Whoop, a Boston-based technology company that makes the official wearable fitness device of both the PGA Tour and LPGA, is releasing the Whoop Strap 4.0, an update to the fitness and sleep monitoring system worn by scores of professional golfers such as Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas and Olympic gold medalist Nelly Korda.
Waterproof and designed to be worn 24 hours a day, Whoop measures your heart rate hundreds of times per minute and tracks your level of exertion when you exercise and go about your day, giving it a Strain score. It also tracks the duration and quality of your rest, giving it a Sleep score, and measures how primed your body is at the beginning of each day to exercise and work. with that measurement called a Recovery score. All these scores are creating data Whoop collects, along with proprietary algorithms, and the idea is that by tracking your Strain, Sleep and Recovery numbers in a free smartphone app, Whoop users can learn how different factors – such as travel, alcohol use, diet and different workout intensities – can affect their training. The goal is to help athletes develop a data-created plan to optimize performance and health.
Nelly Korda wearing a Whoop 4.0 strap on her right wrist (Whoop)
Whoop gained a cult following in the CrossFit community in the mid-2010s before a handful of golfers, including Scott Stallings and McIlroy, began wearing the device.
In 2020, Nick Watney awoke before the second round of the RBC Heritage, checked the Whoop app and saw that his respiratory rate (how often you take a breath while you sleep) had spiked overnight. Whoop had learned a spike in respiratory rate was often a sign that someone had contracted COVID-19, even if he or she was asymptomatic. Watney asked the PGA Tour to test him, and the results came back positive. That incident got wheels turning quickly, and within days a partnership was created so every PGA Tour player, caddie and tournament official could get a Whoop strap. A few weeks later, the LPGA Tour struck a similar partnership.