WHOOP Podcast - Study shows training based on WHOOP recovery improves performance, reduces injury

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

On this week’s episode, we cover the results of Project PR, a study in the value of using the WHOOP recovery metric to guide your training. This study showed that runners who used the recovery score to help determine their daily training load over an 8-week period improved their times significantly and sustained fewer injuries than those who used a static training program. WHOOP VP of Data Science and Research Emily Capodilupo and WHOOP Marketing Manager of Women’s Performance and Running Allison Lynch talk with Mary Cain, who served as one of the coaches for the program. Mary is a world-class runner in her own right and was the youngest person to ever represent the United States at the World Championships. They discuss Mary’s New York Times op-ed on culture issues in the running world (3:38), body image in sports (7:05), optimizing performance for women (9:57), avoiding overtraining with WHOOP (12:27) , balancing green, yellow, and red recoveries (15:18), Project PR (16:28), structuring the study (18:52), key takeaways (24:04), training to HRV (30:40), becoming an elite athlete (33:50),  and sleep and performance (37:52).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 back to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Amit, founder and CEO of WOOP, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. That's right. Woop builds wearable technology to measure strain and recovery and sleep and really to help you improve your health. You can check that out at Woop.com. You can get 15% off of WOOP membership if you use the code Will Ahmed, WI-L-L-A-H-M-E-H-M-E. E.D. All right, on this week's episode, we cover the results of Project PR, a study in the value of using WOOP recovery data to guide your training. We partnered with tracksmith and outside magazine to examine how using Woop Recovery can help runners optimize their performance. And what we found is pretty remarkable. This study showed that runners who used the recovery score, that's right, the WOOP recovery from 0 to 100% red, yellow, green, to help determine their daily training load over an eight-week period, improve their time significantly, and sustained fewer injuries than those who used a static training program. Who better than to tell you about all this research,

but our VP of data science and research, Emily Capital Lupo, back on the podcast, and she is joined by Woop Marketing Manager of Women's Performance and Running, Alison Lynch, They sit down with world-class runner Mary Kane of Tracksmith to discuss everything about this program and what we've learned from it. Mary was a world junior champion in the 3,000 meters and was the youngest person to ever represent the United States at the world championships. She also made headlines in 2019 with a New York Times op-ed that detailed what she described as a culture of emotional and physical abuse during her running career. We've linked to that piece in the show notes. Without further ado, here are Emily, Allison, and Mary on how recovery can help you.

Hi, everybody. I'm Emily Capital Lupo, Vice President of Data Science and Research at Woop. And I am joined today for the first time by my colleague, Allison Lynch, who's our marketing manager of running in women's performance. We have a really special guest with us today. Her name is Mary Kane. And for those of you who aren't familiar, she's been in the professional running. circuit for a really long time now, pretty much since high school. And she went professional with Nike. And she's broken multiple high school records. She was the youngest American to make a world championship team and run in a world championship final. So we're really excited to have her on this podcast today. She's going to talk about her participation in Project PR and the results that we gained from that. So welcome, Mary. Yeah. Thank you so much for having. having me. Mary, thank you so much for joining us today. If you want to start off, we'll start

with a softball, you want to tell us a little bit about your running history and how you ended up involved in Project PR with Whoop. Yeah, that sounds awesome. So I guess to take it back a step, as Allison said, I signed a professional contract at age of 17, so while I was a senior in high school. And I'm 24 now. So over the past seven years, I have maybe gone through a little bit of a roller coaster ride to put it lightly with my professional running career. When I initially signed a contract, I was kind of in a figurative sense on the top of the world with my elite running. And I moved out to Portland to join an elite training team, which ended up being an incredibly toxic environment, which I've since shared publicly in a 2019 New York Times op-ed, where I kind of

detailed my experiences of really the lows in sport of both elite running and really kind of the systemic, I believe, kind of abuses that a lot of women in sport and elsewhere experience when put into such a high-pressured environment where coaches are really given full control of an athlete. And so really over the last year, since I've shared my maybe toxic experiences in the sport, I've been really trying to carve out a way for me to continue to train at an incredibly elite, intense level, while not falling into the same pitfalls that I did at a very young age. And so one of the steps that I made to kind of create maybe a more well-rounded self is signing an untraditional contract with Trachsmith in that rather than signing the traditional

independent contract that you would sign with an apparel sponsor. The contract that I was signing was a traditional employee contract. So I joined Tracksmith in April of 2020. And one really cool thing about working for Tracksmith is that I've had the opportunity to work with entities like whoop and connect and kind of use some of my expertise in coaching and in training and was the person who really kind of led Tracksmith's involvement with creating training plans for project PR and my coworker and fellow elite runner Nick Willis was really great to, you know, help kind of give advice for the process of creating the plans. But it's really cool kind of being able to explore maybe a lot of different sides of the sport with my role at tracksmith.

And you and Nick and all of Trachsmiths were so wonderful to work with with Project PR. So thank you for all the work you all put into that. And I do want to, we'll come back to Project PR, I think, in a little bit. But kind of going back to your career, I did watch the video op-ed from last November in the New York Times. And we'll link to that as well in the show notes. But one of the things that struck me, in addition to sort of it not being a particularly healthy environment, was that it seemed like your coach used an all-male staff with a mostly male team and just really didn't understand how your training needs might be different.

I'm curious, like being such a young professional athlete and on top of that a female athlete, how do you now understand the needs of a female athlete to be different? What advice would you give young female runners who are looking up to you and really inspired by your career? Yeah, I think that's always a really great question that I've had since I've shared the piece because I think there's always a couple of people who interpret it as, yeah, you're right, women can't train as hard. And I'm like, whoa, that is not the message. We can train just as hard, just as intensely put our bodies through really the same amount of strain. but it's just there are both cultural shifts in sport that need to happen and there are also some physical differences between the male and female body that have to be acknowledged in

training and I think just to start with the cultural things I think a lot of young women will experience the conversation around body language is very different towards female athletes than male when I was on the program I was on sometimes weight came up for some of the guys on the team but it was usually kind of this like joking like boys club like oh stop eating skittles ha ha you'll figure it out sort of language um but for me there was this like shaming and blaming and kind of um like questioning of how how much i wanted it um and i think a lot of that comes down to just women in throughout society have this pressure to look a certain way. And I think in sport, when you know, you're trying to really create like the greatest body

that you can to propel you as well as you can, I think those, you know, external forces compound to create even more of a toxic environment around that. So I think just cultural stuff like that needs to shift. But then there's also just a lot of parts to being a female athlete, like we menstruate. And one thing is that traditional nutritional advice is all using men as the basis of the study. And the reason is is because this fluctuation that we go through in estrogen throughout the month makes it harder to almost keep it like control throughout the study. And every study is supposed to have as many controls as possible. And so it's just easier to study then, which is so lazy because. Female athletes are also, I mean, if not more than 50% of the population, at least in

subtly track and field training. And so it's been really helpful for me in the last really year is that I've been working with a great nutritionist, Lindsay Elizabeth, who happy to share her information because it's been super helpful for me who had never really kind of learned about maybe the nutritional changes that are important to a female athlete. But I've been able to learn more about the fact that when I'm in the post-obulation to TMS phase, some of my nutritional intake has to change. So it's, you know, harder for me to digest certain things. And I should almost eat more after I run because I'm going to have a harder time kind of really consuming certain things. And so it's just crazy realizing that that's not as like mainstream known.

One great book that I recently read is called Roar by Dr. Stacey Sims, and she talks a lot about how not only our female athletes, nutritional needs very different from male athletes, but how they change throughout the cycle. And a lot of things that, you know, coaches, if they haven't gone through the process of educating themselves, just wouldn't know. And your young female athletes haven't learned yet. Things like when we menstruate, we lose a lot of salt. And so when you're PMSing, you know, is often this like fear of bloat, you actually do need to increase. your salt intake because you're losing a lot of salt through all the natural processes that are going on. And so, you know, if you know that, it's a really easy, cheap change to make. But if you don't know that, you're really going to suffer and not feel great during that time. And so, you know,

highly recommend it. We'll link that in the show notes as well. I know Woop has done, I appreciate the fact that there have been times where, like, we can track our menstruation and we can see how it's affecting our recovery. And I think, you know, a lot of this stuff isn't that complicated. Like, you know, I, and I, not to, you know, maybe SaaS people who don't do these studies, but there is a certain degree of, you know, sometimes it's just a matter of like eating a little bit more peanut butter and eating fewer carbs or, you know, making sure you're getting a little bit more salt intake and adjusting your fluids over the course of the month. And I think the more this information is just public for people, I think the more they're just going to feel better and feel more confident.

Going back to your time at Nike for a second, you overtrained. I'm curious how you're using WOOP now to avoid that and how you think WOOP could have been useful to your younger self. I think one thing I will be totally honest about, and I think it can be helpful for some people too, is that during my time in the Oregon Project, something like Woop was just not. something we used right we didn't use heart rate we really didn't use any technology that was used to kind of give us a little bit more information into how our bodies were handling load and I think it was because of this old school like you got to tough it out you got to grate your teeth and sometimes like in certain moments that's actually super helpful right like if it's race day and it's pouring rain and you're like oh this is horrible um you kind of need to have that like essence of

hey, I'm, I'm ready for anything. But I think technology is something that is incredibly useful if it's used in the right hands. And I think when I first ever used Woop, it was kind of right after I had left the Oregon Project, right? So I'm still knee-deep in a lot of the issues that I developed because of my time at Nike. I still had a manorrhea. I still was decreased in bone density and I still had an unhealthy relationship with my training because I was so brought up in this overtraining mindset. So when I first got whoop, I almost had a slightly negative like relationship with it because any time I saw myself in the red, rather than just take it as information, I would think, oh my God, I'm failing. I did something wrong. I did something

bad. This is horrible. And I would kind of wreck my day because I was in the red. And what's been really, really interesting is now, you know, I ended up maybe taking kind of the gear off from using it because I was probably just not ready to actually absorb the information. And going kind of through my own like processes of self-healing and learning more about what my body needs for training, as I've integrated it back in, it's been incredibly helpful. And it's because I'm actually ready to use the information. And I think one thing that can happen to a lot of athletes at a young age who really are exposed to technology is if it's not done in a way where they're like learning to use it and like work with it and it's used in this like really positive way, I think had the Alberta Salis like the Salsars of the world had whoop, they would have used it to like get mad at me

you know, being in the red and stuff. And so I think with anything like technology, there's such a power to it that I think the more it's used and taught and shared and spread in a way that I use it now, which is just information. And finding trends, I think that's incredibly powerful. And I think your team does a really good job through the social medias that I follow and through the stories that you tell that there's no right or wrong. There's no good day or bad day. It's just another day. And it's learning how to be a little bit better than next. And so that's why, you know, sometimes when I look back, I don't, I don't even regret not having certain things because I realize if it's in the wrong hands, it's going to be used wrong.

I love your answer for so many reasons, but I do think that a lot of people have that initial reaction that, you know, it's like a report card and red means I failed. And like that's so totally not true. And green isn't even like an A, right? Like if you're getting nonstop green recovery scores, you're probably not pushing your body or training very well. And that's like really quickly going to turn into D training. And if you're getting nonstop reds, like, that's not great. But you do want to see over the course of a couple of days that you're cycling through these values. You should push your body and then red means that you pushed your body.

But when you back off, you do want to see that it comes back and that you get those green scores. And so it's really just helping you understand, like, am I actually doing to my body what I intend to be doing to my body? And not a value judgment of like you failed as a human being or, of course, anything like that. You know, I think this is a great segue to move into Project PR because so much of what Project PR was about was, you know, how do we use the recovery score correctly? So, Allison, I don't know if you want to start us off. What was Project PR? Who was involved?

So the goal of Project PR was to show how WOOP could help runners, you know, help them with reducing injury with the longevity of their career as a runner. we really wanted to put the whoop data to the test to see if, you know, training via whoop recovery, monitoring things like strain and sleep, as opposed to following a static running plan without those metrics could make a difference in improving performance. So what we did is we partnered with Outside Magazine and TrackSmith to put together an eight-week training program for a 5K. So we had runners from, you know, people who had never run before, the way up to more elite levels, people who had run in college, Division I. So we had the full

spectrum of people a part of this project. And we also had people of all ages, too. I think our oldest participant was 75 years old. I think our youngest was about 19. So it was really cool to have such a diverse range of people as a part of this project, because we could really put the data to the test to see how it worked across all sorts of populations. We had three different levels. We had our beginners, our advanced, our elite groups. And within that, we had static training programs versus a WOOP experimental program. So people who followed the static program, they had workouts, you know, two days a week.

In addition, they had some long runs and they had some opportunities to cross train. For those in the experimental group, they were following a similar plan in terms of structure, but the difference was that they were modulating their workouts based on their whoop recovery. So every day you had a red plan, a yellow plan, and a green plan. And, you know, based on your whoop recovery that morning, you know, you would follow the plan accordingly. So, you know, as opposed to the static plan, people were adjusting their workouts each day, basically. You know, adjusting intensity, adjusting time, specifically for their speed workouts. they're changing the number of intervals they're doing.

So that was the plan that Mary worked on. And Mary, if you want to tell us a little bit more about how you developed that program and kind of the expertise you put into that, I'd really love to know more. So I found this to be a really interesting challenge. I think to start, I love studies. Like I'm totally a nerd in that way where I'm very much the epidemic of somebody who just like if I'm going to read anything in an article like I want to read the study as well to like actually see how legitimate like the test was the control groups and so I took my job

very seriously and especially trying to make sure that the control plan and the adjustable plan were very very similar so how I would structure a week is the workout would always be the same between the static plan and the adjustable plan. But if you were having a yellow day or a red day, it would just be slightly changed. So if you had to do 10 reps of something at a certain pace, maybe you'd still have to do 10 reps, but slightly slower pace or effort is actually how we like specifically structured the plan so that it was how people really kind of felt versus giving them specific paces. And then if they were on a red day, maybe they only had to do six or eight of the said reps. So it was always the same structure of the week,

same workouts week to week, but just really subtle adjustments, maybe five minutes, less of running one day, five minutes more than next, depending on what color block you were in. But it was really, it was a really interesting challenge, I think especially working for the beginner runners. Where personally, I'm somebody who runs like, you know, six to seven days per week. And And so it's, in a way, easier to build a plan if somebody's running every single day. And so I think for a lot of the beginner runners, it was this really cool challenge of trying to make it so that we could track how they were reacting kind of day in and day out, but still building in some days that the runners had off or could choose to do cross-training and

giving the runners still a little bit of flexibility, but really trying to kind of keep the study as honest as possible, as comparable as possible, as constant as possible, and also really giving people enough that they were able to progress over the course of eight weeks. And so we had a beginner, an advanced, and then an expert plan. And based on the feedback, it seemed like everybody feels like their plans. And I'm definitely curious to hear what the study ultimately showed with the progression that was made and the positivity, which I assume is the case around listening to your scores because personally I know for me if I've if I've been locked in a little bit of a yellow slump for a while sometimes it just means taking a lighter day and

that can just really rejuvenate you so I'd love to hear how it went yeah Mary before I get into the results you know I just want to say that overwhelmingly the feedback that we got from the participants in the study was that you know they really enjoyed being a part of it you know they loved the plan that that you and Nick wrote. So, you know, huge shout out and big thank you to you, Nick and the whole Trachsmith team for writing that because I think it was really thoughtfully done to work for, you know, the couch to 5K type crowd all the way up to elite runners, which is not an easy feat to pull off. Especially during a pandemic when everything is virtual. Yeah, virtual pandemic training done well is not a small achievement. So awesome job with that.

So I guess with that, let's jump into the results because they actually were incredible. So as you mentioned, we had three difficulty levels, the beginner advanced and the elite groups. The elite group actually ended up being quite small. And so we did exclude them from the final analysis just because there weren't enough participants to be statistically significant. So there's really four groups of interest here. So within the beginner track, there were. two groups, which participants were randomly split into. So they either followed the static plan, which was just exactly as Mary and Nick wrote it,

or this dynamic plan, which was the static plan ever so slightly modified by the recovery score. And then the same thing on the advanced group where there is an advanced static plan and then an advanced modification based on your recovery score. And one of the things that's really worth calling out here is that the way that we modulated the static plan, based on recovery score to create this dynamic group is that it reduced your training load. We never increased it, which means that on average, the dynamic groups were training a bit less than the static groups. And among the people in the dynamic groups who were poorly recovered throughout the eight weeks, actually some of them trained substantially less than the static groups.

And so that's like where the results actually are really interesting. So if we look at eight-week 5K improvement in the beginner group, on average, the static group and the dynamic group improved by about three and a half minutes, which is pretty good. And what's interesting is that the difference between the improvements that we saw in the static and dynamic groups were not statistically significant, a couple of seconds, but ultimately meaningless. And then we saw that very similar results on the advanced side where the size, where the static groups and the dynamic groups improved by about one and a half minutes, and the difference

was only a couple of seconds and not statistically significant. But if you look at the injury rates within those groups, we saw that all cause injuries. So whatever each participant reported on any given day throughout the eight weeks, the static groups for the beginners experienced about 30% more injuries than the dynamic groups did. And in the advanced, it was closer to like 15% more injuries in the static group than in the dynamic group. And so what this ultimately means is that the dynamic group trained less, got the exact same results in terms of their ultimate 5K performance, but sustained many, many fewer injuries, very statistically significant. significantly fewer injuries, which is really, really powerful because it means that when you're

training, when your body's not physiologically prepared for that training, you don't get that much out of it. So they did more, about two hours more training in the static group, but didn't get any more performance out of it, right? Didn't run a better 5K for it. But they did sustain this like pretty significant risk of injuries. And so one of the things that were kind of of excited about with this study is that there's a lot of your third party research, some of it, you know, that long predates whoop, that that has shown that when we train when our bodies are not ready to action this training stimulus, we get injured as well as like we don't make these performance gains. And so it shows that training based on what your body's ready for

or based on your recovery score can result in better performance and lower risk of injury. Yeah, and Emily, I just want to add to that, too, like, just anecdotally speaking, it's also a huge mental aspect of performance, too, to see your recovery every single day and to have that in your mind of like, okay, I'm in the green. Like, even though I don't feel great, like, I think I'm going to push a little harder today. Or if you're in the red, you know, over and over again, you know, that's in your mind. You're thinking about that and you're thinking about ways that you can prioritize recovery to get back. in the green. And running is a hugely mental sport. I usually say that it's more mental than physical, to be honest, because, you know, anybody can technically follow a training program. You know, you can download something online. You can follow it. But if it's not personalized to you, if it's not, you know, unique to your training needs, you're probably going to get injured or you're probably going to do something wrong. So it was really fascinating to see with Project PR how people use their group recovery and how they found ways to connect it with their running performance.

We did have a Facebook group with over 3,000 members in it with Project PR. And just anecdotally speaking, people were, you know, they're posting things, they're posting screenshots of their data. And it was this constant conversation of like, wow, like, look how much effort I put in today. Or like, wow, look at how that drink affected me last night. It's, you know, it's seeing these changes in your body. being aware, which I think hugely helps. So not only is it physically related, like reducing intensity and mileage, it's, it's mental too. It's telling yourself, okay, I'm prepared or no, you know what, maybe I need some extra time to recover. Yeah, this is really interesting to me because

I think similarly, it makes sense that I would almost have been surprised had the, had one group far exceeded the other in terms of performance, purely just because to me, it almost makes sense that if you're kind of doing junk miles that aren't really helping you, and if anything, are maybe making you a little bit more strained and a little bit more tired over the course of your training plan, it's probably going to, like, at best, just put you back down to zero, but at worst, injure you. And I think it's somebody who has kind of grown up in the very old school mindset of training. It's so nice to hear that official statement in a way that sometimes taking a day off, sometimes listening to your body and doing a little bit less,

is really just protecting you. Because I will challenge the study in this one way in saying that even though over the course of an eight-week training program, the results maybe showed equal levels of, you know, performance increase. If you prevent yourself from getting hurt, then 16 weeks later, 20 weeks later, 24 weeks later, you actually will start to see most likely more of an increase in the group that's staying healthy. That long-term study would be interesting. Yeah, that's such a good point. I mean, eight weeks is so short and, you know, we were trying to balance, you know, doing good science with something that wasn't going to be like an unreasonable burden because this was mostly just meant to be, you know, fun thing for our members

and for the running community. But it's definitely true, right? It's like that long-term investment that if I pull back today, and so, you know, maybe, you know, don't hit that mileage number for the week that I had in my head, but then that means that I'm available to train next week because I don't tweak my ankle or do something stupid. Right now, all of a sudden, when I'm green next week, I feel good and I'm ready to, you know, and I am green instead of like kind of getting into this rut and staying under recovered, that you kind of have that bounce back moment and then can train more. I definitely agree. I think it'd be really interesting to repeat something like this where you're looking at a season or years even, although you'd have to wait a long time

to get those results. But yeah, it was really cool. And it was particularly cool because as we were putting together this plan over the summer, you know, starting to think about this. And In June, actually, a study came out by Dr. Daniel Ploos in New Zealand, who's just one of my, you know, celebrity academic crushes or whatever, read everything he writes. But he had an eight-week training plan for elite cyclists. And if you're not familiar with him, he trains like Kona athletes. He's like the 2008 age group Kona Iron Man course record holder. So like both a very serious academic and a serious athlete. And so he was training elite cyclists for an eight-week plan where he had a block periodization group and an HRV guided training group.

So very, very similar actually to what we did with Project PR on elite cyclists. His plan was different in that when they were high HRV sort of equivalent to high recovery score, they did more training, whereas we only pulled back. But he found that when they trained based on HRV, their VO2 max and their 40-minute time, trials improved by significantly more than when they followed this block periodization plan. So really similar results. And it's great to see in another sport in a totally independent study that very similar results or supportive results are being found. Yeah, that's actually really interesting because I will say one thing I have since and while

creating it thought a lot about, meaning the training plans, is that I think results would also look a little different and maybe more severe if you were looking at an elite training population. And the reason I say that is because the way our training plans were built, running is so high intensity and it's so hard to do that for a beginner runner, it's almost impossible to do it every single day. So we almost had like fail safes built into the training program to prevent people from getting hurt by having days that were completely off. So when you have a population of runners that's running, and I'm sure it was the same for the elite cyclists who are going every single day, just the risk factors of overtraining increase because

you don't have these days where your body gets to fully recover. And so I'd be really curious to see, I just have to imagine that the prevalence of injury would be almost even. even more significant if people are kind of just blowing through a plan versus taking some time down. And I will be honest, last week, I actually did listen to my whoop and I was very proud of myself where I realized that I just wasn't quite handling my training as well that week. I'd been kind of avoiding maybe the inevitable. And it was finally looking at my whoop score and realizing I had seven days in the yellow that I said, I'm taking tomorrow off. And boom, it immediately made me feel much better the last five days. But it's just, I'd be really curious to see, you know,

continued studies come out. And I really appreciate the work you guys are doing. Because for for us type A runner personalities, it's really good to, I think, have that positive reinforcement that listening to your body is actually the best way to become a great athlete. Yeah, I love that. And, you know, Mary, obviously you and Allison are both just incredible runners, but, you know, I think that this study has implications beyond the running community. So I don't know if Allison or Mary, you want to address sort of what does the study mean beyond runners? I think when you're talking about performance, I think this works across the board. I mean, the goal for any athlete, whether you're a beginner or your elite, is to stay healthy, to reduce. your risk of injury and ultimately just to enjoy the sport itself, otherwise, you know, you're not going to want to do it. And if you're healthy and you're injury-free, you're going to enjoy something and you're going to be more motivated to stick with it. So, yeah, I think this

has implications definitely beyond running. I think modulating your workouts based on recovery and personalizing your workouts is something that I would love to see more people do across every sport. I think that, you know, a lot of people just tend to follow the science that exists or they tend to follow something that they read online. And it's not always the best for them. And every person has different unique physiology. Every person has different needs. And that's what's so important about having a coach. I have a coach because I have, I'm very needy when it comes to running. I, you know, I've had all sorts of issues with my thyroid, with my iron. And, you know, it wasn't until I found the right coach for me who really helped me, you know, achieve the level of

running that I've been able to do today. So, you know, how that translates to whoop, I think whoop is an additional tool that you can use to help personalize your training. I use my whoop with my coach and I tell him, you know, my resting heart rate has jumped five beats the last two days. Like, I don't feel that great. I'm going to take a rest day. It doesn't matter, you know, what kind of athlete you are. I think that this applies to any person who's trying to stay healthy and, you know, no matter what age, no matter what gender, it truly is universal. Yeah, Alison, I love what you just said. And I think that at best, right, people who are well-intentioned are following the research, but so many people aren't even doing that. They're like following random influencers

without any real credentials. But even if you are trying to follow the research, like it really is, as Mary said, like important to actually read the research because so many of these studies are done in like four cyclists who are, you know, 30 year old men or something. And you really have to think about like, who is the study done and like how does that generalize to me and what I'm trying to do? And that's where I think, you know, whoo comes in. Because I don't know that like Mary, if you would agree with this, but like, your coach probably wasn't an idiot. He just didn't have the information, right, about your unique physiology and what was going on with you, you know, and probably did read a decent amount of research when he overtrained you. But ultimately, like,

you're the one who pays the price for that. And so research, obviously, you know, a lot goes into it. And, you know, I think all the academics who put that stuff out there have the right intentions. but there's this gap between what does the research say and then how do I apply that in my life that actually does require some real thought and some interpretation and, you know, who can help with a lot of that. And then one other thing that I think we'd just be remiss to not mention is that, you know, the recovery score is not designed or, you know, trained to prevent injuries explicitly. We certainly don't claim that your training based on your recovery score is a guarantee to prevent injuries.

You know, we have seen repeatedly that when you're training with your body, that you're maybe less likely to get injured, but that certainly doesn't mean that the risk doesn't exist. There's also some really interesting research done outside of Loop about the relationship between some of the things that are captured in the recovery score and how those might relate to injury. There's a fantastic study, which I'll link in the show notes done by Dr. Sherry-Mott, Stanford in 2011, where she increased sleep in. in Stanford's basketball team by an average of 110 minutes per athlete, so almost two hours extra sleep per night, and was able to reduce injuries in their team, as well as increased free throw percentage and basketball performance. And one of the really interesting things that she included in that study

was that she also measured something called psychomotor vigilance, which is a reaction time test. And so it's like this cute little test where you have a screen and you have a mouse and a dot appears on the screen, and as soon as you see the dot, you have to click it. And so it's like the amount of time that it takes your brain to register that you saw the dot and then to like transfer that signal to your finger to push the button is sort of, that's like your reaction time.

And she found a, I believe it was a 13% decrease where decreases are better, faster in psychomotor vigilance when they increased sleep. And so, you know, it's these little moments like if I'm more coordinated, and, you know, my reaction time is faster. I might be, like, better position to, like, you know, trip and then fall correctly and to not, like, twist an ankle or something like that. And so that's obviously sleep is one of the four inputs to our recovery score, so is somewhat captured in this study.

And so, you know, we do see kind of research like that, but haven't, you know, explicitly trained the recovery algorithm to try and minimize injuries, nor is that, you know, something that we're particularly interested in trying to do. So, you know, definitely train smart and listen to your body. But we do think that this study shows that it's one factor among many that can help you reduce injuries and be more available for your training down the road. Yeah. And I think just even one quick thing maybe on like the personal side of things is what I find

very helpful about WOOP is I think, as I mentioned before, I love reading studies. I love learning about kind of like mass tools that you can use. but the truth is for every 10 things that helps people in studies, maybe only one or two really is going to react well to your physiology. And I think one thing that's really helpful about something like whoop is that it's been able to kind of teach me what are the things that actually help me. So even though the studies show there's 10 options, for me, I know blue light blocking glasses really help my sleep score and really help my quality of sleep. And I have friends who it really doesn't in the same way. So it can be really interesting to kind of get that maybe

positive reinforcement about what's working and what maybe I don't need to spend my time on because it doesn't quite help me. And so I think that's, there's a, you know, really helpful, I think, side to that focusing on the individual. So read every study and then test which ones work for you. So I think that's part of the fun. So Allison, where can. people who want to read more about Project PR find that information. Yeah, so we are actually going to publish a piece with Outside Magazine in the coming weeks. So that will be published on all of the WOOP. Social media channels.

We'll send an email out. And in the meantime, I mean, it's never too late to sign up for a 5K. There's plenty of virtual 5Ks out there. We do have teams on the WOOP platform. You know, you can join for community and engagement. specific to location or type of training you're doing. So, you know, a lot of people have asked now that they've finished project PR, like, okay, what's next?

Like, I want to keep running. And Mary, I know that Trachsmith offers a lot of different community programs too. So I don't know if you want to share a little bit more about that and how some people could be involved. Yeah. So if you go onto our website, we have like a pull down at the top if you want to search our newsletter section. we create a lot of different kind of running training newsletters, including fast times, which I

curate on a weekly basis and it comes out on Friday. And I think the really fun thing about that newsletter is rather than telling you what you have to do every single day. Every week, we recommend a workout that's designed to kind of tap into like all different types of training systems, depending what you're training for. And then otherwise are sharing training tips, stories. And it's kind of a motivational tool, in my opinion, to really help add and supplement to your training and maybe take it a step beyond just writing a workout, but kind of helping develop the whole runner. And if you're in the New York City or Boston area, we also have a New York City and Boston Digest that similarly shares great places to run, training tips, highlights our local

runners, and it's just a way for us to all feel a little bit more connected to the community. Amazing. Well, Mary and Allison, thank you so, so much for your time today. And Mary, thank you also for your participation in the study. And if our members want to find you, are you on social media? Yep. My Instagram and Twitter are both run Mary Kane. So if you want to see too many pictures of my dog running for the occasional happy birthday to one of my sisters, follow me on social. But we'll be sure to link those in the show notes. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you to Emily Allison and Mary for coming on the Woop podcast. A reminder, you can get 15% off a WOOP membership if you use the code Will Ahmed.

You can follow us on social at WOOP at Will Ahmed. And we are wishing you a very safe and healthy in the green. You know,