How I Used the Whoop to Raise My Average Heart Rate Variability (HRV) 20 ms in 6 Weeks
In January of this year, I was gifted a six month subscription to a fitness tracking device called the Whoop. I heard about this product initially through the Joe Rogan Podcast, and then started to realize several friends had the Whoop band and loved it. I was at a point where mental and physical fitness and wellbeing were becoming more than just a casual interest for me, and it seemed like the statistics and data from the Whoop would be right up my alley. I did not know much about the specifics of what the Whoop did, I just knew it helped with sleep and recovery. I quickly started to learn the details of the device and what the data meant.
The Whoop provides a strain score each day that is related to the how hard your heart worked during that 24-hour period. It also gives a sleep score each morning based on the quality and amount of sleep you got (separated into deep sleep, REM sleep and light sleep) and a recovery score determined by a combination of your sleep score, resting heart rate and Heart Rate Variability.
It turns out, one of the biggest factors involved with our recovery is a measurement called Heart Rate Variability, or HRV. According to Whoop, “Heart rate variability is literally the variance in time between the beats of your heart. So, if your heart rate is 60 beats per minute, it’s not actually beating once every second. Within that minute there may be 0.9 seconds between two beats, for example, and 1.15 seconds between two others. The greater this variability is, the more “ready” your body is to execute at a high level.”
I think of it as heart “flexibility”. When HRV is higher, heart rate can change and adapt easily. When HRV is low, heart rate is constant and rigid and has short term and long term negative implications on health. I was not sure if HRV was truly an indicator of recovery or long term heart health, so I did some preliminary research and found a great deal of evidence on the importance of HRV. Even Harvard says so.
In researching more about HRV, I read that it is a highly individualized number, and one should not necessarily compare their number to others. However, I also found charts like the one below that showed typical ranges of HRV based on age, and I kept reading how chronically low HRV was a predictor of heart issues and generally less favorable health.
After a few weeks of wearing the Whoop, it became apparent to me that my HRV was quite low. The typical range for a male in my age bracket is 55ms-75ms (ms=milliseconds). My HRV was typically in the low 30s, often dipping into the 20s and even sometimes the teens. This became unsettling for me. I felt like I was a healthy person. I worked out nearly every day, I ate nutritious foods, I did yoga on occasion. I thought I had it all figured out, but the Whoop told me otherwise.
A major attributing factor to Heart Rate Variability is stress. When we experience stress, our heart is less “flexible”, and our HRV score will typically be lower because of it. At first, my low numbers were actually causing me to experience more stress. I tried a few things here and there to raise my score, but nothing in a meaningful or consistent enough manner to affect real change. For months my score hovered in the 30’s, and I started to think attempting to improve this was futile. (Eventually, I was actually able to use the fact that stress lowered my HRV to help calm down in the moment knowing I would be disappointed in myself the next day for letting my emotions negatively affect my recovery).
I finally came to a crossroads where I was either going to give up on the Whoop, or I was going to commit myself fully to trying to improve my HRV. Fortunately, I chose the latter.
The week of May 4th (below, left), my average HRV was 32ms. According to the chart above, that would put me at the low end of the average for someone over the age of 65. I am 32.
My average for the week of June 22nd is 53ms, and I had a day that reached 73ms.
This is how I did it:
1. Cardiovascular Exercise
As I mentioned, I was working out most days of the week, but I was doing almost no cardio. I decided to change this approach completely. While I continued to lift, I also added treadmill running (not necessarily my preferred method of exercise, but it was all I had access to during the quarantine) to my routine. I ran on the treadmill five or six days a week. I tried to vary what I did, so some days I would run a longer distance, others I would do Tabata sprints, while other days I would run my fastest mile. I also binge watched Billions to make the act of running on a treadmill slightly more tolerable. I noticed a massive improvement in my cardiovascular endurance during this six week period, and I am convinced it was the biggest contributor to improving my HRV.
2. Meditation
I had meditated a handful of times in my life prior to my Whoop Wellness Journey, but I never committed to doing it on a consistent basis. I decided to give it a try after encountering a great deal of evidence on its mental and physical health benefits such as those listed here. Meditation was something I tried once I was already anxious or stressed. I never thought to do it as a daily practice or as a “maintenance” exercise. I now meditate every morning within the first twenty minutes of waking up using the Headspace app. There is a free version of the app available to anyone, and the full version is currently free for health care workers, educators and unemployed individuals. There are also free resources for meditation available through YouTube and other sources.
3. Water Intake
I knew drinking water was important, but I never truly paid attention to how much I was drinking, and I only made it a priority when it was convenient to me. This seemed like a very simple one to improve. The Whoop asks you a series of questions each morning about your previous day, and one of the questions is about water intake, so it seemed wise to improve in this area. There are several different pieces of “conventional wisdom” about how much water is enough water, but I decided to go with drinking my body weight in ounces of water each day. With the amount I was sweating during my treadmill sessions, this seemed about right. Not only do I think increasing my water intake helped my HRV, it also made me feel better each day. I had more energy, I did not get as hungry and my mood was improved.
4. Early Dinner
When we eat too close to bedtime, our body has to work while we sleep to digest the food (especially if it was a heavy dinner) and we lose out on some of the recovery and restoration our bodies need to thrive the next day. I go to sleep early, so it was not realistic for me to eat more than three hours before bedtime. However, some nights I was eating only thirty minutes or an hour before I went to sleep. I committed to early dinner every night, and I could actually tell a difference in how my body felt when I got in bed. My heart was calmer and I felt clearer and more relaxed.
5. Reading in Bed
Instead of watching a few episodes of Cheers and passing out, I left the TV off and picked up a book instead. I could write a separate article on the benefits of reading (and I probably will), but I just want to talk about the impact reading in bed had on my sleep and HRV right now. After several days in a row of reading in bed, I found that I woke up fewer times in the middle of the night, and I woke up in the morning feeling more rested. Again, it was the consistency that made the difference. I had read in bed before, but it was sporadic. The commitment to doing it nightly was when the magic happened.
These five factors made all the difference in the world for me. After less than a week of implementing these practices, I saw a rise in my HRV. I now see scores in the 60s and 70s on a relatively consistent basis. Before I made these changes, the highest HRV I had ever achieved was 50ms.
One important takeaway from all of this is that there is a big difference between doing something on occasion and doing it consistently. I did all of the things I listed on occasion, but it was not until I did them on a daily basis that I saw improvement.
I talk a lot about the idea of being happy, not satisfied, and this applies directly to my Whoop Wellness Journey. Instead of looking at my low HRV numbers as anxiety-inducing and insurmountable, I chose to focus on the process (steps above) and not the product (the number itself). Once I did this, an achievement (higher HRV) was a byproduct of the process.
I look forward to continuing to refine my daily routines and processes, and I have no doubt my HRV will continue to improve. There are countless ways to help raise your Heart Rate Variability, and different techniques will be more effective for different people. If you are thinking about purchasing a Whoop subscription, I highly recommend doing so. It has changed my life for the better, and it provided me information about myself that I would have never otherwise known. If you already own a Whoop and are looking to make improvements, give the above ideas a try! I am confident you can bust out of your “Whoop rut”!
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