Hey guys,
I have been using whoop for some time already and got the MG just on release. Initially I wore it as I did with 4.0 on my wrist but I thought I give it a try and see how much better the data gets when I wear it 24/7 on my biceps.
So I got the whoop biceps band and tried.
Unfortunately the results are so much worse than I was hoping for. I believe generally on 24/7 usage and weight lifting the biceps data looks reasonably well but then I did a Intervall running sessions today.
The results are very bad. The sensor is sitting tight in my biceps as it should I guess (comparing to that how to wear whoop on biceps video from whoop on YouTube)
See data below. 1st image is whoop data, 2nd image is my reference data from polar h10 and 3rd image is another Intervall session when I wore the whoop on wrist.
What’s the issue here? Any comments from whoop team?
This will only work for people with smallish arms, but I use the regular strap on my bicep instead of hassling with a bicep band. Both the hydroknit and this band work when I use the device “unfolded” as in the photo.
So, if your arms are on the smaller size, save money.
update: today I did some indoor rowing and exactly the same thing happened with whoop on biceps.
The first 10min or so are looking great but then the HR explodes and is absolutely off.
I had a very consistent HR of approx 120 throughout the session but whoop reports this:
Hi @Jakub87, I asked a member of our Sensor Intelligence team to look into your specific account based on the data you posted earlier. They reviewed your data, and according to our internal flag, the strap appears to have become loose around the same time the heart rate data became less accurate. There was a clear drop in tightness approximately 15 minutes into the activity, which aligns with your decline in HR accuracy. Our advice is to tighten the strap tighter. That should fix the issue. If it continues, feel free to ping Membership Services at support@whoop.com and they can take a look at your strap with you.
Hey @Durkin , thanks for the quick reply and support. Okay I see, I will give this a try tomorrow with tighter band on the biceps and report back if it fixes it.
I hope I won’t need to tighten it so much it becomes uncomfortable for 24/7 wear
@Durkin getting back to you. I tried to put it a bit tighter on the biceps and can in fact confirm, data from the run today looks good again!
Thanks for your support and looking into the data. Helped me to narrow down and fix the issue!
Hey @Durkin , sorry for that but I have to bring this up again.
I thought it was solved when tightening the strap but unfortunately yesterday (July 18 - left side) and today (July 19 - right side) did look very bad again.
Again at around 12-14 min or so into the run.
This is strange. I checked multiple times during the run even, the strap was tight and did not move at all (except for the movement while running of course).
It looks like the device is either having some software flaw or cadence lock or so?
Of course this could still be me and maybe sweat or what ever but in such a case I wouldn’t be able to wear it on biceps for activities
All other HR data throughout the day and also with weight lifting looks good. It’s only the activities after the initial period somehow.
I attached the polar h10 logs as reference.
Thanks for looking into this again.
PS. It could be helpful as a feature to expose some of those error codes you guys see for debugging purpose on customer side.
Hi, I’m seeing this in a very similar way. Switched from Wrist to Biceps with my Whoop 5.0 Peak and especially when doing interval runs, where my HR really goes up I’m seeing very inaccurate data, especially after the first half of my run. This happened to me on my last two interval runs. Normal runs show quite similar results compared to my Apple Watch Ultra 2.
detailed screenshots - the first 2 intervals look very good, starting with interval 3 whoop HR drops completely and is way off, while my Apple Watch Ultra 2 replicates the intervals that I ran completely fine.
I wanted to get back and give my feedback and experience. Maybe it will help others.
I have tried another spot on my biceps, right on a muscle strand. I guess my previous position was a bit too much upwards where maybe my muscle fibers were to much moving or so, I don’t know.
Anyways, with this new position the HR is spot on. It is spot on for running but also very precise with strength training. So I am very happy now again!
Wrist heart rate data is totally off for me when running. I switched to bicep and adjusted positions often. Still very unreliable. Look at my data. With bicep band. Running for 2 hours with heart rate close to 200? Ridiculous.
I’ve had very accurate results from the wrist in my first 2 months of owning my Whoop 5.0 - like, really accurate (+/- 1bpm on avg and max). I’ve been using the sport flex band for all my running, cycling (MTB, road and indoor) activities and they’ve all been spot on with my chest HRM (Garmin HRM Pro+). I was really surprised how accurate the MTB rides were as I expected it would struggle.
I was however intrigued by the bicep band, mainly as I climb (boulder) a few times each week, and prefer to have nothing on my wrist / forearm when climbing. The bicep band arrived while I was on holiday last week, but I decided to give it a try on a road ride yesterday - to my surprise, it had a bit of a shocker!! I’m not sure if I wore it too high and more on my triceps, so need to play around with the placement, however I’m confident it was tight enough. Comparing it after the ride with the chest strap recording I’ve validated all my wrist placement activities with, it had a number of spikes in a 90min ride, recording my HR ~25 beats too high on a number of occasions - all impacting the strain score, which is frustrating. I need to do some more testing on the bike, maybe changing the location to being more on the inner “fleshy” part of my biceps to see if that helps - I did wonder if being on the triceps, it would be more likely to moved when the muscle contracts and moves the sensor slightly, or allows light in to impact the readings. Either way, I’ve never seen this on the wrist for any activity type.
I’m climbing this evening, so my plan is to use the bicep band again, but slightly tweak the location and see how it fairs. Will report back my findings - I’m hoping the bike ride yesterday was just a one off due to bad placement rather than a material issue with wearing my whoop on the biceps.
I’ve also tried the bicep band for cycling. I adjusted it and wore it in different places on the bicep. To my frustration it was always 5 - 10 behind or ahead of my chest strap. Mostly lower. Wrist is a no go for cycling. Look at my bicep heart rate above for running. In total Whoop is a disappointment for me as a triathlete
That’s a real shame - so far, I’ve been nothing short of amazed at how accurate my whoop is when worn on the wrist, it’s scary close to the chest strap. I’ve never had an optical sensor do as well as the 5.0 does - I’ve owned both a polar verity sense and the Coros arm band - neither of them come close to being as accurate as the whoop (for me)….
Maybe I’ve been lucky and the profile of my wrist along with the sensor design are just well matched. I do think placement is arguably the single most critical component for accurate ppg recording. Not the only one, but certainly the one that’s most likely to cause inaccurate readings if it’s not correct (whatever that looks like)..
I will continue to always use an external HR chest strap for all my training, but it’s nice when I know the Whoop is getting close to the chest strap as it gives me confidence in the recovery score which is my main use case for the Whoop platform.
The basic issue is we shouldn’t have to tighten the band to a certain level or move the band to a certain location for accurate reading. I do not expect Bicep or Wrist to be as good as Chest Strap but I expect a certain level of consistency not matter how or where I wear the device. I have a Garmin watch and use a Garmin bike computer with chest strap. The watch and chest strap are close but Chest strap is still better. That said the Whoop band is no where near as good as the Garmin watch. There seems to be a fundamental issue with the Whoop 5 hardware when I see so many Whoop 4 users complaining.
Plenty of opportunities for whoop to do.
Allow connection to a external HR Strap, they broadcast so why not read.
Import more than just time from Garmin/Strava collect: HR, Power, Cadence, Distance, GPS, Steps, Pace etc
I don’t think it’s uncommon, nor should it be unexpected, that an optical sensor relying on ppg for heart rate detection will inevitably require some degree of position and / or resistance play to find the optimal placement from person to person.
I’ve been using heart rate measurement for over 15 years and as someone who takes their training and data seriously, understand the nuances that should be considered where optical sensors are concerned.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t expect consistency, quite the opposite, but there are clearly many 5.0 users seeing very accurate results, me being one, and equally others who aren’t. My hypothesis is many users not seeing consistent results would likely see improvements by simply changing the position of the sensor. There will always be a degree of trail and error and what works for one person doesn’t another, however there are clearly some non negotiables for ppg to work accurately and consistently which if not done correctly will never provide accurate results regardless of an individuals physiology.
I too have been using optical sensors for a long time and had more devices than I’d like to admit too. Whilst placement is important Whoop MG seems to suggest it needs to be on the wrist for BP and ECG. So it should work properly on the wrist which it doesn’t. It requires placement on the wrist a certain distance from the wrist bone but where that optimal place is hard to determine. Two fingers seems to be ok but I will still get crazy spikes doing something like washing my bike or doing the dishes. Whooop 5 seems to sensitive to slight position changes, moving arms or vibrations like when riding a bike.
Now are there people with Whoop 5 seeing accurate results or they have nothing to compare with
Yes optical sensors have their limits. I’m also doing lots of training since many many years and have used Polar Verity Sense, Coros Armband, Polar Chest Strap, Suunto Chest Strap, Garmin watches, Coros watches, Suunto watches, Apple Watch etc.
Whoop doesn’t work at all for me at the wrist. I bought a bicep band. Used different positions but results are limited. I’m not talking about 1 or 2 bpm off. It’s 10 bpm or more. In both directions. And this is a lot.
I like the idea of Whoop, the app and what it does. But it’s just unacceptably off for me. The metrics I get are thrown off because of inaccurate heart rate data.
I too am getting very mixed results during rowing. The placement is always on the wrist, and the accuracy is all over the place regardless of the type of training I do, be it Zone 2 long row, HIIT (4X4 or shorter) or threshold row (40 min Zone 3/4). What’s even more frustrating is that sometimes it under-reads, sometimes it over-reads. Sometimes it starts well and then it just goes down to about 90 for no apparent reason, even though I’m in the middle of the session. I tried tightening it but the results were still quite varied. I really want to like the device but my patience is finally running out and am thinking of giving up on it altogether and cancelling the membership. Any other suggestions?
