After years of full-time wear, these are the things I wish I knew earlier about Whoop.
The Whoop 4.0 isn’t like other fitness trackers, which means there can be a bit of a learning curve when you first begin logging your training and tracking sleep.
After three years of full-time wear (and plenty of inconsistent wear before that), I’ve realized there’s plenty I wish I had known earlier about Whoop—and how to get the most out of wearing one.
Sure, there are the obvious bits to understand when you first strap it on—like the concept of Whoop’s Strain—but this guide is all about uncovering the hidden features for those just getting started.
These are the 10 things I wish an experienced Whoop-er would have bestowed upon me before I embarked on using it as a full-time wearable for my training.
1. Don’t try and wash it in the shower
Whoop insists that you wear the tracker in the shower, especially since it introduced all-day stress tracking in 2024. You’ll now get push notifications telling you to put it back on when the Whoop 4.0 realizes it’s not attached to you. Even the charging module is water-resistant.
My advice: do not shower with it on.
In my experience, doing so can lead to mild skin irritation despite being relatively breathable. It also really increases the likelihood you’ll need to wash the smell out of the band (more on that later) because it doesn’t dry quickly enough.
The same goes for swimming. I’ve tested Whoop’s Hydroknit bands over the last year or so in the pool, and they do, as claimed, dry quicker than the out-of-the-box bands. Yet, I still prefer to switch to a semi-retired band for most water workouts.
2. The bicep band is superior
I’ve not particularly got any bad feelings toward the wrist-based Whoop 4.0 bands. Still, both wearability and accuracy increased massively when I switched to a bicep band after a couple of months.
Not only does it allow me to avoid one of my great fears—wearing wearables on both wrists for an extended period—but it also ensures the Whoop 4.0 never gets in the way and can’t ever really be felt.
Again, I’ve also found it much more reliable at tracking heart rate during workouts – likely on account of being in a better place on the body to monitor pulse.
On the odd occasion that I’ve used a regular band in a workout, the data showed it to be more prone to either not picking up heart rate spikes and dips quickly enough or missing them altogether. It’s much more sensitive – and closer to gold-standard options like Apple and Garmin – when worn on the upper arm.
3. Skin temperature will skew if you charge overnight
I expect many will pick up on this very quickly, but, ashamedly, I think it took me three or four occasions before I realized why my overnight skin temperature had spiked by over a degree.
It’s the battery pack’s fault. Obviously.
Don’t be alarmed if you notice this reading is above your usual baseline in the Whoop Health Monitor. As long as it’s just this metric that’s off, you can likely ignore it.
Stick to charging during the day if you don’t want skewed stats.
4. You can change pounds to kilograms
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve Googled a pounds to kilograms calculator in the gym while cursing Whoop for forcing the imperial system onto me.
Of course, they weren’t, and you can change your preferred measurement unit in the Whoop app.
I had lazily looked and not found the option to change units when initially testing the Strength Trainer, but I only accidentally stumbled on it months later.
Don’t be like me, endlessly trying to perform mental maths to correctly convert your lifts into the Strength Trainer.
Just go to More > My Account > Profile Information > Units and spare yourself the anguish.
5. Definitely use the Strength Trainer
Using the Whoop 4.0 for lifting was always a bit flawed before the Strength Trainer came along last year. This is because the company’s Strain metric was previously just based on heart rate and never accounted for muscular load.
It meant that my sessions in the gym – at an average of around 130bpm, for example – would only typically deliver a Strain Score of between 7-9. Even the most demanding gym sessions used to amount to what Whoop took for a rest day or less challenging than a half-hour base pace run.
That all changed with the Strength Trainer. After initially going in the opposite direction and overcalculating Strain (in my case, at least), this now appears to have evened out and provides an accurate-feeling estimation of effort.
It takes time to draw up your routine in the app, but I can’t recommend it enough compared to other wearables and third-party apps I’ve tried over the last decade.
6. Leave the Whoop app open while charging
This is another area where I wasted a lot of time and effort. It probably took me a couple of months at least to realize that my battery pack doesn’t charge the tracker unless the app is open.
Now, admittedly, this isn’t a widespread issue—but there are others like me on the Whoop subreddit who have found the same solution to the problem.
I now actually own a pair of Whoop charging packs. Interestingly, one seems to have this issue, and one doesn’t. But on the faulty pack, charging drops off immediately unless the Whoop app shows on our phone (running in the background doesn’t solve this).
If you ever experience issues, try this trick first.
7. Link Google Health Connect
One just for the Android crowd, syncing with Google Health Connect is a superb way to sync what you track on Whoop into apps that don’t necessarily support native integration.
So, for example, I use it to make sure my Whoop data syncs over to Oura. It means that heart rate readings are pulled in by the smart ring maker in areas it struggles with, like strength training or run tracking.
It can sound complicated at first, but Health Connect is surprisingly simple to use; it’s clever enough to not double up on data (if you also have the Whoop-Strava integration on, for example) and means you can cherry-pick where your Whoop data goes outside of the app.
Whoop’s Google Health Connect support page is pretty helpful for those getting to grips with this.
8. Wash the band in vinegar regularly
Remember earlier when I told you not to wash the Whoop band in the shower? The downside of listening to that advice is that it inevitably starts to kick up a stink regardless—particularly if you’re wearing it on your bicep.
We found out the hard way after a week of sweaty workouts in 30-degree heat and plenty of sun cream to leave the bicep band in rough condition.
Luckily, leaving the band – with the tracker removed – in a sink of white vinegar for a few hours means all the nastiness is extracted. I do this every month or two to avoid skin irritation (and the smell). It’s worked like a charm over the last couple of years.
9. Tell the Sleep Planner you want to ‘Peak’
When I first used Whoop, I ignored the Sleep Planner for around six months. As somebody who loses most cognitive functions after less than eight hours of sleep, the suggested bedtimes of 02:00 following a rest day or 00:40 following a training day rendered it pointless in my eyes.
That all changed after I permanently switched the goal from ‘Perform’ (85% of Sleep Need) to ‘Peak’ (100% of Sleep Need). I now use this feature most days, particularly when preparing for a hard training day or when I’ve suffered a red recovery.
It may sound obvious, and this advice applies more to those who have the luxury of choosing a consistent sleep and wake time, but I’ve found it really helps my recovery effort.
Add more Key Statistics to your dashboard
Another simple but effective way to boost the Whoop experience is to add more Key Statistics to your dashboard.
It’s another feature I initially missed, and adding more has allowed me to get a quick insight into the hours of restorative sleep I got the previous night, and which way it’s trending.
There are many options here, and you can tailor them to be more sleep-based (with things like Sleep Debt and Time In Bed counters) or recovery-focused.
To do so, make sure you’re on the ‘Home’ tab in the Whoop app, scroll past your day’s activities, and tap ‘Customize’ sitting adjacent to the Key Statistics section.
