WHOOP 4.0 Opens Up – Starts to bring in data from other platforms [Beta]

A big step happened for WHOOP today as it starts to open up the WHOOP app to data from other platforms.

Must Read: WHOOP Band 4.0 Review

I recently signed up for the iOS beta where WHOOP is linked to Apple Health and now brings data from there [beta]. That might sound fairly narrow in scope however if you already save your Garmin, Polar, Apple Watch, Suunto (or more) workouts to Apple Health then some of that data will now be passed into the WHOOP app. Even better than that, other wellness data like meditation is sent across too. Finally, for those of you who weigh yourself daily with a smart scale like  Withings Body+ or Garmin Index S2 then your weight will now magically find its way into WHOOP.

It’s a fairly big change in direction by WHOOP, let’s look in a little more detail.

Current WHOOP Integrations

You might remember that WHOOP already has integrations with Training Peaks and Strava. So you might be wondering what the big news here is as surely you could already get your other workouts in from Strava if that was what you wanted?

A: No.

Currently, the Training Peak and Strava links are one-way in the sense that WHOOP sends your workout data to them but received no workout data from them at all.

Why is WHOOP doing this?

Accuracy, maybe? Hmmm.

There are probably many motivations here for WHOOP but the most obvious one that springs to mind are addressing the concerns of athletes who are Cross-training and concerned about accurately recording strain, perhaps they are already using a medical-grade chest strap like a Polar H10?

There’s a whole host of issues I’ve just brought up there.

Firstly WHOOP absolutely does already record heart rate properly during workouts but only if you wear it properly and the place to do that is on your bicep. FitGearHunter and I performed numerous tests that show that to be the case. These for example…

Check out the details in the videos if you want to know more. Hunter is a trustworthy reviewer.

Wrist Accuracy

Forearm Accuracy

Bicep Accuracy

Then the second issue for cross-trainers or lifters is that strength-type exercises create a kind of muscular strain that is NEVER accurately recorded by the level of your heart rate. Just trust me on that!

The big HOWEVER is that WHOOP WILL and ALREADY DOES correctly look at the HRV recovery from strength workouts.

So you’re already good, right?

A: Kinda

How Do I Sign Up?

It’s a beta-invite only right now and I would imagine that the full public availability could be soon or, I would guess, at the end of March 2022 at the latest.

WHOOP link to Apple Health – More Details

Here are some screenshots that show the correct Apple integration, the permissions required, some notes and then a few activities from me today that have already been synced through into WHOOP.

You can see WHOOP got my waking-HRV reading with the Apple Watch Breathe app for 2 minutes at 08:17. I do that every day and correlate recovery scores & HRV between Apple, WHOOP and others in HRV4Training.

Then there are 15 minutes of HIIT, again recorded on the Apple Watch but this time with the Apple Workout app. But there was no workout heart rate as I was not wearing WHOOP (you have to wear WHOOP AND the Apple Watch).

If I add in another test bike ride recorded on the Apple Watch Workout app, this time wearing the WHOOP Strap, then I get the HR data, GPS track and post-workout subjective scores.

If you’d used Garmin, Polar, Wahoo or any other app then the same information would also get passed to WHOOP via Apple Health.

The only caveat here is that only the heart rate recorded by WHOOP is used. Heart rate is NOT imported from anywhere else.

Anything Else?

• Don’t forget to link your favourite app to Apple Health if you want this all to work. eg Garmin Connect or Polar Flow
• You must wear your WHOOP band for it all to work as you’d expect
• Manual Strain Sessions recorded by you on the app take priority
• Conflicting start and end times for whoop workouts and external workouts will be merged
• Google Fit will get the same treatment as iOS in Q2.2022.

Take Out

This is a nice feature and WHOOP has already said that they will consider sending data back into Apple Health in the future.

The main purposes of today’s announcement are for the correct classification of workouts and for updates to your biometrics like bodyweight.

I am unsure that WHOOP will ever receive externally recorded HR data. It will be easy enough for them to do that but that would invalidate their strap in one fell swoop, although you’d still need to subscribe to the platform to get the analyses so, hey, why not?