WHOOP Podcast - Celebrating 100 episodes of the WHOOP Podcast

Episode Date: November 25, 2020

We’re celebrating 100 episodes of the WHOOP Podcast!  We've compiled some highlights from our first 100 episodes and it's our hope that you have found our amazing guests as insightful, informative, and inspiring as we have. We look back on conversations featuring former NBA Commissioner David Stern (1:24), golf greats Rory McIlroy (4:41) and Justin Thomas (7:53), basketball legend Sue Bird (9:59), Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman (11:41), former Navy SEAL Mark Divine (16:00), bestselling author Ryan Holiday (18:33), WHOOP VPs Kristen Holmes and Emily Capodilupo discussing heart rate variability (20:37), alcohol (23:23), and sleep performance (25:04), Yale coronavirus expert Nicholas Christakis (26:23), respiratory rate and its connection to COVID-19 (27:47), pro golfer Nick Watney on how WHOOP alerted him to his coronavirus case (29:10), former NBA player and addiction and recovery advocate Chris Herren (30:25), and Green Beret Kevin Flike (31:44). Plus, we reflect on the story of WHOOP (33:05).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello, folks. Welcome to the WOOP podcast. This is our 100th episode. Pretty amazing. I remember when we first started the podcast, I said, we'll do 10 and see how it goes. And here we are 100 episodes later. And thank you all for listening and supporting the WOOP podcast. A reminder, you can get 15% off a WOOP membership. If you use the code Will Ahmed, that's WI-L-L-A-H-M-E-D. We do have some amazing offers for the holidays coming up. Check us out on Black Friday through Cyber Monday if you are interested in getting a WOOP membership. All right, our 100th episode, you know, we started this podcast with a simple mission to be able to share conversations around the world of performance. And that's included professional athletes, business leaders, CEOs, scientists, doctors, and members of the WOOP team to really help you understand

everything about the broader world of human performance. And we hope we've done that over the last 100 episodes. And we're going to continue carrying on that mission moving forwards. And we're going to use this episode to really look back at all the insights and learnings we've taken over the first two years producing this podcast. And we're going to share some highlights and reflections from our first 100 episodes. No retrospective would be complete without starting from the very beginning, our very first guess. was NBA Commissioner Emeritus, David Stern. I miss David every day.

He passed away in 2020. And one of the many things that stood out to me from that conversation with David was just how forward-thinking he was about the use of data in sports. My question for you is, as you think about sports over the next, let's say, 10 years, how much longer do you think NBA players' careers or athletes in general can be? Do you think that we're going to see players that are doing the Ray Allen, the LeBron James, the Tom Brady type career, do you think that's going to be more common? Yes, in the short answer is I think that there are so many measurement approaches, devices, protocols, however you describe them, that are, and players are going to interface with those so much earlier in their careers, that the playing career length. is going to be a function of the life length. You know, we're going to have more people who are going to be octogenarians.

And so that's going to reflect itself in sports as well because they're going to be monitored in a certain way. Their blood pressure, their heartbeat, their hydration, their sleep, their recovery, their strain. They're going to all get monitored in a very special way. And that will obviously extend careers if properly done by a year or two, at least. Just think about that.

Every star. Yeah, how good is that for the end? You know, if you're a rookie, you don't like that as much, but if you're a star, imagine if every NBA star had an extra year tacked on. It would be great for business. It's incredible. Do you think the habit of sitting players

for just a random game throughout the season So this happened in 2012 where Popovich sat Duncan and Parker and a few other players. And I remember you find them because they didn't have a reason for the players not playing. Do you think that that's something that's going to continue as a trend? Well, actually, perhaps not because of Whoop, because you're going to know whether the player needs the rest or not. Well, that's where I was going with this. So it's, you know, if Whoop is telling a...

You're leaving. me. Well, you took me, though. Objection. If Whoop is telling a trainer or a coach, hey, this guy's showing some things physiologically and this guy's really run down. Is the coach then empowered to sit the athlete? I think he should be. David, we missed you. Thank you for everything that you did to encourage me in building Whoop. And I know you're cheering for us. It's awesome still for me to hear just how visionary David was about everything that we were doing at whoop. And it gave me a lot of confidence, frankly, that he saw the same potential that we all have in how data can revolutionize sports. Now here's the perspective from some professional athletes.

It's hard to find better golfers on the planet than Rory McElroy and Justin Thomas, both of which have been on the podcast. What I took away from Rory was just how hard he works to be the best. I mean, there's so little, really so little, that separates the best golfers in the world. And it was just fascinating to hear how whoop fits into the equation for him. I started wearing whoop because I just wanted to know more about my body and myself and how I recover. And, you know, I just wanted to optimize what I do. And I think in this day and age in golf, with the technology that's out there, everyone's got closer together. You know, the difference between the number one ranked player in the world and the number one hundred.

is actually pretty small. Yeah. So for me, I want to do everything I possibly can to get an advantage. And for me, whoop is one of those things that can give me an advantage. Rory also spoke pretty candidly about this collapse at the Masters in 2011 and what he learned from that experience. You know, sometimes the fear of failure is a good thing. Yeah.

So, you know, for me, it was I never want that to happen again. And I'm never going to, you know, I've always pride of my. myself in learning from my mistakes. And I made a lot of mistakes that day and that week. And you know, maybe the next time you're not going to do everything perfect, but you're going to be a little bit better and a little bit better. So for me, it was just this gradual buildup of, okay, you know, the next tournament I play, what can I do better than I did then? And it was just putting the building blocks in place to get to a point where all I wanted was another opportunity. I was like, I want to get into the final group of a major again and I want to show my

myself and people that what they saw at the Masters wasn't a true reflection of who I am. It's amazing listening to Rory and just having spent a fair amount of time with him now. Like his level of humility and thoughtfulness towards his sport, but also I think towards life is incredibly refreshing. And it was really cool to hear just how much mutual respect there is between Rory and JT. I said there's two guys where I live down in Jupiter that practice harder than anyone else. and it's myself and Justin Thomas. And there's no coincidence why we're two of the best players in the world.

I mean, I think the absolute world of him. He treats everybody and me way better than someone who has done everything that he has should. I have a lot of respect for JT because I see how hard he works and I think he tries to put as much into his game as I do. And again, there's no coincidence why we're two of the top players in the world. You put a lot of people in his shoes with all the everywhere he's being tied or pulled, all the accomplishments he has, all the money he has, everything that he has, he should not be as nice and everything as he is.

And down to earth, super down to earth. Exactly. And it's just, it's little things like that that being around him has helped me. And I've tried to honestly model not only my game, but just my persona and my personality and my swagger after him. because he's about as good as it gets when it comes to that. It's really cool hearing the admiration they have for one another. And I like what J.T. said about swagger. You know, it's an important recipe for success for so many athletes. And mind you, there's still a lot of nerves, which J.T. talked about.

Now, when you're standing over a put like the one on 18 at the President's Cup with Tiger Woods, do you actually feel your heart rate elevated? Are you trying to bring it down? Are you just ignoring that whole concept and focused on the put? I've never thought of it before. I'm focused on one thing and one thing only, and that's making that specific put that I have. Will you acknowledge that you're nervous in a moment?

For sure. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't understand why someone would do something if they're not nervous, because if you're not nervous, that doesn't mean anything to you. Totally. There's definitely good nerves and bad nerves. There's a, oh my gosh, I'm so nervous.

I'm scared to fail nervous. And then there's like a, this is such a big moment. I can't wait to make this put. show everybody, you know, this moment nervous. So there's butterflies and then there's bad nerves too. But, yeah, it just, it always, it makes me laugh and honestly drives me crazy when some guys are like, I'm as stubborn as they come, but I don't understand how some guys can be so stubborn to say that they're not nervous teeing off Sunday at Augusta with the lead.

It's like, what are you dead inside? Like, no, it's not possible. I mean, I'm nervous teeing off at a, anytime I go play Augusta for fun. let alone the first round of a tournament, let alone the first run on Sunday with a lead. So there's nothing wrong with admitting you failed or didn't do well, but it's just so funny to me to hear, and people are like, I'm not nervous. And I'll be the first one to admit when I get nervous, but it just sometimes are more than others.

It just differs. It's funny actually listening to JT talk about being nervous at Augusta because they just had the masters there, and we looked at the whoop data across all of the, the professional golfers at Augusta, and sure enough, the first day actually had the highest strain. So it just shows you that everyone feels something when they step foot at Augusta. You know, I think it's clear to me just from doing all these podcasts how much elite athletes are willing to sacrifice to be the best. It's a really powerful theme. Here's basketball legend

Sue Bird sharing her thoughts on the unbelievable feeling of winning and how those moments are so short-lived. Now, you've experienced that moment of bliss of winning. Yeah. Right? It's nice. Is that the drug for you that keeps you coming back? It is. It totally is because there's no other time. I've not found other things that, you know, can make you feel the way that that feels. And it's funny because the sad part of it is and there's the other thing you learn with experience, it's like, it's so hard to get there. you get there it's this amazing feeling it's like a rush and it really only lasts like that night yeah it's like 12 hours yeah and i always tell my my younger teammates i'm like especially last year it was like you need to enjoy or even megan at the world cup like tonight tonight is the night

like make sure you are like living it up because you try to recreate it the next night and like don't get me wrong it's fun and it lingers and it lasts but it's never nothing is ever quite like like the night you win. The thing I took away from that Sue Bird podcast is how fleeting that feeling is of success. And I think that permeates really across all aspects of life, not just professional sports, but there's this moment where you feel like you can win it all, but you could still lose. And when you overcome that moment and you win, it's the best feeling in the world. And then, you know, it goes and it's on to the next. And so driven people have this I think this challenge with balancing dopamine and balancing serotonin, which by the way is a theme

that we talked about with Andrew Huberman. Mother Nature installed this feel-good chemical called dopamine that is secreted anytime we're focused on something outside the reach of our hands and our own skin, literally. If it's about focusing on things outside our immediate sphere of experience. It's involved in goal-directed behavior. So working towards a degree, working towards the rays, building something, all of that. And it makes sense why Mother Nature would design a chemical like this, because otherwise, why would we ever go forage for the food that would give us the reward or forage for the mate that would give us the reproductive event? You know, why would we ever do that, right? Yeah, it keeps us motivated, right? It is, think of it like a rocket thruster. We have this

conscious capacity as humans to self-dose these dopamine rewards in very subjective ways. And I think that's where meaning comes in. So I think of the famous examples, almost cliche examples of like Viktor Frankl or Nelson Mandela, you know, horrible circumstances, super challenging, but they found internal mechanisms to allow them to push through and not just to survive it, but to really emerge in a sense of real thriving in the face of adversity. People that push through adversity, hard degree programs, et cetera, they find this, they learn how to self-dose these dopamine rewards and the most powerful ones, and their good psychology studies to support this, are going to be ones where people attach themselves to an external thing, but they internalize it as very

important. But you don't ever want the pursuit to be in such excess of the eventual goal that you feel underwhelmed when you get there. Or you do, and then you are arrive there and you simply pivot to a new goal, which you see a lot of people do over and over again. So they are chronically in the growth mindset. Growth mindset is their dopamine release as opposed to the goal. The key is to register the satisfaction from both. And there's a third element that I'll just mention that's, I think, very important, which is Mother Nature installed other reward mechanisms in us that are very important. These are getting a lot more attention these days, there are a set of chemicals like serotonin and oxytocin that are involved in generating

a sense of well-being and reward for things not beyond our reach and that lie in the future or outside of us, but that are within our immediate sphere of existence. And so these are, we're designed to be released when we hold next of kin, when we see close friends. Sometimes even when we look at objects that we have hold meaning for us, they tend to be kind of heartwarming because they trigger activation of some of the neural circuits that link the gut and brain and they create a kind of sense of warmth in the torso. And so there was that feeling of like well-being and like, oh, I just love, you know, you or this so much. It's, you know, it's how I feel about my bulldog downstairs, right? I've had him 10 years. I look at him. I just think, like, I just think he's like a badass

bulldog, but I feel different. It's not like it makes me want to go do anything. It's it. These Neurochemicals generate a sense of quiescence and a kind of sense of peace and calm. And it's very important for anyone that's listening that has goals that is ambitious or hard driving, that you cultivate both reward mechanisms because they were designed to work together of working towards things and then gaining deep appreciation and gratitude and satisfaction for what you have, as well as the desire to go get more things. The people who are really balanced know how to cultivate both these rewards. I've spent a lot of time around super driven people. And it's fascinating to hear Andrew Huberman talk about this balance between dopamine and serotonin and really the importance of the ladder and the importance of gratitude. I mean, you listen to Sue Bird and she talks about winning and how you put so much into winning that title. And there's like that 12 hours of enjoying it before you're on to the next thing. And so being grateful, I think,

everything that you accomplish and being grateful for the moment. At least that's something I've really taken away from this podcast. Now, one of the main themes of the WOOP podcast has been around mindfulness and putting yourself in the right head space to succeed. And former Navy SEAL Mark Devine was really one of the most inspiring guests in that regard. He joined us in episode 59 and detailed how practicing mindfulness, meditation, in Zen helped him transition from being a CPA to becoming one of America's most elite warriors. Meditation is one of those things like exercise. If you just keep doing it and stick with

it day in and day out, you'll look back over time and see your progress. You may not note the progress every day, but when you look back, you're like, holy shit, I have come so far. And so when you start to meditate and you get control of the rational, cognitive kind of left brain aspect and you can drop into these moments of silence where you're not doing anything right the yogis would call that you're perceiving mind you're not thinking you're not visualizing you're not remembering you're not dreaming you're just sitting there meditating i guess right which is doing nothing well you're doing something but you're not actively doing anything you're just listening and you're searching or being quiet and all of a sudden that's when you can hear or sense what the

gut is telling you you've got brain and all the brain activity of the biome and um and your heart right and these two have a different way of communicating with you or through you and i think that's what i was you know this idea that i was a warrior it wasn't pattern recognition it was my heart my spirit telling me that's the direction to go then i showed up at maybe seal training everyone was a total stud, right? And I'm looking at this class, I had 185 studs on day one. And I'm like, wow, there's some badass guys, a lot of former military, like Marine Recon and even Special Forces guys trying to become seals and then a bunch of civilians like me. And so it turns out, Will, I mean, the physical stuff, I was right there. You know, I'd done the work, but pretty much

everyone had that, you know? So I immediately kind of went back to my toolkit from Zen and said, okay, you know, what's going to differentiate me? Like, do you think you become a seal? if you never learned to meditate? Absolutely not. Like there's zero chance that I would have been a seal. Mark was an amazing guest on mindfulness and someone I've followed up with

for my own practice and I've meditated now for six years and it's changed my life. So if you're listening to this and you're interested in mindfulness or meditation, I highly recommend it. Best-selling author Ryan Holiday echoed many of the same sentiments.

He dove deep on the meaning of stillness. But to me, stillness is When things slow down, when you get into a zone, when things are clear, when you're not sort of distracted by external or internal things, it's the ability to concentrate the ability to focus. it's the ability to be at peace with oneself. So stillness comes in a lot of forms. I guess I think we can more clearly define it by what it's not. It's not inactivity, but it's also not needless activity. This idea of stillness, this idea of being ego-free,

I don't think it's antithetical to achievement, to success, or to great, you know, great feats of prowess, whether it's in art or sports or business or whatever. I actually think it's more impressive to be successful and good at something and not a slave to it. To me, my definition of success is autonomy. Do I have autonomy over my day, over my body, over my habits, over how things are done? If I'm moving towards autonomy, then I'm becoming more successful. If I'm moving away from autonomy, I'm becoming less successful. even if depending on the direction I'm making more or less money or achieving more or less recognition for my work

or selling more or less books. To me, autonomy is where I'm trying to move toward it. Along with sports performance and mindfulness, we've really tried to go deep on understanding science behind performance. And that's been a big theme for the episodes hosted by Kristen Holmes and Emily Capitaluppo. They're really our go-to resources within WOOP for learning everything we need to know about our WOOP data and human performance.

And there's an enormous number of great topics that they've covered. I'd encourage you to check out all of them in the WOOP podcast archives. But here we're going to recap on HRV, alcohol, and sleep performance. So how just like generally, you kind of described, you know, this, you know, heart variability going up, resting heart rate going down, you know, just explain like how that's kind of a sign. of fitness. Sure. So basically, like, with every heartbeat, our bodies need, like, they use that oxygenated blood to do stuff. And so when your heart rate goes down, your resting heart rate goes down, you can roughly assume that the amount of stuff you have to do stay the same. And so what

that means that, like, if you're able to sort of do that same amount of stuff with fewer heartbeats, it means that each heartbeat is more effective. You know, so either your body got more efficient. And so, it can kind of like do more with less or your heart is actually beating like more sort of higher what they call stroke volume so more blood pumping per heartbeat and so given that our maximum heart rates are more less fixed they decline as we age but you don't really train that if you can sort of do more per heartbeat then that means that at your maximum heartbeat which is your absolute maximum capacity you can do more than somebody who's sort of doing less per heartbeat and so what we start to see is that like

As somebody becomes more and more trained, and so their cardiovascular system is more efficiently pumping blood, they're able to do more at lower and lower heart rates, which means that they're sort of taking on less strain. They're able to do more before they hit their anaerobic threshold and start to go into oxygen debt. And so that's when you start to see people that they're like running faster and further. So with HRV, when your HRV is going up, it just means that your system is more balanced. And so the more sort of you're not sympathetically dominating, the more room there is for sympathetic activities to come in and dominate. So what we actually see is that like when you're exercising at a really high capacity, you are in sympathetic domination. And so your HRV gets really, really low when you're, you know, exercising close to your or above your anaerobic threshold. And that's normal and that's totally healthy as long as when you stop exercising, you know, balance gets restored.

Right. And so when your HIV is sort of higher, there's sort of more capacity to, like, disrupt that and to allocate those resources towards exercise. I love this episode, the episode Kristen and Emily do on heart rate variability. And one big takeaway from it is that as you get fitter, doing the same workout on whoop may actually trigger lower strain, right? You do the same run at the same pace because you've gotten fitter, it actually has less stress. strain on your body, your heart rate is lower during that workout. So one way you can measure fitness over time is heart rate variability. Another way to measure fitness over time is as you do the same workouts over and over, you may actually see that your strain decreases. Here's alcohol.

Okay, so just generally speaking, Emily, maybe we can just kind of go back and forth on what we know about alcohol. We can kind of back into the root metrics and kind of actually what people are seeing in their data and how that might be related to the alcohol consumption. Sure. So I think You know, one of the reasons why it's such a common kind of new user aha moment for us is because alcohol is a little bit sneaky. You know, we sort of perceive like, you know, oh, I went to bed drunk and then I just passed out and like didn't move for 12 hours, right? And we think about that as sort of, oh, that meant that I slept really well.

But of course, if you think about it, right, when you wake up after drinking a lot, you don't feel rested. Like, yeah, you got, you know, maybe 10, 12 hours of sleep, which you. is huge, but you're not rested. So where does that kind of come from? And that's because alcohol is a sedative. It's not actually, you know, a sleeping aid. And so it does make you sort of not awake, but sleep is an incredibly active process. Our bodies are working really, really hard when we sleep. And if you have alcohol in your system, then none of those sort of very active processes can happen. So while it is true that you were not awake, you know, you didn't actually get the benefit of sleep, the reason why we are

sleeping. And so you wake up sort of almost as if you hadn't slept at all. One important phenomenon here to understand that Emily touches on is you can actually get a lot of sleep but have a low recovery. And that shows up in particular when you have alcohol in your system because you may get eight or nine hours of sleep, but because it's low quality and because your heart variability is low, that'll still trigger a low recovery. So that's one of the interesting things about whoop is that sleep and recovery are actually independent in scores. Kristen and Emily have spent so much time discussing everything you need to know about sleep. They're always reminding our listeners that sleep consistency is a critical component to getting

better sleep. Well, I think this backs in really well to just this concept of regularity, right? Because regularity is what, if you can understand when to go to bed and when to wake up, everything else kind of writes itself for the most part. That's going to help drive the efficiency, right so if you if you stabilize or you kind of can anchor the sleep wake time it basically kind of sets healthy circadian which in turn is going to influence all the other clocks in the system and all sorts of good things kind of happen and that's the goal right to spend as little time in bed as possible but get the restorative sleep you need right like the reason why you know we're all sleep deprived is because there's so many things we'd rather be doing and so the real like hack to

sleep is to figure out how to like spend every second that you're a sleep, sort of getting benefits. One enormous sleep hack for people listening to this is sleep consistency. If you go to bed and wake up at the same time, even if you're not getting the same number of hours of sleep, say you're not spending eight hours in bed, you're only spending six hours in bed. But if you spend those six hours in bed at the same time every single day, it actually makes the benefit of those hours much higher.

COVID-19's been a huge theme in 2020. And as a thought leader in health and performance, we felt like it was critical to do research on it. Yale coronavirus expert, Nicholas Christakis, has been a long time whoop advisor. So we got Nicholas on the podcast in March as the shutdowns began. The most optimistic estimate that I've seen anywhere is about 0.3% case fatality ratio. Now, if that happens, if 120 million Americans get infected and 0.3% get it, that's 360,000 deaths. That's a top three killer in our society. It's catastrophic. that many deaths. And it could be worse. It could be better. We cannot know for sure what's likely to happen. There's a range of outcomes. But what I can't tell you is that we need to take this seriously. You know, this is not a drill. You know, this is like a real thing. We may get a little relief as is typical of pandemics like this in the summer. But then what's going to happen as is typical is the schools will reopen in September and people will go back to work and then we'll have a second wave. And in 1918, the second wave was four times as deadly as the

first wave. And I don't think that's going to happen in this case. I think this will be more like the 57 pandemic, but we're very, very likely to have a second wave. It's amazing how accurate Nicholas's prediction was there. We're tracking, I think, towards over 300,000 deaths in America from COVID-19. And frankly, we couldn't have predicted that WOOP would be a valuable resource for understanding COVID-19 until we did the research with CQU and other leading research institutions. But we began to notice that many of our members who came down with COVID-19 saw a dramatic increase in their respiratory rate. So we launched groundbreaking research into that connection, and our findings proved pretty important. Earlier this year, Woot became the first wearable

to have their respiratory rate validated by a third party. We're actually still the only wearable who's had their respiratory rate validated by a third party and we're very, very good at it. So we're within one breath of truth during sleep. And so it's something that we can put a lot of stake in because we know that when we say your respiratory rate was 15 and now it's 18, like you can actually trust that that changed the curve. And one of the things that we've noticed about respiratory rate that I think is particularly relevant here is that in healthy individuals, respiratory rate varies very little from day to day. Like most users, they're going to vary like less than one breast per minute. And so when it goes up from like 14 to 17, that's

statistically extremely significant. Emily here highlighting our research on an elevated respiratory rate being a potential early indicator for COVID-19. And this turned out critical in the world of sports. Pro golfer Nick Watney tested positive for coronavirus shortly after the PGA tour restarted its season. And he wouldn't have known that he had COVID-19 if it weren't for his whoop data? I wasn't really symptomatic besides his whoop data. I mean, they took, they put me through a thermal scanner and also took my temperature with thermometer. Both were normal, no cough, no, uh, shortness. Like I, my respiratory rate was up, but I didn't wake up panting or anything or I wouldn't have known if I hadn't seen the data. Went to the golf course, social distance

while warming up and got a call about 20 minutes before that said, your test came back probably you need to go. You need to leave as soon as you can't. I kind of said to the doctor, like, is this real? I can't. I mean, I know that I saw the data, but is this, and he said, yeah, this is real. You need to go.

It's amazing. We're glad Nick's feeling fine today, and he never really showed meaningful symptoms, but pretty amazing that if he hadn't seen this elevation in his respiratory rate, he would have been playing golf all weekend with the rest of the PGA tour. I certainly appreciate Nick. coming on the WOOP podcast to be very open about his story and how using WOOP data helped prevent

the spread of COVID-19. And I would say throughout this WOOP podcast journey, we've heard from a ton of inspiring guests. Chris Heron certainly fits that bill. Chris was a high school and college basketball star, played for the Boston Celtics, before his career in life were derailed by drug and alcohol abuse. He told us the moment that finally got him down the right path was when he opened his eyes to the pain he had caused his family. I think the moment that spoke to me the most was when a counselor told me that I should play dead for my family. I had just relapsed and my wife was in the hospital with our son.

She just gave birth. Christopher was nine, Samantha was seven and Drew was a newborn and I relapsed on alcohol and heroin. And when I went back to the center, he told me I should play dead. give your wife some peace and tell her to tell your children that their daddy died in a car accident today. And I want you to get in a vehicle when you leave here and drive as far away from Massachusetts as you possibly can. He looked me in the eye and he said, play dead and let them live. Chris has an amazing story and we got to know Chris because his rehab institute now uses whoop on all of its guests.

In episode 61, we sat down with Kevin Flike, a group. Boreen Beret, who was badly wounded while serving in Afghanistan. This is a remarkable story of overcoming immeasurable pain and suffering while shot on the battlefield. Kevin told us what it's like to face death on multiple occasions. And he said in those moments, you reflect on the way you've lived. I got trapped on a mountain. It's 120 degrees. We're running out of water. We've been fighting all day. Every time I moved, it was like a movie, like a machine gun, just like trail my every movement. And for extended period of time, a couple hours, like, I just kind of had to, like, lay down behind some cover and had a lot of time to think. I was like, wow, you're going

to die today. I had a conversation with myself at 26 that most people don't have until they're 80 or 90. I started to ask myself questions about my life. Like, what kind of man are you? Like, did you live your life the way that you wanted to live your life? I ultimately came to the conclusion that I hadn't because you always think you have the next time. I was like, all right, and today is it for you. You woke up for the last time today. I've never felt so terrible in my life. That was truly an unbelievable podcast with Kevin and I won't do it justice describing it. You should go listen to it. And to close this episode, I thought I would reflect a little bit on the journey here at Woop. Here's an episode I recorded with our friends Michael and Marcus from

noble. So our mission at WOOP is really to unlock human performance. We believe every individual has an inner potential that you can tap into if you can better understand their bodies and their behaviors. And we've built technology really across hardware and software and analytics designed to continuously understand you. So it starts with a small sensor. It's measuring your body 24-7. And it's sending data from the sensor to your phone, phone to the cloud. One of the main things that differentiates Woop is we have a big focus on sleep and recovery and strain. And we also collect way more data than any other product in the market. So we collect about 50 to 100 megabytes of data on a person per day. And we sample data about a thousand to 10,000

times as much as, say, a Fitbit or an Apple Watch. So it's a huge focus on health data. It's a big focus on performance. Our origins are really in professional sports. So, we started working with really the best athletes in the world when the first product came out. And, you know, two of our first hundred users were people like LeBron James and Michael Phelps. And we became partners with the NFL Players Association. So we were distributed to every player in the NFL. We became the first product approved in Major League Baseball. We got to work with incredible people like the Navy Seals.

Over time, we developed a whoop into a consumer brand. And so now today we're on our third generation of hardware. and so it's been a pretty fascinating evolution from high-end sports wearable to now a product that a lot of people are finding value in and just bettering their daily lives. I would love to hear how you got started. Yeah, I got into this space because I was always into sports and exercise myself. I was playing squash pretty competitively when I was growing up and I got recruited to Harvard to play squash and I became captain of the team there and I felt like I didn't know what I was doing to my body while I was training. You know, a lot of athletes, overtrain, undertrained, misinterpret fitness peaks, don't necessarily understand

the importance of recovery or sleep. And I was certainly one of them. Like, I used to overtrain almost every season, which is the ultimate betrayal because you're putting so much effort into getting fitter and stronger. And then all of a sudden you fall off a cliff because you've just pushed your body well past what it's capable of. And so I got very interested in, okay, well, what could I measure about my body to prevent me from doing that? And at a school like Harvard, actually felt like the three or four hours that I was spending exercising was some of the least intellectual time I was spending. It just seemed like we were frozen in time with the way we thought about exercise. So I did a ton of physiology research. I read something like 500

medical papers while I was in school. And I ultimately wrote a paper myself around how I thought you could continuously understand the human body. And that really became the business plan for whoop. You know, I didn't set out to start a company as an undergraduate in school. But one thing just led to another, and I just became completely obsessed with this concept of continuously monitoring the human body. So that was episode 74 on the wood podcast, if you're interested in hearing more about the origins. And frankly, I don't feel like I've gotten any less obsessed with trying to understand the human body some eight years later from all that research in school. Well, thank you again for listening to this podcast. I'm going to run through the different podcasts that we just hit.

So David Stern, former commissioner of the NBA, episode one. Heart rate variability, deep dive with Kristen and Emily. That's episode 29. Sue Bird, women's basketball champion, episode 42. Alcohol, all its negative effects on your body, how to optimize around it, episode 43. Sleep performance. This is a really good deep dive on sleep, episode 55.

Kevin Flike, the Green Beret, 61, very inspiring story. Nicholas Christakis, a Whoop advisor and an epidemiologist focusing on coronavirus, that's 66. Respiratory rate and how it can help you understand COVID-19, 67, Rory McElroy, 68. Andrew Huberman, world-class neuroscientist out of Stanford. That's episode 69. The Story of Whoop, that's where I was interviewed by the founders of Noble. That's episode 74. It's a good deep dive on the history of Whoop and where we're going.

Ryan Holiday, New York Times bestselling author, episode 75. Justin Thomas is episode 77. Nick Watney, episode 80. So that recounts a PGA tour golfer's experience using respiratory rate to predict COVID-19. And Chris Herron, a former professional athlete. an alcoholic drug addict who has turned his life around and now use his whoop with many of his patients. That is episode 95. So that was the lineup for today's compilation. So many amazing episodes, super grateful personally to get to be able to do this and to record all these

podcasts with such, you know, really insightful guests. And so thank you again to all of our guests. Thank you to Kristen and Emily for all of their contributions to the program. Thank you Matt McCarthy, our podcast producer, and Mark Van Dusen, our original podcast producer for all their contributions to the Whoop podcast. And thank you all for listening and supporting the Whoop Podcast. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast, rate and review us. You can find all 100 Whoop podcasts at whoop.com slash Locker. Select a podcast there and you can see the list or find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Interact with us on social media at whoop at will amid and have a phenomenal thanksgiving everyone