Alcohol has biggest negative effect on body, Whoop annual review shows
Alcohol has the biggest negative effect on the body according to this year’s annual review of Whoop stats.
Whoop 4.0 is the king of recovery and sleep tracking wearables. The device helps you better understand the ins and outs of your body, how to properly refuel. This ultimately helps you train smarter. Should you attempt that PR or do a Base run today? Whoop will let you know.
In our hands-on review we found Whoop to be a great device for those serious about their athletic pursuits. It’s a great platform to experiment how behaviour changes effect your training readiness and recovery.
In addition to the detailed insights and user-friendly app, another thing that separates Whoop from the pack is the frequency of measurements. The activity tracker measures key performance variables up to 100x per second, 24 hours a day.
Many thousands of individuals wake up every morning to their Whoop stats. And now the company has tapped into this rich database of data to give us an insight into trends for this year. Of course, no individual’s data was shared. The statistics are across a population level.
So what does the data show?
Recent years have been anything but normal. Luckily, the pandemic is largely behind us and things are pretty much back to normal in most countries.
Strain data
This is reflected in the Whoop 2002 data. The overall Whoop community saw a rise in outdoor and group activities. Solo and indoor activities, on the other hand, fell.
Globally, Pickelball saw the biggest increase. The activity grew by a 356% amongst Whoop users in 2022. Each country, of course, has its own preferences. For example, those living in Ireland register 392% more hurling activities than the global average. In Australia football is 286% more popular then elsewhere, in German cross-country skiing comes in at 187% and in England cricket 136%.
Unsurprisingly, running was the most popular activity in 2022. It registered a 4.14% increase on the previous year. Running was followed by functional fitness (down 10.98% on 2021), weightlifting (up 12.86%), walking (up 41.56%!), cycling (down 20.92%) and golf (down (16.79%).
Recovery data
Recovery data to us is more of interest considering that this is what Whoop is known for. 2022 started off strong – perhaps something to do with New Year resolutions. January was the top month as far as sleep performance with Whoop users averaging a solid 6.5 hours of sleep per night. This equates to 80.1% sleep performance. But it was all downhill from there.
The goal of a 100% sleep score was not unacheavable. Over 94% of members managed to get the perfect score at least one time during the year. On average, 16.5% of nights delivered a 100% sleep score. Those living in Minneapolis, Portland, Knoxville, Denver, Greenville and Amsterdam put in the most shut-eye during 2022. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Miami, San Jose and Los Vegas were at the other end of the scale.
Those that use Whoop have the option to log events in the journal. If you’re not taking the time to do that – you are not making the most of the device on your wrist. It is a window into how your habits effect your sleep and recovery.
So what did members learn during the year as far as recovery?
For starters – Alcohol is a no, no. This is something members of the Whoop community have known for a while now. Alcohol is by far the leading factor that effects negatively recovery according to the stats. Cut down or ditch alcohol altogether is our advice. Surprisingly caffeine topped the list of factors which contributed to a good recovery. It was followed by proper hydration.
Check out the table below.
The highest average recovery was recorded on Mondays – 64%. No doubt, this has something to do with people going to bed early in preparation for the working week.
You can check out the Annual Review stats in full on this link. Whoop is currently available at a 20% discount on the company’s website. This is the biggest discount to date on the wearable.
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