outsource our intuition, but it has taught us to pay attention, to notice patterns, to take sleep more seriously, to think a little differently about strain, and to see recovery as useful feedback. And maybe most of all to ask better questions. Because in the end, the goal is not perfect metrics. The goal is to live well, recover well, love well, and show up well. And if a wearable helps you do that with a little more awareness, that's not nothing. I also want to just say a huge thank you to Kelly for joining me for this conversation. I love getting to do this with you, and I'm really grateful for your honesty, your perspective, and the way you help bring such heart to this episode. And if this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend, a spouse, a teammate, or someone else who's trying to better understand their body and live with a little more awareness. Thank you all for being with us, and as always, keep redefining what's possible.