WHOOP Podcast - HRV 101: Insights From the WHOOP Podcast

Episode Date: July 28, 2021

One of the best metrics to determine your physical fitness and your body’s readiness to perform is heart rate variability.  We’re bringing you some of our top WHOOP Podcast conversations on HRV to date, detailing everything you need to know about HRV, what it signals about your body, and what you can do to optimize it. Kristen Holmes and Emily Capodilupo explain the basics about HRV (2:17), the factors that increase or decrease your HRV (5:42), and why HRV is a highly personalized metric (9:34). Dr. Bob Arnot shares how monitoring his age is helping him turn back the clock (12:54). World-renowned HRV research Dr. Daniel Plews details what you need to know about HRV patterns and why training based on your HRV is an effective strategy (16:16). Golf great Rory McIlroy and world champion surfer John John Florence talk about how tracking their HRV helps give them an edge (22:37). Jackass star Steve-O explains how mindfulness and meditation keeps his HRV higher than most (29:38), and Kernel CEO Bryan Johnson has a simple and unexpected technique that consistently increases his HRV (32:23).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

what's up folks welcome back to the whoop podcast where we sit down with top athletes scientists experts and more to learn what the best in the world are doing to perform at their peak and what you can do to unlock your own best performance i'm your host will omit founder and CEO of whoop where we are on a mission to unlock human performance on this week's episode we're going back to the basics and talking about one of the most important metrics that affects your ability to perform, heart rate variability or HRV, as you'll see in the Woop app. We're compiling our top episodes on HRV over the past two years to help you understand what it is, why it's important to track, and what you can do to optimize it. You know, when I first got interested in

this space, I was doing research at Harvard, and heart rate variability was one of the most fascinating statistics that I discovered. This would have been 2010, 2011. The studies at the time were a small number of studies. We're talking about 10 people, 12 people at a time being measured by electrocardiograms. But they were fascinating results. Olympic power lifters using heart rate variability to predict how much weight they should lift. The top cyclists using heart rate variability to determine what their load should be the next day. The CIA using heart rate variability, the using heart rate variability for lie detection tests. Cardiologists using heart rate variability to predict whether former heart failure patients would

have a heart attack. This is a truly fascinating statistic and a lot of the origins of WOOP or this idea of what if we could take heart rate variability and measure it continuously and non-invasively. And that was really the breakthrough with the original WOOP 1.0, which goes back to 2012, certainly a long time ago. All right, we're going to kick things off with one of our most listened to episodes ever. This is episode 29 with VP of Data Science, Emily Capulupo, and VP of Performance, Kristen Holmes, explaining exactly what heart rate variability is and how it's a key sign that your nervous system is balanced.

So if I'm being a math nerd, it's literally the variability in the timing between beats of your heart. So a lot of people, you know, you go to the doctor and they tell you, you know, oh, your heart rate 60 beats per minute. And that actually doesn't mean that it's beating like once a second on the second, you know, like a metronome. What actually is happening is that sometimes it's beating, you know, after 1.2 seconds, sometimes after 1.8, 1.9. And it averages out over the minute to be 60 times in a minute. You know, that's why at the doctor, they measure it for, you know, 30 seconds or something. And that variability comes from competing inputs from your nervous system. And so our bodies have sort of two opposing branches of your autonomic nervous system.

You have the sympathetic that says sort of do stuff activating part and the parat sympathetic, which is that's the rest, digest, the slow down, the recover. And so when both of these are sort of giving instructions to the heart, you get this kind of spastic, increase, decrease, increase, which causes your heart rate to go up and down, up and down, and causes variability. And that variability is actually a good thing because over the course of time, we need to respond to both activating and deactivating signal. So, you know, we need to respond to threats and we need to dilate our pupils when there's too much light and all these little things that require action. But we also need to digest food and sleep and do all these things that require inaction. And so we're constantly trading all of that off. And when those systems are well balanced, you see a lot of variability because they're both sort of getting their way. And your heart's responsive to both signals and as equally as well.

Right. So your heart is going to do whatever sort of it's being told to do. And if it's going up and down a lot, it means it's hearing, for lack of a better word, the instructions from both sides. Now, what starts to happen when your heart rate variability goes down is that one of those inputs is sort of screaming more loudly than the other. And so your heart rate's getting or your heart is getting one set of inputs. Almost always the sympathetic is dominating. And so it's sort of getting its way, which is activate and do. stuff, produce cortisol, and kind of have all these activating responses. And the parasympathetic isn't getting heard, which means a whole bunch of stimuli that our bodies receiving are not getting actioned. And so heart rate variability is actually, it's a signal of your nervous system being balanced. And I think that that's really important in a source of confusion for a lot of our athletes. It's not so much it's good for your heart to go up and down, although it's certainly not bad. It's that it's good that your nervous system is being responsive to a wide variety of stimuli because all of these stimuli are present. And so being able to action them in a balanced way

is healthy. And it just happens to show up in your heart. So we could also measure this by sticking an electrode in your vagus nerve, but that would be very unpleasant. Heart variability is a very easy, cheap, non-invasive way of getting the same information. But we're actually seeing how like that balance is manifesting somewhere else. It's an indirect measurement of what we actually care about, which is autonomic nervous system balance. Right. When your autonomic nervous system is balanced, you'll notice a high HRV, which explains you're ready to take on strain. But what if your HRV is declining? As Kristen and Emily are about to explain, there are many factors that can increase or decrease your heart rate variability. The major big things are obviously

the activity level, stress, fatigue, you know, illness is going to make your HRV, you know, plummet. But then there's also, like, so many little things. It's like one of the most sensitive metrics that there are. So, like, if you're dehydrated. Which makes it so powerful, right? Right. You know, it's just there's so much information that's synthesized, which makes it very powerful, but also, like, a little bit tricky because it's not a very specific metric, right?

So, like, my HIV could be low because I'm dehydrated. And so it could be as simple as, like, you know, I drink this glass of water. And then it's going to shoot right up. and that's like a really easy fix, whereas like if it's low because I'm tired and I actually need to like go to bed early tonight, that's like, that doesn't give me as much like room to affect it, you know, say by I have a game tonight or anything like that. So obviously like alcohol is going to make it shot because you sort of divert all these resources towards your liver to sort of clear this poison out. And so that's like a very high like our body's prioritized getting that out. And so then those resources get tied up. So you can basically think about like HRV as like we have this. like finite number of resources. And our whole body is competing to use these resources for different things. And if my HRV is like very, very high relative to my baseline, it means all of my resources are available to be reallocated. If my HRV is really, really low, it means that most of those resources are spoken for. So there's very little to kind of move around. And so if I'm

sick, right, my immune system is going to take just take a whole bunch of those. It's going to hold on tight and they're not going to be available. I can't stop fighting an infection in order to run a race. If my HRV is sort of low because I'm hot, right, I can change or I can turn on the AC and all of a sudden that's going to like bounce back really quickly. And so then I can take those resources that are working on thermoregulating, right, you know, get into a thermo neutral zone and then all of a sudden those can be reallocated. If I just like ate a sandwich, a whole bunch are going to go to digesting that sandwich, but as soon as that's done, they get freed up again. And so HRV changes like a whole bunch, you know, day to day, but also like within the day.

If I'm walking, for example, there are a lot of resources that are going to like keeping my balance and, you know, like watching all, you know, the space around me and just being like focused. And so all of those get tied up and then I sit down and they free up. So, you know, it's not just like, oh, a low HRV reading is bad. It's just a sign that like those resources are being allocated. So anything that just requires attention, whether that's like mental attention, physical attention, things we're aware of or not, is just going to start to like pull those off of the ready-to-go pile. Right. And when you're exercising and you're trying to compete and do something impressive, you want to be able to say, like, I want to take all of these resources and, like, put them to the muscles in the cardiovascular system that's going to make me win this game or this race or whatever it is. And I don't want to waste a whole bunch of them because, like, I had, you know, all this cheese at lunch that's, like, sit.

in my stomach and so like 10% are going to cheese processing. Right. And what you end up doing is you end up sending just mixed signals to your body. Right. Like you want to send the right signal to your body at the right time based on what it is that you need to do. Right. So it's like why people would not recommend like having a big meal immediately before a game. But immediately after a game, it's a totally great time to eat because like, yeah, you know, like you need to recover. You have time. To get in parasympathetic dominance and digest the food. Whereas you don't want your body to be focused on digestion right before you go out and run a race. Like that, you know, again, you're sending mixed signals to your body at that point.

Right. So, like, I would definitely say, like, your goal is not to have, like, maximum HRV at, like, every second of every day because, like, you need to kind of... Toggle back and forth. Yeah, like, these resources need to go to stuff. Like, you have to do things that's part of being alive. But if you start to understand, like, how different things affect your HRV, you can start to manipulate the timing of these things relative to moments where you need to peak. We get a lot of questions about HRV at Woop.

One of the most common is what is a good HRV? The answer is more than just a single number. I'll tell you from personal experience, my HRV has evolved over time. You really want to focus on your HRV versus your HRV and avoid comparing yourself to other people, although it can be easy to do so. Let's hear from Kristen and Emily. You know, people ask all the time, you know, what's a good HRV, what's a bad HRV? And there are some kind of global kind of metrics, I guess, that we can kind of point to.

But what's your viewpoint on just how do you answer kind of what's good and what's bad relative to HRV? Yeah, I hate that question because it's so much variability. Heart size, like genetics, yeah. Heart rate variability is just how this autonomic nervous system, like, happens to be manifesting in your heart rate. But it's not actually, like, perfectly one-to-one with, like, what your vagus nerve, which is where, like, ideally we'd be measuring this. it would just hurt. So what we see is that, like, as people get older, that that pathway between the vagus nerve and, like, how this just manifests in the heart seems to get dampened, even if fitness

and sort of athletic ability doesn't seem to fall as much. And so we do see HRV, like, declines dramatically with age much faster than, say, like, resting heart rate increases with age, and much, much faster than we see, you know, like, athletic ability declining with age. That's not something to, like, get upset about. It's just, it's something we see across the board. If you're older, your HRV is probably lower. We see slightly lower HRVs in females than in age-matched males.

There's a bazillion exceptions there, but sort of globally, that is a trend that's been observed. And we do see, you know, things like higher HRV endurance athletes than in, you know, kind of strength-based athletes. But really, like, we discourage as much as possible athletes from sort of, like, looking over at their neighbors, whoop and comparing HRVs to each other. And we also really discourage people from like measuring their HRV once and being like, oh, my HRVs, you know, 132, as if that means anything. You know, it's only meaningful when you're looking at your own data day after day after day and starting to understand like what's good for you, what's bad for you. But there's very little like, oh, if this is your baseline and my baseline higher or lower, like I might be outrunning you and I might not be.

Right. So how we apply this in elite environment is we're always looking at kind of the percent standard deviation relative to your baseline. Like we, you know, that is the way to really think about it is. It's me versus me. And what is my HRB today relative to my baseline? Yeah. If there's a big standard deviation, that means that all right. I'm either positively or maybe, you know, negatively adapting to training or my lifestyle is, is such where it's, it's not contributing positively or my lifestyle is contributing positively to my HRB. That was cuts from episode 29 with Emily and Kristen talking about how HRV can decline dramatically with age. But actually, here's Dr. Bob R. not proving that you can increase HRV with the right training and the right lifestyle. Dr. Bob joined us in episode 87 and explained how he's turned back the clock even as he ages by monitoring his HRV. So with Woo, using HRV as a marker, you can bring your bio.

biological age down by down, bit by bit. Well, how old are you actually? Let's tell the audience, because you, part of the magic is that you're competing with 20-year-olds and you're how old? 72. Isn't that amazing? Well, what's amazing about it, though, is, you know, so I started out. The story is that, so a year ago, I get back from the world cross-country ski championships

in Norway after competing there and then climbing Norway's highest man with their lead guide, and I come back, and I'm fried. So I called this coach and said, I need a coach. Why do you need a coach? Because I'm fried. I need a recovery. He goes, buy a whoop. Good advice, honestly.

I did. I bought the whoop. And, you know, lo and behold, I'm like red every day for like, you know, weeks and weeks and weeks. And so obviously I completely changed my training. And I had, HRV like 18, 20, which was, you know, like my age, like 72. I actually got up so I was 130. I was the equivalent of my seven-year-old.

What I love about is, you know, when you look at metrics, look at all the other metrics in terms of, you know, real hard endpoints like biological age, I mean like CRP, six weeks, cholesterol, two and a half weeks, blood pressure, three weeks or so. This is day to day. So in one day, you can see an improvement. The week, you can see a big improvement. And what I love about it is that, again, you know, people are so motivated, they're so competitive that they want to see these scores change. and they do. So I ended up 130, which is the equivalent of like a seven-year-old. And, you know, my fiance always thought that was true mentally, but now it's actually true physically. There is no greater dream in life than to perpetually live the life of a 25-year-old, especially, you know, you're

older, you're wiser, hopefully you're, you know, you're richer and, you know, no more and you're smarter, whatnot. But to biologically be 25, and honestly, it's a tremendous dream come true. And, you know, heart rate variability, when I first looked at this, you draw my, drew my attention to it. And, you know, look, I'm a scientist. I work, you know, with one of the best hospitals in the world. And, you know, I'm skeptical about it. I read the literature, and I kind of get into a little bit. And then I saw that HRV has, of course, nothing to do with the heart, the heart help.

It has to do what we call inflammation, which is that when you're young, you know, you're balanced. So your HRV is a very good high score. Because again, what HRV shows is how kind of springy your overall automatic nervous system is. You know, you're resting, you're recovering because it's very elastic, very lively, or is it kind of like dead? And when you look at heart rate variability, as you know, here's the distance between two heartbates. Is it like, you know, boom, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, like cutting sausages, there's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. With that variability, it turns out, it's the best overall marker of it. biological age. And as you've also educated in the world, it's the best for overall mark

of somebody's recovery. If you are able to get a great HRV, you've really recovered. So it's a tremendous motivator. As Dr. Bob puts it, HRV is a great indicator of day-by-day recovery, but it's also, I think, important to look at HRV over multiple days and weeks, especially when you're evaluating your training. Here's world-renowned HRV researcher, Dr. Daniel plues, sharing why he looks at HRV patterns over time. I think one of the things, one of the main things, and I've written about this at length in a number of my papers, is the, I don't think in all certainty that a one-day measure is the way forward.

I think you need to look at kind of rolling averages is always something that I've been more of a fan of to give a better idea of what's happening, whether I'm going to make a change based on training, you know, because you can definitely have some false positives on some days and and vice versa. Like some, you know, for example, there are, you can have some examples, especially people are doing high levels of endurance training where you get really, really high heart rate variability, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're feeling that great. So there's that to be aware of as well. I've always thought it's not the silver bullet and the question that the one single metric that you should look at, you need a variety of

metrics to really know whether you're going to change training or not. And often it's the, it's really, it's providing you with more certainty in a decision rather than making the decision for you. And that's the way I like to, I like to particularly use HIV and all metrics to be fair. So, you know, if an athlete presents and I'll see that they've got low HRV, their motivation to train is low, they had a bit of a bad session yesterday. And all those things together would make me make a decision not just.

based on one metric on its own. That's Dr. Ploos on episode 108. He spent a lot of time researching HRV-based training, working out based on your HRV score instead of on a set schedule. And he's found that training to your HRV is the secret to training smarter, not harder.

And it depends which school of camp you sit in, really. Because the whole area of periodization, in my eyes at least, I believe is a bit of hogwash anyway. And it's based on a lot of dogma. There's really no evidence to suggest that periodized training does anything that's more beneficial. And there was a great paper that was written by Keeley, I think it was in 2010, 2011.

And there's a title of it. Yeah, it's a great paper. Yeah, 21st century dogma or something like that, periodization. He just pooh-poo's the whole periodization. He puts forward really good cases. And the reason being, and this is where HRV can be so. great is because the adaptation to any kind of training stimulus is different depending on how you approach or you present yourself at that training session.

So even if you're, if you present yourself with low motivation, you present yourself with low sleep, you present yourself with low intent compared to someone who presents themselves with high motivation, high intent, they actually get better adaptation from doing that training session. That's why having this pre-idea that, okay, this week we're going to focus on this, this week we're going to have a recovery week, this week. And you know, you might not need a recovery week at that time. And likewise, you may need to do a recovery week when you're actually doing a high-intensity period.

So it's just, yeah, I'm not a fan of basic periodization, really. Yeah, Dan, and the results of your paper really back up your dislike for block periodization. Do you want to share what you found? The actual results were reasonably similar, but the real take home was that the HRV guided training group actually did a little bit less training as well and had slightly better results, but it wasn't actually significant, but depends on where you, I mean, to me, that's a positive result. Yeah, and I think that really speaks to the idea that you were just getting at where, like,

if you show up to training and your body's not really ready for that training, that, you know, you're not going to get the benefit out of it. So the fact that they got similar results with slightly less training is really interesting and kind of speak to that, you know, train smarter, not harder. And it's the exact point that, you know, you do, I always like to say when you, when you train, you want to get as much bang for your book as you possibly can. And by doing, being smart, it's a way forward. Emily and I and just generally, we talk a lot about this concept of showing up in capacity,

you know, and how that is actually, you know, kind of, what you're doing away from training is actually most predictive, right, of next day capacity. And I think it's probably a little bit different, Dan, in your world, and that, you know, you're doing multiple sessions. This is tip of the spear, super and super intense training. And that's obviously going to have quite an impact on heart rate variability. But for folks who are not trying, you know, training for Kona, for example, or an Iron Man, but are just, you know, working out for an hour a day, it's those other 23 hours that are really, really critical in terms of how they deal. of them that will be most predictive of next day, HRV, next day capacity. Do you have any insights there on, you know, just for the regular Joe and then also for the Kona type athlete and how to

deal with those other 23 hours? Yeah, well, I guess, I mean, it all comes down to recovery, right? And for me, I always think of recovery as as three main pillars. And the three main pillars for me are nutrition, sleep and training. I'm going to say the word training periodization. But what I mean by training periodization is basically how you, where you place different training types. So, for example, if you're doing a high VOTMAT session, you at least want to leave 48 hours before you would attempt to do that other type of session, whereas if you're doing kind of more of a threshold-based set, a threshold or kind of a tempo-based session, you can probably leave more like 24 hours.

So it's that, it's the backing up of training sessions that require higher. high heart rates and therefore high sympathetic stress where the real problem comes in. I actually had a question the other day. Someone asked me, I have an education community. And one of the questions that came through was, when is heart too hard, too hard? Can I actually go too hard in training? And my response was, well, it's really, it's impossible to go too hard. The only thing you can do is go too hard too frequently.

Now, while a lot of Dr. Poulouse's research is focused on endurance athletes, We've also heard from many elite athletes across all different sports that want to track their HRV. That includes golf legend Rory McElroy, who here explains why he has gravitated to HRV on WOOP. So I found out about WIP probably two or three years before I started wearing it. There's a couple of trainers on the PGA tour that were wearing it and were talking to me about it. and I thought it was really interesting

but for me as a golfer I was like well do I you know I'm not an endurance athlete's I need a heart rate monitor 247 all that sort of stuff and so I sort of didn't do it I wore an Apple Watch for a bit and that was fine and it sort of tracks a little bit but not much

and I've used some other HRV devices and stuff that measures a central nervous system but it was once I started to learn a little bit more about sympathetic and parasympathetic and, yeah, central nervous system, HRV, what all that means. And I think, you know, I started wearing whip 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 become so,

everyone's got closer together. You know, the difference between the number one ranked player in the world and the number 100 is actually pretty small. Yeah. So for me, I want to do everything I possibly can to get an advantage. And for me, WIP is one of those things that can give me an advantage. Athletes like Rory are always looking for an advantage who explains why he became so interested in HRV.

It's a really great episode. You can listen more from Rory, episode 68. Here's now World Champion Surfer John John Flore. who's also always looking for that edge. John John Florence, much like Rory McElroy, has achieved a number one world ranking in his sport of surfing. We talked with him about all the factors that can suppress your HRV and why it's a great lens into recovery.

The HRV has a lot to do with the mental aspect of it, right? From what I've seen, too, just in my experience with it, is like when I'm stressed, when I'm traveling, when I'm anxious, HRV just plumbed. Like, it's much, much lower. Yeah. So we measure heart rate variability continuously, although a bit of the secret to whoop is that we're capturing the reading for recovery and the reading that we show you. We're capturing that during your slow wave sleep.

And in particular, we're measuring it during the last five minutes of your slow wave sleep. Slow wave sleep is when your body produces about 95% of its human growth hormone. So we're able to look at your heart rate variability during this period of time where your body's repairing itself and that makes it a very good predictor of your your next day readiness your next day recovery because if your body is showing that it's more sympathetic dominant or less balanced you're in your autonomic nervous systems less balanced right with sympathetic and parasympathetic activity that's a sign that your body might be a little more a little more run down and the way that your stress levels can also affect that

is your mind can also drive the sympathetic nervous system. And again, if it's more sympathetic dominant, that's almost the equivalent of exercise where you're putting additional stress on your body without having that parasympathetic response, right? Yeah, that's super interesting. Yeah, so parasypathetic is like what helps you fall asleep. Or when you inhale, that's sympathetic.

When you exhale, that's parasympathetic. and you effectively want them always to be in balance. Now, you probably have a high heart rate variability because, one, you're a professional athlete, and two, you practice breathing. So each one of those independently would make you have a high heart rate variability, but the combination of it is pretty nuclear. Man, my heart rate variability, this past like four months, I just can't get it to where it was, though.

And when you say where it was, where was it like that you're trying to? when I was like at when I got hurt the last time for my last surgery my like and this was like my highest ever was like I was averaging at like 140 yeah and it showed like high as of like 220 or so that's very high yeah and then but now you know I'm just kind of ranging below that like just below 100 just above 100 kind of back and forth around there and I don't know if it's because like I'm not allowing like enough rest uh with it or if something's changed with it, yeah, I'm not entirely sure of why I can't get it back to that. We'd have to spend a little bit of time talking about all the different behaviors and circumstances.

It could be that you're getting cardiovascularly, you're catching back up to your cardiovascular fitness of before you got injured, right? It could be that your body's still training itself back into that level of cardiovascular fitness. it could also be that you're a little suppressed from doing things like travel, right? You're in Australia. Yeah. Right? Yeah. That's a big time zone jump.

Your body's probably still trying to get used to this new time zone because that can have a big effect on your circadian rhythm and your ability to have. Yeah. Because we actually went Hawaii to California for like four days and then California back to Australia for. So it's like kind of been bouncing around time zones for. few days now. Yeah, so I would expect actually your HRV right now to be suppressed. And you could even argue that since it's not that suppressed, maybe you're actually doing just fine. Like, maybe you're in a very good place. Once that stabilizes, I bet you will see it go back to some of those higher levels. And if you compare that to the moment in time before where you felt like you had high

heart rate variabilities, were you generally in Hawaii and generally not traveling as much? Yeah, and I was the highest heart availability I had was when I was kind of resting for a whole week. You know, like I allowed my body to kind of catch up with all when I, because when I'm at home, it's hard. I serve so much. Like every day I wake up and I look at the way as I'm like, I have to go serving. Boys are good. And so it's like I'm never really allowing myself to catch up. And so the best it got was when I kind of had a week and I allowed myself to kind of catch up with it.

Yeah. So that would be an example where you trained for a long time. then let your body rest. That's like how you actually peak. John John has a lot of amazing insight. Check that episode out. That's 119. We also go deep on meditation and mindfulness, which are two things that can dramatically boost your HRV. Now, here's a surprise guest, Stevo. Yes, that's right. Steveo, the wild stuntman from Jackass, cares about his HRV. A guy who found fame by destroying his body and videotaping crazy stunts has a higher HRV than most people. And he says mindfulness and meditation are the keys to keeping his HRV high.

What's the most surprising thing you've learned about yourself from Woop? The heart rate variability being high. You know, I've always known that I have a particularly low heart rate. You know, like resting heart rate for me is 45 beats a minute. You know, and like this is on brand for you. Like I feel like a world class. crazy stunt man should have a low resting heart rate like that's a good stevo brand moment the whoop is i really legitimately every day like check it okay i'm doing all right check it out

i got 97% recovery with 160 HR wow that's pretty baller you know it's interesting that your HRV so high because we actually see people have used drugs and alcohol heavily that that can suppress their HRV over time. You must be in such a Zen state with this new, you know, new you. You want to know what the real ticket is, dear? The real secret is, check it out, dude. This is my meditation. I'm on 306 straight days averaging 41 minutes per day.

I know it's funny. I could tell you're a meditator just from talking to you. I've been I've been meditating for six years I used to do what kind of meditation I do transnational meditation you know mantra based dude mantra based focus clears your mind out

lets the things float in that you need to know about it changed my life epic dude I'll take it a step further I believe and I know a lot of people think oh what a cook but I genuinely believe that by the virtue of a disciplined spiritual practice of meditation twice a day without that you actually get plugged into something

where the universe conspires in your favor because we're all interconnected no matter what and by I just think it plugs you in where like it's a big deal man it's a big deal it's a real life hack stevo was episode 106 again phenomenal guest really inspiring and unexpected. Now, there are plenty of ways that you can increase your HRV,

some of which are not exactly what you'd expect. Here's Colonel CEO, Brian Johnson, a really, really successful entrepreneur talking about how he sings before bed to increase his HRV. Funny enough, I find that when I sing before I go to bed, my HRV improves. Isn't that interesting? And so all these small little things I do, it's like last night, I was singing with a group of friends for 30 minutes and my HRV increased by 17%.

These are the kinds of unexpected things. I wouldn't have thought that HRV training, because I've approached HRV training saying, look at the time domain, the frequency domain analysis and optimize these parameters and do this brief exercise 5.5 seconds in and eight seconds out. There's really a lot of ways to methodically approach it. And then there's like, let's sing. And that has its effect. And so I'd say that that's the fun of having measurement is I get to try something new every single day and I get to fine tune myself every single day. Whoop has allowed me to improve myself at a speed I've never been able to do before.

That was Brian Johnson on episode 117. It just goes to show you there's so many factors that can affect your HRV. We've said this before on the podcast, but you can really only manage what you measure. We think HRV is important. We think you should measure it. If you liked what you heard today, I encourage you go back and check out some of our previous episodes.

So that was Understanding Your HRV with Kristen Holmes and Emily Capulupo, episode 29. Rory McElroy, episode 68. Dr. Bob Arnott, episode 87. Stivo, episode 106. Dr. Daniel Ploos, episode 108. Brian Johnson, episode 117. And John John Florence, episode 119.

You can find every episode of The Whoop podcast at Whoop.com slash Locker or wherever you listen to podcasts. And don't forget, our blog, The Locker, again, whoop.com slash Locker has so many great articles to help you understand and improve your HRV. If you like the Whoop podcast, make sure to leave a rating or review. Check us out on social at Whoop at Will Ahmed. Don't forget, you can get 15% off a WOOP membership by using the code Will Ahmed. That's WI-L-L-A-H-M-E-D. Thanks for listening and we will see you next week.