“The reality is, by measuring your body, you can start to figure out, ‘What are the little things I can do to make myself a better version of me?’”
Will Ahmed
EFR 239: WHOOP - Uncovering the Secrets of Human Performance, Reducing Overtraining, and Improving Recovery with Will Ahmed
Welcome to the first episode in a mini-series from the Spartan World Championships 2019 from the beautiful Squaw Valley in Lake Tahoe, CA! Ever Forward Radio was present and in full force engaging with athletes, weekend warriors, and everyone in between during this multi-day event in September, 2019.
Are you a person of action who wants to constantly improve yourself and your performance? Each and every one of us has this inner potential to perform at our maximum potential. We can only achieve this if we have the knowledge and understanding of different signals in our bodies.
In this episode, Will Ahmed shares with us WHOOP, a next-generation wearable that measures sleep and recovery, and the benefits of using the product. He also gives valuable insights into how athletes can use this product to prevent overtraining. We also discuss how knowing our present body condition, especially physiological signs, can lead to meaningful changes and reinforce positive habits. WHOOP is not just for athletes, but for every go-getter. Will shares stories of WHOOP users whose lives have improved with its use.
If you wish to improve your performance and be on the know of how your body responds to your activities, then this episode is for you.
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Save 15% on WHOOP and get the activity tracker band for FREE when you sign up with a new membership with code CHASE at www.whoop.com
Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:
Learn about overtraining and how you can avoid it.
What are the different ways to prevent poor sleep, non-recovery, and sickness?
Discover the benefits of using WHOOP and how it can reinforce positive habits.
Resources
WHOOP’s website. Save 15% when you sign up for a WHOOP membership and get the activity tracker band for FREE. Just use the code CHASE at checkout to avail of the discount.
Episode Highlights
How WHOOP Came About
Will founded WHOOP when he was 22 years old.
He was the captain of the squash team at Harvard.
He was also doing a lot of physiology research at Harvard, focusing on preventing overtraining and how to train optimally. This became the business plan for starting WHOOP.
Overtraining and Overreaching
Overtraining happens when your body is on a period of sympathetic dominance, and your body is having trouble creating a parasympathetic response.
About 70% of athletes have overtrained at some point in their careers.
Some of the common symptoms include low heart rate variability, trouble sleeping, feeling a little depressed, and a lower level of energy.
Overreaching is a good thing. It means putting slightly more stress on your body than it is ready for, which builds up fitness.
But if your body is not recovering and you are still incremental amounts of load, you're putting your body in a state of overtraining.
Preventing Overtraining
It is vital to understand how recovered your body is every single day.
As a result of understanding your body, you will know your limitations, You will know how much strain you can take when performing and training.
Using Whoop In Training
Whoop can help athletes dial things back and say “no” for that specific day.
You can only manage what you measure.
The measurement of factors like sleep, recovery, stress, and strain is imperative to improvement. All of these affect your body and your performance.
By measuring these things, you will see where your body is and its condition. It gives you a baseline.
The Condition of Your Body
There are physiological indicators that you cannot feel.
They are a better predictive indication of your performance over what you feel.
Heart Rate Variability
This is the lens of your autonomic nervous system.
The autonomic nervous system is composed of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity.
Sympathetic activity is what makes your heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration go up.
Parasympathetic activity is the opposite.
You need your body to strike a balance. For every sympathetic activity, there must be a parasympathetic response. This equilibrium increases heart rate variability.
WHOOP’s System and Design
WHOOP is a wrist-worn sleep monitor.
Its system is designed to measure sleep recovery along with strain.
It is, by far, the most accurate sleep monitor.
Third-party validations have proved that the product is very similar to a PSG (sleep lab).
Our Inner Potential
It is the potential to perform at your highest level.
You can only harness this by uncovering secrets your body has been telling you.
Body signals, no matter how small or big they are, are instrumental in preventing injury and finding motivation.
WHOOP bridges the gap between what your body is telling you and how you can listen to it.
Using WHOOP can help you find your inner potential.
WHOOP for Behavioral Change
You can use the data provided by WHOOP as your baseline.
It can give you an idea of how your habits may be affecting your performance. In turn, you can come up with ways to avoid these harmful habits.
Knowing the impact of your habits empowers you to take action.
It can lead to behavioral change.
Why Use WHOOP
It is designed to help you understand your body.
You can also interact with other people in the WHOOP community. They can be your support system.
WHOOP is effective for motivated individuals.
There are a lot of people who testified that WHOOP changed their lives and habits for the better.
5 Powerful Quotes from This Episode
“You can only manage what you measure. And if you're not measuring things like sleep, if you're not measuring things like recovery, how the hell are you going to figure out what you need to do to improve them?”
“I actually think feelings are really overrated. Because there are physiological indicators that you can't feel that actually have a much better predictive indication of how you're going to perform than your own feelings.”
“Rest is the missing ingredient for almost everyone.”
“The reality is, by measuring your body, you can start to figure out, ‘What are the little things I can do to make myself a better version of me?’”
“The powerful thing is feeling empowered, knowing what the impact of those different things (habits) is going to be on my body.”
About the Guest
Will Ahmed is the founder and CEO of Whoop, Inc, which is the creator of Whoop, a next-generation wearable technology. Whoop aims to optimize human performance and has worked with professional athletes, college athletes, Olympians, and even the US Military.
To connect with Will, you may reach him on Twitter. To know more about Whoop and some details about how to avail membership and some experiences on using the product, check out their website.
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