How I Started: Just Strava
I was a pretty active guy before I started using WHOOP. For years I would track my runs, rucks, and cycling using the Strava app. When I started over a decade ago, I simply used my phone to track these events — and lived through all of the foibles of early smartphones: apps crashing, bad battery life, weird GPS tracking — and still managed to keep a record of everything.
Soon came a chest strap HRM — a little bulky with quirky connectivity. Eventually, I switched to a running watch — far more accurate and easy to use. But I had all of that data in Strava, so I'd sync my running watches to Strava. The setup worked nice and simple: I'd start and end the run on my watch, and when I was done, it would sync with my phone, updating all of the HR and GPS data to Strava.
For my non-distance tracked workouts (martial arts, for example), I would also use an HRM, and it too would sync with Strava — so I would have both the start and end times, as well as the HR data.
Then I Got WHOOP
Then I got WHOOP, and WHOOP works a little differently. WHOOP tracks your HR 24/7 and has no buttons. There are essentially 4 ways to add an activity in WHOOP:
- Start an activity using the WHOOP app on your phone — This will also use the phone's GPS, and you decide when to start and stop.
- Manually add an activity after completing it — Simply add it in the WHOOP app with start and end times, and WHOOP will use your heart rate in that window for the activity strain. (Sadly, there is no GPS data using this method.)
- Auto-detection — WHOOP can automatically detect an activity in progress (based on your heart rate) and prompt you to process, save, and add details when you are done. (Also, no GPS for this one either.)
- Integration with other fitness apps — WHOOP can integrate with other fitness data services on your phone like Apple Fitness, Google Health, and Strava. If you set it up correctly, when you complete a workout in one of those apps, WHOOP will import the workout time and GPS information, but will replace the heart rate with its own.
For some of you, the WHOOP app and either auto-detection or retroactively adding the information would be the best way of adding workouts. But if you like to track distance and realize that phone GPS isn't as great as the one in a watch, you're going to want to use the last method I outlined.
The Setup: WHOOP + Apple Watch + Strava
Here is how I set it up using an Apple Watch:
- Connect WHOOP to Apple Fitness and to Strava — Allow it to both read and write workouts.
- Wear both your WHOOP and your Apple Watch during your workout — I will often use a bicep band when doing this, but sometimes wear one on each wrist.
- Start and stop your run on the Apple Watch — Use the Workout app as you normally would.
- If WHOOP automatically detects your workout, do not process it — Wait a few minutes for WHOOP to sync with the Apple Fitness app. The reason for this is that if the auto-detection's start and end times are slightly off, Strava will treat them as two different workouts.
- Once the Apple Fitness workout is synced, you will find the workout in WHOOP — It will have the GPS and duration information from the Apple Watch, and the HR data from the WHOOP.
Caveats and Quirks
There are some caveats, of course. For starters, WHOOP and Apple sample data differently. So even though WHOOP imports all of the raw GPS data from Apple Watch, occasionally I will see small gaps in distance — as WHOOP seems to be dropping some sample points when importing.
Another anomaly is in the heart rate. While the overall HR seems to be relatively close between the two (+/- 5bpm), what I've found is that WHOOP will sometimes miss sharp changes in my HR, and overall, as a result, the Average and Max HR for a workout might also deviate by a few BPMs.
There are also some weird bugs with Strava integration as well. At one point there was a bug that if the overall times were slightly off, you would wind up with two almost identical runs in Strava — which would be double-counted (i.e., it would look like you ran two 3-mile runs simultaneously). WHOOP seems to have fixed that issue. The other quirk is that when uploading to Strava, if you upload a duplicate activity, the second one gets ignored. So in this case, since Apple Fitness gets uploaded first, that's the one whose data Strava keeps — including Apple's HR data. The Strava upload also includes a strain graphic as well as WHOOP's own HR data, but that data gets ignored. (The workaround is to not have Apple Fitness sync with Strava, and you are good to go.)
Other Tweaks to My Setup
With the setup guide above, your WHOOP/Apple Health/Strava setup should work great. There are also some other tweaks that I've done to help me with my journey:
- Step tracking — Since my WHOOP is on me 24/7, I made that the primary source of my Apple Health step count. Otherwise, it will only count steps I take with my Apple Watch on my wrist or the iPhone in my pocket. This way I get credit for all of my daily steps.
- Body composition tracking — I have a Withings scale, and I use the direct Withings integration with WHOOP, so that I get my lean muscle mass and body fat % values into WHOOP. (You could use another Bluetooth scale and post to Apple Health, but it will only give you weight measurements.)
- Hydration tracking — I also use Apple Health to track my hydration, and that data is synced to WHOOP.
The Gear You'll Need
If you want to replicate this setup, here's what I recommend:
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