WHOOP Podcast - Study with U.S. Army looks at Alaska soldiers' HRV and resilience

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

WHOOP is unveiling a major research effort with the U.S. Army in Alaska to better understand how soldiers are adapting to the harsh winter conditions in the Arctic. This study examines how circadian alignment impacts physiological metrics, heart rate variability, and self-reported measures of resilience. WHOOP Director of Military Teams Robert Moeller sits down with WHOOP VP of Performance Kristen Holmes and Army Chief Warrant Officer Phil Ranck to discuss helping those who serve (2:59), measuring stress in soldiers (5:45), sleep deprivation (13:06), the goals of the study (17:24), HRV and sleep quality (18:38), understanding stress (19:39), extreme Alaskan conditions (21:47), darkness and the human body (23:28), optimizing for shift work (29:12), the design of the study (35:33), keeping soldiers safe (37:55), rest and preparedness (41:21), the core principle of HRV (49:13), and the purpose of this partnership (55:31).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 WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Amit, founder and CEO of WOOP, and we are still on a mission to unlock human performance. That's right. The WOOP membership includes hardware and software and analytics that's designed to help you change behavior and improve health. You can measure things like sleep and recovery and strain on WOOP.

And if you're not on WOOP already, you should check out whoop.com and use the code Will Amma, W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D to get 15% off a W-W-P membership. All right, phenomenal podcast coming your way. We are unveiling a major whoop research effort with the U.S. Army in Alaska. We've put whoop straps on over a thousand army personnel in the Arctic to better understand how their bodies respond to high stress environments. As we know, it gets cold in Alaska, and sunlight is especially hard to come by this time of year. The Army has partnered with Woop to study how circadian alignment impacts physiological metrics, heart rate variability, and self-reported measures of resilience.

Our director of military teams, Robert Mueller, is behind the mic this week and sits down with VP of Performance, Kristen Holmes, and Army Chief Warrant Officer Phil Rank. They discuss what the Army and Woop hope to learn about resilience through the lens of physiological data, everything you need to know about HRV and why it's an excellent indicator of how your body is handling stress, the importance of examining sleep quality in soldiers, understanding how the harsh conditions of Alaska affect members of the Army both mentally and physically, and how perceived readiness and actual physiological readiness align. A fascinating study, and I also want to emphasize how important personally it is to me, and I know the rest of the team at WOOP, that we get to support the Army and people who are

protecting this country and serving this country. I just can't emphasize enough how much we thank you for your service and thank these armed servicemen. So without further ado, here are Robert Kristen and Phil. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the WOOP podcast. I am your guest host, Robert Mueller, and today we are going to be talking to Chief Warrant Officer Phil Rank of the U.S. Army and Kristen Holmes of Woop.

And the goal of today's conversation is going to highlight how Woop is now partnering with the U.S. military to ensure they have a better physiological blueprint of individual soldiers so they can come and be more effective as a collective force. So Phil and Kristen, I'm so excited to finally have this conversation. This partnership has been amazing so far, and what we are going to learn over the next six months, I feel, is going to change the way that we view performance from a physiological level when it comes to those that serve us and do so in a thankless way. So, Kristen, we'll start with you, Phil, you're next, and let's jump into this conversation. Hi, everyone, Kristen Holmes. I'm the vice president of performance science here at Woop.

Great. And Phil? Good morning, everyone. My name is Phil Rank, Active Duty, Warnow. station in Anchorage, Alaska with the 425th Airborne Infantry Brigade. And thanks for that, Phil. And what we're going to talk about today is a really unique partnership that Woop has with Army Alaska. More importantly, 425 and a few other units inside of Alaska. And what we're doing within this partnership, it's the first time that we're

actually able to talk about it openly, but this has been going around in the background for about six months now. And we recently just kicked off a really unique, but more importantly, a study that has really never been done before inside of the United States DOD and more importantly, the tactical space in general. And when I say tactical space, what I mean is, you know, it doesn't matter whether you're in the Army or in the Secret Service or, you know, any other unit in between a firefighter, police officer. These individuals, you know, at whoop, what we consider are tactical athletes because they are always constantly exposed to different sleep cycles, nutrition issues, heavy, heavy travel.

There's so many things that influence a tactical athlete in ways that a collegiate and or a professional athlete are not exposed to. Quietly, we've in the background has been working in the tactical space for almost three and a half years now. And Kristen actually was one of the ones that pioneered this back then. I've been lucky enough to work with Kristen alongside her making sure that the tactical space has grown the right way. And this has been a culmination of her work and a bunch of other people at Woop. And Phil was very gracious and very forward-facing to bring this to Army Alaska.

And here we are. So, Kristen, if it's okay, can we spend some time talking about the partnership between Army Alaska and Phil, you're next here, and just talk about how everything started manifesting on the tactical side. And then, Phil, what I'd love to hear from you is how, you know, the Army was just positioned right at the time to jump on board with Whoop and really pull apart the stuff that we're doing in the study. Yeah. You know, I think, you know, what we've seen over time is that, you know, Woop can really provide reliable insights and so what's happening with our members throughout their daily

lives. You know, we saw this with our, with our, you know, tactical athletes. You know, it's a non-invasive measure of stress. And we can capture this during high octane. activities like those conducted in the military. And, you know, I think over the years to be able to capture this data, this 24-7 picture, has really helped our warfighters get a better understanding of how their body is not just adapting, you know, to the demands on a mission or a training trip, but also home life. And being able to knit all of that together and come to conclusions on, you know,

what is adaptive type of stress and what's maladaptive and being able to associate behaviors with one or the other, I think, has been an incredible source of insight. And I think probably why we're so sticky in the military space is that, you know, this daily exposure to these data points really do help point our warfighter in the right direction in terms of how to really optimize behaviors so they can be, you know, as resilient as possible. And I think that's really the framework with which we've approached this study with the U.S. Army. No, I love that. And you mentioned two things there that I would love for you to spend a little bit more time on because I think everybody listening really doesn't, not that they don't know, but I think they would find it unique and really fascinating here. You mentioned training versus a mission. Now, of course, across the board, different training and missions are happening, you know, as we speak right now, whether it's inside DOD and or.

on the federal side globally. But can you kind of pull apart what the data says inside of the training, you know, generally speaking, versus when we have individuals going overseas or, you know, being in the United States here, being a part of a real world mission for their unit? Yeah. I mean, as you'd expect, and you can, Robert, expand on the demands of training. But, you know, as you can imagine, training is highly demanding. Folks are. exposed to huge amounts of volume and intensity. You know, this is blasts. This is, you know, in some cases, if they're, you know, if we're talking NSW and they're working on diving or operating at high altitudes, it really does have a massive impact on, you know, an individual's

physiology. And each individual is going to respond differently to those stressors. So someone who might be on, you know, might be diving for consecutive days versus someone who's an altitude, you know, have very different physiological responses. Some folks can adapt better to diving and are adapting less well to altitude. So to kind of have the insight on how an individual is adapting and what type of measures they need to take before they go on a mission. I mean, that's the insight that they're gaining from training, right? As they see where their gaps are, where their vulnerabilities are, I just think that

the source of insight from these training trips enable them to then go into a mission with just a little bit more information on how they need to prep what to expect from themselves physiologically. Understanding, of course, that training trips don't replicate, you know, the kind of stress and demands that they're going to face on admission, right? That's the simulation is a simulation. But obviously, the attempt is to recreate that. But, you know, we see in the data that they're obviously two very, it's very different, right? But the moments in training are hugely beneficial in terms of helping the warfighter understand how they're going to adapt and again, where the vulnerabilities might exist.

No, that's great. And it sounds like it's so important what Woop has been able to do inside of DOD and some of the other tactical spaces is provide a baseline in training. Compare that baseline to when they are in these real world situations. Is that a fair? fair assumption? Yeah, I think that's exactly right. You know, I think there's also the concept of, all right, after a trading trip prior to deployment, you know, what does that time frame mean to look like? Right. You know, how to, you know, my baseline, you know, what we see in the data, you know, of course, is that the baseline is, is quite disruptive. You know, we'll see anywhere from two to five standard deviations from the mean, you know, off of the individual's baseline.

And it's going to take a fair amount of time post-training trip pre-deployment to get back to baseline. Right. And I think that's the other piece that not just for a soldier, but for, gosh, for any human who undergoes stress, like understanding your baseline just gives you, you know, a point of reference to know, all right, have I adapted to a lower level of functioning or am I back to neutral or am I actually thriving, right? And I think that is the greatest source of insight and the most empowering source of insight we can have as a human being. And I love that you bring that up because, you know, here at Woop with the Woop device, especially in the tactical space. And it doesn't matter if you're in the Army or a firefighter or a police officer, what ends up happening is you're able to track, measure, and then action your daily life in a way that. helps promote positive behavioral changes. And Phil, this is where I want to bring you into the conversation because before we talk about

what's going on with the Army in general, if you're okay, sharing some of the personal experiences that you had and just talking about, you know, how long you've been in the Army and, you know, at the tail end of your career here, you know, you put this whoop strap onto your wrist and how is that manifested for those positive behavior? real changes. Sure, sure. Thanks for having me to begin with an exciting opportunity for myself and for the Army in general. But kind of like Rob said, so I've been in the military for 24 years and I've spent most of my time primarily in the tactical space. So I've been with brigades and infantry levels, mostly airborne infantry, which are fast movers. They're the early entry guys for some of our missions.

and my trade is a logistician. So while I support the infantry and I support Calvary guys that are recon specialists and I support engineers and I support cooks and I support everybody else, I by trade, I'm a logistician, more specifically a mechanic. And having been through deployments and training exercises, PCS and kids, we live in an environment where we feel that it's okay to beat our. our bodies down. You know, we live 24 years saying, hey, this is my mission first. I have to accomplish my mission at all costs, you know, whether that comes to personal harm or personal time. Right. And we almost wear it as a badge of honor. You know, same thing when we go into training missions, we know when we go into whether it's training or deployment, we're going to spend about 48 plus hours awake, trying to establish, make sure that our defenses are all set

as they need to be. And we wear that sleep deprivation as a badge of honor. And you never really understand the toll that that takes on your body. And now that I'm here in Alaska, you know, that has an additional element to it with the Arctic environment. You know, it is considered a hardship tour. And, you know, Army's trying to start to realize that. So when we started talking with whoop and I put a strap on my wrist for the first time and I actually saw what wearing that badge of honor was doing to my body and what it was going to have a long, a long lasting effect on my family, my kids, and my life after the military, it was an eye-opener that was, I'm not even really sure there are words to say with that eye opening. This doesn't get it and I really can't find the words to express how amazed I was at what I saw just by looking at something on my wrist. And I don't remember if it was Rob or Kristen that said it best, they said it first, but it was how do I become the best version of myself again? And that by pushing myself to that limit to that breaking point of sleep deprivation, I was doing my command of justice. So it personally,

Unfortunately, at the end of my career showed me how to best support all of those elements that we work with. So while I'm not the infantry that fights on the front line, everything that they use comes from me. And if I'm not at my optimal performance, I'm not going to get them when they needed, how they needed. And that can result in a lot of pain and suffering for a lot of people. So it was absolutely amazing to see how to optimize myself through this to help them. Phil, I love that. And I think you're underselling your role, but for everybody listening, Phil is the puppet master in the background, you know, for 24 years. If something's supposed to be on the ground, you know, if anything is supposed to be in place for a mission to be successful, if it's late, if it doesn't show up, if there's not enough water, if there's not enough power. And this is anywhere in the world, the mission could be potentially failure. And that's just not an option for individuals that are, you know, on the front line, doing what they're doing. So being locked in tight is critical

for somebody like Phil and his ability to realize towards the latter part of his career that, to Kristen's point earlier, that you develop this new normal that is not okay. And what I mean there is you develop this callous of sleeping three, four hours a night and think that you're functioning at a very high level and you and you may be but at the end of the day the lack of sleep is going to put you in a long-term deficit and you're going to build a new normal that is not optimal and I think this is a good way to jump a little bit more deeper into the study that we're doing with Army Alaska and talk about why we're doing this because like Phil said, lack of sleep is a badge of honor in a lot of individuals. I was one of them

and also a lot of units. So, Krista, that being said, do you want to talk about what we're doing with this study with the Army? Yeah, definitely. And I think before I start, I think what's really exciting about this study is that we're able to integrate, you know, the bio psychological information. And, you know, typically, if we think about fields of psychology and physiology, they've always been fairly separate. And, you know, I just want to say, like, how proud I am to be, you know, a part of a company that is so supportive of, you know, is really at the forefront of this movement of kind of combining these two fields in the way that we are. And really, that's what the study is able to do is that we're able to really understand the psychological components and, and how they manifest physiologically, right, through this 24-7 capture. And that's what, you know, and Phil, I'm so grateful for your support and the Army's support

to really, you know, have these individuals wearing the WOOP device 24-7 to be able to capture this physiological data, not to mention, you know, the kind of the psychometric, you know, questions that we've been able to ask to really understand resilience. And that's really at the core. What we're trying to understand is resilience in high stress environments and the impact of circadian alignment. And, you know, to kind of go back, Mo, to your original question, a question about just being exposed to this environment over the last three and a half years, I've seen what

desynchronization does to human physiology. Right. And, you know, we're talking about, we're not talking about 12 people. You know, I'm talking about thousands and thousands of people. I mean, I've been able to really see, you know, what behaviors contribute positively, what behaviors contribute negatively, you know, and what this profile kind of looks like. And really the study, hopefully, is going to put some, you know, scientific brackets around what I've experienced and witnessed in the data

over the course of these last five years in my time at WOO. The study is really examining the impact of circadian alignment on heart variability. And just for folks out there, it's the variability in the beat-to-beat timing when at rest. Okay. And this is call it's HRV. So we'll refer to heart variability as HRV. We're examining sleep quality and self-reported measures of resilience. And I think where HRV, for folks who might not understand, it is a biomarker of an individual's overall resilience profile. And it correlates with sleep quality, specifically time spent in deeper stages of sleep. Right. So we're really trying to understand that relationship more fully. And then we're going to explore the relationship

between factors that underlie circadian alignment. Now, these are part of the intervention, so I can't reveal what these interventions are, but they are related to circadian alignment and how these interventions impact sleep quality, heart re-variability, in self-reported measures of resilience. So that's kind of what we're examining in the study. And then the kind of goal of the project is to really provide, because we're not just doing this just to do research, right? And this is, I don't do anything without like a clear, like I want to understand what the action is. And we're really trying to provide insight into how personal, you know, psychological and situational factors, you know, interact to, you know, produce adaptive and maladaptive stress responses, you know, in these folks. this U.S. military personnel operating in kind of these extreme Arctic and, you know,

environment and temperatures, but just more globally, just, you know, the presence of darkness. And, you know, there's obviously a lot of, it's a harsh spot, right? You know, as you said, it's a hardship tour. You know, what is, what, what, what actually is happening in this environment. No, that's beautiful. And I love that you, you put that in such a nice, neat box because it's fascinating when you start to see the trends and the data. And just to give all the folks out there listening the type of view that Kristen has into this data,

we have well over 25,000 tactical athletes on the platform. And when she says that mental preparedness and physical readiness, or the way that I would explain it, because Kristen does it a little bit more articulate than I do, but we're able to see what a more resilient profile looks like in our tactical members. And we have well over 20,000 folks. that's growing, you know, at a, at a blistering pace. For the purpose of the folks out there listening to this, Phil, can you spend some time and explain why the folks up in Alaska and in the army are interested in a more resilient soldier? Yeah, absolutely. And I'll take it back just a little bit to the beginning of how we got here and define a few things as well to help out. So when we say

that the Arctic Alaska and the Arctic conditions, you know, for those that have not been to Alaska, it's more than just cold. So when we look at the issues that we have to combat up here, we do have two posts up here. We have those down here in Anchorage where I'm at. And we have cold conditions. Then we have another post, Fairbanks, which is more, it's more to the center of Alaska, inland Alaska. And their conditions are much harsher, much colder, they're closer to the tundra line. But it's not just the temperatures we deal with. It's the extreme dark that we go through for months at a time. At its darkest moment here during the winter solstice in Alaska, in Anchorage, we will have about four hours of what we call daylight, but it's really not

necessarily direct sunlight depending on the day. It's just light effect. And Fairbanks has much less than that. The further north you go, the less that you have and you experience where there is no direct sunlight, and by meaning the sun doesn't crest the horizon. So those are some of the, and that has an effect on our on our psyche up here while we're doing things so that's what we mean by arctic environment so you're you're saying that for any individual up there whether it's fairbanks and or anchorage you know during this winter period of time you're getting maybe three hours to four hours of potential sunlight but it's not direct how many months out of the year is that you know taking place i'd say about three months a solid three months like that where you know the sun doesn't

really or the light doesn't really present itself until about nine o'clock morning. And then it's usually gone by about four o'clock in the afternoon. So between the months of October and February, well, yeah, November and February is really what kind of zeroes that in. And December, you know, late December, early January at the solstice is when that is at peak darkness for us. But you experience those extended times of darkness in between November until late January. Yeah, that's, that's a harsh environment. And Kristen, from your standpoint, and I don't know if we're able to talk through it generally because, you know, what we have going on currently, but from your standpoint, you just being so close to the data, can you spend a little bit of time explaining what, you know, potentially 20 hours of darkness does to a tactical individual? Yeah, it's, you know, so every person has like an internal like timekeeping system. And it's kind of known, I guess informally as like circadian clock. And it's located in the hypothalamus, which is like near the front of their brain. And the circadian clock is programmed to kind of reset or train every 24 hours. And it's guided by like natural light. So when you don't get this natural light, hormone production, mood, appetite, digestion, like body temperature, like all sorts of bodily

functions like just work differently or are not optimized. So, you know, I think if we can kind of show some of this, you know, phenomena occurring where, you know, mood is potentially suppressed. And, you know, the physiology is it doesn't look quite as good as, you know, once they do become exposed to light, we can start to deploy, you know, treatment and prevention strategies to kind of manage and reduce the everyday stress, right? Because some of these things that are not occurring naturally, such as like this light exposure, if we can provide happy lamps, you know, for everyone or just or just making sure folks know, hey, within 20 minutes of waking up, you know, prior to 9 a.m., I need to bathe myself an artificial light.

You know, even if they're not able to get, you know, there is no natural light yet. Bathing them in, you know, artificial light is enough to get that cortisol pulse, which is going to basically influence, you know, that sleep wake homeostasis, right? Which is, you know, once you get that cortisol pulse in the morning, that starts like your sleep drive. You know, like you start kind of this sleep pressure. Like it, but if you don't ever get that, right, your body doesn't know what to expect next. And that's where understanding and really what we've been in terms of how we've been pounding the pavement over the last three or four years with folks on the tactical side is, all right, how do we, if we know there's an absence of light and we can't set our system in this way, what are other things that we can regulate and drive toward that can help reduce some of the impact related to, you know, natural light exposure, for example, you know, and, you know, temperature and meal timing, um, exercise. time, you know, sleep wake timing, you know, all of these things can be used in combination

to kind of mitigate the effects in this case of, you know, not getting the natural light exposure. Yeah, no, that's, that's amazing. And I think it's safe to say that sunlight is critical for all functions on that 24-hour basis. Yeah. And observing sunset, too. You know, I think we don't realize, like, again, those two moments, you know, they transmit signals, right, that tell our body what needs to be happening. And really, again, is going to, you know, stabilize that kind of sleep or you'll provide that sleepway chomestasis that's so critical. I think it's great that you mentioned the light, the, the, the, the happy light. Because, you know, here, hearing everything that you're having to say is exactly why we're partnered with WOOP. It's because we don't have

that education at all levels with. Up here, we take a very general approach to things. And the happy light is one of them, that simulation of UVB light. However, However, most of the soldiers and most of the personnel, they come up to Alaska, have never heard of that before they come here. And they come with the perception of, does that really work? And, you know, I have this light shining in my face, but is this more of a placebo or does this UVB thing really have merit to it? So we approach everything when people come to Alaska from a very general perspective, you know, not everybody gets issued a happy light. They're very expensive up here, but people do eventually acquire them over time, you know, if they believe that it works. And then we also have constant testing for that vitamin D going back to that, you know, effect on our body.

Because another large impact for us that we are aware of, again, from a general perspective, is that during those periods of darkness, it's even extended past the periods of darkness is when the sun stops producing that vitamin D to our body. And we're not able to store and use that. So when we hit that peak dark portion of the year, our bodies are super deprived of vitamin D. And we're constantly flooding to our medical stations, getting tested, seeing where our levels are at. And, you know, it's very, it's hard to see what's causing that because we go to these training iterations and we'll tell ourselves, oh, I'm just tired because I was training last night or I'm tired for, I was on staff duty or one of these other details or missions. And what we're not realizing and that it's really the lack of vitamin D in our body,

because as that lethargy starts to continue one and we don't really know why and then we start getting in the mood swings, it's what causes the issues that surround why we came to whoop in the first place. But again, just understanding from a general perspective, like, hey, if you're three days in a row, that's kind of our marker where you're just really drug down and can't seem to move or get it together, go get tested, and we're just going to pop some vitamin D into you. Because I think it's late September into right around the March time frame where the sun is at an angle with which it does not produce vitamin D directly to our bodies. So that's also, again, part of that environment would be able. And I want to talk about Sarcadian rhythm here for a second, but to pull

apart a little bit more before we we have christian kind of talk about the importance of it and why it's so critical for any tactical athlete or tactical wellness piece you know globally is you know phil and if you don't mind sharing and i'll share mine next i mean how many in a 24 year career you know how many nights have you worked you know how many how many months have you you know worked during the night and slept during the day and just missed all of that potential sunlight. Wow, I don't know that I have no fingers and toes to count that many times over 24 years. But like I can tell you, and I'm sure Rob agrees, it comes in waves. Anytime we see a training mission, a deployment, just a field exercise on post,

you know you're going to go through about a 48 hour plus the 72 hour cycle of, you know, off-scheduled sleep, you know, wake through the night, taking a nap during the day. And these training iterations happen about once a quarter, about every three months. So, I mean, to do the math that way would be a way to present that. When we're at home, about every three months, we go through at least one of these offset sleep cycles. And then in deployment, it's even more irregular. You're not sure when the mission's going to hit. But for a year, on any given day, you could wake up and, you know, just be awake for 48 hours for a mission set.

So the number's very high. Yeah. And on my side, I mean, I would be, you know, sleeping a normal circadian rhythm. So I would wake up at 606 and hopefully be in bed by, let's be honest, probably 11 o'clock at night, midnight back in the day. And I would do this over and over again for months with this badge of honor of three to four hours of sleep. Then for real world operations, I would go overseas in less than 72 hours, flip my circadian rhythm completely on its head. sleep during the day and work and supposed to be optimized for eight, nine hours at night. And I wasn't, you know, wearing whoop at the time. Woop didn't exist at the time. But what I think would be absolutely fascinating, we've actually pulled this apart the data, is see how long it takes to get back to baseline when you go from a sarkadian rhythm that

you have, which I would call normal. And Chris, and I'll let you pull apart a little bit more, waking, you know, waking at normal hours, experience the sunlight like we're talking about here and sleeping at night, to just having a drastic shift within 72 hours, living the exact opposite, three, six, seven, eight, nine months at a time, not to mention that you're conducting real world missions around the world, so getting shot at in these very different dynamic situations, and then coming back to your normal life, if you will, the kids, the wife, the husband, whatever it may be, and having to readjust. From a physiological standpoint, there's so much

going on within the individual, just there alone, not to mention the physical or mental stress that they incurred over the last deployment cycle. So, Chris, I think it'd be really great for the folks to hear how circadian rhythm is so important to the individual. And it doesn't have to just be military individuals or tactical individuals. This applies to shift workers. This applies to so many different people listening here. I think it's really important to to spend some time there to express the importance of Sarkhanium rhythm. Yeah, I mean, I think at, you know, the highest level, like, you know, your, your body wants to be able to do what it's naturally meant to do. And when you're in, you know, I'm in an East Coast time zone,

you know, so it doesn't, as soon as you move out of your time zone, it's going to take you a day to 48 hours to adjust your cycle, right? So that, that, that, you know, you. you know, is kind of unavoidable. You can start to, prior to travel, you can start to prepare for that. So it's a little bit less, you know, not as harsh on your body. But you're, when you, when you disrupt your sleep wake rhythm or you have irregular sleep wake rhythm, you know, that's going to, it's going to affect your mood. It's going to affect your appetite and your digestion, you know, all the things that,

in hormone production, all the things that I kind of laid out earlier. And you'll eventually get your system like back. to a decent place if you are regulating your sleep wake timing, if you're exposing yourself to, you know, light, natural light, you know, than 20 minutes of waking up prior to, you know, 9 a.m. You're watching the sunset. You're, you know, not exposing yourself to a lot of artificial light, you know, after the sun goes down. It's also really important. You know, these are just small behaviors, but they really do add up and basically determine whether or not your body is able to, you know, adjust and adapt to the demands of life, you know, in an effective way, right?

Like, and this is where Hari variability is just an awesome marker of how you are actually adapting to external stress. And these behaviors that I just outlined, you know, are the ones that that really will determine in the end whether or not, you know, you're able to adapt to your environment or an optimal way to your environment. you mentioned, Kristen, the demands of life. And, you know, we all know within our tactical population, whether you're working an eight-hour shift, a 10, 12-hour shift, it doesn't matter. There's still another potentially 12 hours in the day that still require the demands of you being

you, whether that's you being a parent, whether that's you being a spouse or partner. It doesn't matter what it is. And in order to have a really three-dimensional look at an individual and as a force in general, you really have to understand what the demands of life are. And what Phil was saying earlier is that they have a unique demand with where they're stationed and where they live in Alaska. On the demand of life side, how could the data that we deem from this study with the partnership between Woop and the United States Army be extremely insightful for future decisions that they, based off the data and what we find of the, you know, a hundreds plus of, you know, I don't want to say the exact number, but it's well over 500.

We can say, oh, yeah, there's a thousand folks in the study. So it's, it's a, it's not a small study. It's a huge, a huge end. Yeah, we can talk a little bit more about the design without giving way the interventions. But yeah, they're basically, you know, I think we can, we can say that everyone is wearing a whoop across these thousand folks. Two of the three groups will be getting an intervention, a specific intervention related to circadian alignment. And then the third group will just continue wearing whoop as is. So we'll not get an intervention. So, yeah, the design of the study is pretty cool.

And that will be able to understand the impact of just whoop by itself, which is, as we know, magical levels of insight just by wearing the device and getting the feedback from the app. And then in addition to getting the feedback from the app, you'll get exposed to this intervention. And we'll see, you know, what the impact those interventions have on, physiology and all the, you know, subjective measures of resilience that we're looking at. And then the other third will get a different intervention related to a gold standard on around what we

recommend related to sleep hygiene. So or what the recommendation related to sleep hygiene is, which is well known. So anyway, we'll kind of see how these interventions impact in, in addition to getting this 24-7 feedback from WOOP. And Phil, from your side, you know, after 24 years, you know, same question stands for you is, how do you feel like this would impact future decisions inside of the Army? But more importantly, even let's take it, you know, a couple levels lower, you know, NCO, OIC type of environment where, and for the civilians out there, you know, the management level folks that are making these high level decisions, whether that's in real time in combat or whatever that may be, how does something like this keep them informed from making smarter tactical decisions? short, medium, and long term. Yeah, I think that's an amazing question because, you know, what we're taken away from the initial understanding of the circadian rhythm up here as WOOP is coming on board and starting to educate us on that,

we do look at this from a decision-making perspective and a command perspective. So when we look at our commanders and we try to understand what they have to do on a daily basis, they really have two root primary functions. And that's to identify risk and mitigate it as much as possible and understand what is the return on investment to them. for the decisions that they make. And that helps them base that risk assessment model, the outcome of that risk assessment model based off of their return on investment to that.

So when our soldiers are out there and we're doing things, we have a tendency to mass capability with willpower and determination. That is the soldier way. We will attempt the power through as best we can, you know, again, add personal risk to our own health. And we don't really understand why, because we don't receive education like this on a daily basis. So commanders, really, if you look at it, are using dirty data to make poor decisions, not because they want to, but because they don't have the right information at hand.

So as Woop has come to us and started to help us understand circadian rhythm, and it's not just the commanders, it is all the way down to that lower management level and to the individual soldier level. It's helping us see things in a different light and understand risk mitigation and return on investment better to our leaders. So any mission, any training, anything that we do by risk mitigation, we say, okay, who's going to drive? the truck today on the convoy for eight plus hours, you know, in the middle of the night, who is going to be the first jumper in the door that's going to land on the airfield to start our seizure and, you know, be our battlefront. And these decisions are made off of what we perceive to be the best soldier, but without intervention, we don't know who that is because of that mask that we wear, that willpower and determination mask. So our leaders, as we're starting

to see this data come in, before you even get to the end of the study, just some of our initial feedback, our brigade commanders, our company commanders, our battalion commanders are coming back and saying, help me understand the data. So I, which soldier is the best version of himself? I want to know that the person that I'm putting in that seat to drive that truck is optimized the day to do that, but I wanted to be done off of scientific metrics and not just my personal judgment and observations. And that decision, really, you can take out the truck aspect and put that into anything that they do. Who is my number one jumper? Who is my primary recon guy, who am I going to have drive, whatever function we do from a logistician's perspective.

Who do I want counting the ammo and who do I want supplying that ammo to the front lines that they need? Well, I need to make that decision based off of hard science and not just perceived capability. So that's kind of how we're looking to use that data and understand it better in our environment so we can maximize that return on investment. And so if we have a problem down the road, we can look at ourselves in the mirror and say, we did everything we could to put the right person in the right place. It wasn't just a guess of how we wanted to do it. We did that through support and understanding of scientific methods. Yeah, Phil, I love that. You're buying down the risk there. And I'm sure, Kristen, you have something to add because that's, that's hitting something

that both you and I are extremely passionate about it. They're so passionate about it. It just is, you know, Robert and I have like literally been like evangelizing this concept inside the U.S. military for years, right? And it just fulfilled, number one, for being an innovator and being brave and being able to think about it. You know, these problems through the lens of science, obviously just applaud you. But, you know, I couldn't agree more. You know, we've got this objective data set. We understand how individuals are trending. We understand where the gaps are. We understand with these data, how we can help. individuals, you know, help give them the resources they need to manage their life in a way that

enables them to engage in their craft at the highest level, right? And, you know, I think we think about it, you know, we can talk about the NBA or the NFL. And, you know, if you know an athlete is really under recovered and just simply does not have the capacity to perform that day, well, they're not going to play 35 minutes of basketball. They're going to maybe play 12, right? Or they're going to, you know, they're going to sit out that day. Like, it's not a punishment. It is just smart. It is how you manage people, right? And, and I, and I think there's just, there's so much insight to be able, you know, to use to help folks understand and help management understand. Again, it's, it's not punishment. It's just, hey, there are, there's education that needs to

happen here. And why we've been so reluctant to, you know, especially in cases where it's life or death, right? You know, basketball is basketball. Okay, I tear an ACL. But, you know, we're talking for you guys are doing high risk, high stakes, very, very dangerous, you know, operations, right? So, you know, to not take this lens, I think is just such a missed opportunity, frankly. And I love that you guys are brave enough to even be thinking about it. You hit a really major point that I just want to highlight for everybody listening is you're exactly right. And Phil, you can come over the top here, but it is not punishment. It is not punishment that you don't get to drive the truck that day or be the first one in the door or the first one out of the aircraft. It is the exact opposite.

We are buying down as much risk as possible based off of the individual. individual's whoop data and collective data that a forced team squandered may have. And I just want to point that out because it is not punishment if you had a bad night of sleep and you're going out on a training mission or more importantly a real world mission and you woke up under recovered. I would rather my team know where I am physiologically, both from a physical readiness side and a mental preparedness side, then not know. And that's really what whoop is unlocking. And the last point that I want to push here is that with our military individuals, and I'll say this, even for all of our 20,000 plus tactical individuals,

the amount of emails, text messages, you know, notes on LinkedIn that Kristen and I get, and Phil, you can back me up here is, you know, I would say 99% within 14 days are able and showing they're getting more quality sleep. They're drinking a lot less. and their readiness levels are so much higher just within, you know, a very, very short time period, you know, 14 days or less. And that's, that's keeping it, you know, very generous and not conservative, but that's, you know, we'll see some changes within four days. So, so Phil, I think, you know, if you've anything to add there, please jump in, but, you know, you've seen it within your unit. How has it manifested from, oh, hey, we're doing this thing to your phone ringing every 30 seconds?

saying, where's my whoop strap? Yeah, that is, that is a very common text and phone call right now. You know, as we led into it, the first question from some of the soldiers was, you know, I'm not really sure what we're doing. What is this? Why are we doing to this? And it hasn't even really been two weeks since you've been here in Alaska helping us with that. And I am constantly daily getting phone calls, you know, do you got any more of them straps hanging around? I mean, it is amazing how many are there to the points where some of what I'm getting now is a question is, hey, if I buy my own strap, can I join the study? And what also is amazing about that is all of the other things that are happening up here behind what you will see in the data

that goes back to like you're saying about the punishment or how it's perceived. God, we could spend a whole another hour just talking about that, but some of the bigger issues are, or not bigger issues, some of the bigger benefits are the camaraderie and the competition that it builds within the teams. So they start to see. And what's great is the leader, leadership has to buy into this. We knew that up front. We knew we needed leadership to own this and push this. You know, I can do a great job of, you know, working with Woof to get the straps up here and, you know, we'll work through contracts. But the leadership is the, is the owner and driving it. And that ownership, in that showing the soldiers that we care is more of

an awards-based program than a punishment-based program. We're not saying you don't get to drive today because you're not ready. What you're starting to show soldiers is, we care enough about you to do this to understand what's best for you. We don't want to, you know, we tell soldiers all the time, we're here for you to make you better. And now we're showing that, again, through science and data. We know that putting you in the truck today is the best thing that we can do. We know that not letting you drive is the best thing that we can do. And not to be too grim about it, but just in my four years here in Alaska, I've had to investigate three or four fatalities through rollovers due to driving from north to south, south and north. It doesn't really matter. And up,

know, what our outcomes usually show us is it has to do with driver's training or some other, you know, form of readiness of that soldier around there. So by doing this, it's not a punishment. We're showing them that leadership does care enough to invest in whoop to show us who is the best. And, you know, you go back to the 80s and the 90s, and we used to have a saying it was, oh, you know, the soldiers, Marines, airmen, and it doesn't what it is. They do more in the morning before, you know, they do PT and everything in the morning before you even wake up at 630. that used to be our thing.

So the consistent time frame for the Army is 630 PT. For 24 years, it has been every working day, sometimes weekends, depending on punishments or what we've done, but you will do PT every day at 630. And after not even just my 24 years, but the time in the military, our brigade commander and our commanding general up here, commanding general in Alaska are now looking at this data. And I think Colonel Chris Landers said it best when you were up here, Robbie, said, you know, I can't tell a soldier when to go to sleep, but I can tell a soldier when to wake up. So they may be on duty.

They may need to undo after a hard day. They may get off of a jump of late, and I can't tell them when to go to sleep. They're going to want to go home and unwind and showers, but I can tell them when to wake up. And understanding the data that we're going to collect, if it makes sense to make them the best version of themselves that they do PT in the afternoon as opposed to 630, then I will do that because I'm basing it off of sound science and metrics through the understanding. standing out, you know, through that HR, that WOOP is showing us. So it is amazing to see how quick leaders are ready to reverse an ancient tradition in the military to support the soldiers. And that leads into this is a positive experience for us. And that's why we came to Woop in the first place. We knew we had a problem in Alaska with these barriers and these issues that we

face, but we weren't sure how to address them. We were trying to ask soldiers to self-report. Hey, tell us how long you're sleeping. Tell us, is it good sleep or not sleep? Well, you know, eight hours, right? I'm sleeping eight hours and it felt great. You know, that's that that initial soldier reaction. So that's really how this all came to be was we understood we needed something more than just self-report and lack of education. And that's what brought me to whoop and whooped to us and here we are. And Chris, you know, for you just spending a little bit of time around HRV and, you know, whether it's looked at as, you know, the demands of life to include being a soldier and anything that lives outside of that, you know, outside of the 10, 12 hours a day that I am doing my job as a soldier, talking about the importance of HRV because what that magical, you know, heart rate variability, what it really means inside of the autonomic nervous system and how it manifests in our body. Yeah, I mean, I think the core principle is that, you know, a heart rate that is variable, and responsive to demands bestows a survival advantage.

Like, boom. Like, that's it. Because you have the ability to respond to the demands in your environment in an optimal way, you have a better chance of surviving your environment. Okay, avoid an accident running from a tiger, like, you know, things like that. Like, you know, or in Alaska, you know, running from a moose. We saw a big moose. But, you know, it's really, you know, you want to.

And I think this kind of goes back to your point, Phil, a little bit, is that, you know, guys are starting and gals are starting to compete to be in that position to be able to be asked to do the job, the hard job. Like they're trying to, they start to manage their life and their behaviors in a way that puts them in a position to be able to do their craft. And that's where I think Robert, you know, you and I have seen just really like miracles, you know, unfold with some of our tactical athletes on the amazing stuff with our, are these guys on the platform where they, you know, they reduce alcohol consumption by, you know, almost 90%. You know, they increase their time in deep sleep because they're starting to stabilize their sleep wake timing when they're not in a training trip and not on a mission. You know, the time in between deployment and training trip, they're trying to live as pristinely as possible. right? So they can get themselves, you know, in a position where they can do their craft at the highest level. And that's where, you know, this kind of stoplight feature we have on whoop is is so powerful. And it's, it's whoop recovery. And Robert, back to your original question about

hurry variability, hurry variability is one of the primary inputs to our recovery algorithm. And this basically just as a metric that helps you understand how you are adapting to extremely, external stress, mental, physical, and emotional stress. How your body's adapting, that is what recovery gives you, is a picture of how you're adapting. And as a result, what kind of survival advantage or non-advantage you have. So I think that's, it's just a really powerful forcing function as it relates to behavior and, and frankly, just a source of truth to understand and how in fact you're adapting to your environment. And frankly, when you need to ask for help.

If things aren't going well, you've got three or four days in a row where you're just not trending in a positive direction, something's going on. And if you can't pinpoint it specifically, ask for help. And I think that's another thing, Phil, that I was so, it was just so wonderful to hear that this is how you all are thinking about it. Like this is how you're thinking about this technology is to how do we keep, how do we help these folks thrive, you know, in this, in this, you know,

really hard, tough environment. And it's just, it's, it's unreal. I can't express to you, Phil, how much that the, the initiative that is taking place inside of Army Alaska is not taking place at the, the size and the speed anywhere else. And it's so fascinating to me that, you know, a few people came together and said, you know, we're having some issues and we are going to do something about it. We're going to be a little bit out of the box, but we're going to base our decisions off of science. And that's what's been so powerful for us, just being able to say, listen, it's not rocket science, but it starts with sleep. And then after we have a basic understanding of sleep, now let's talk about how you

digest stress during the day, both mentally and physically. And then when you wake up the next day, how did you recover in a way that you should do more of this and less of that at the individual level? And once we're able to do that for the individual, again, when they come together as a collective force, they're firing on all cylinders. They're firing as a team, a squad, a pair. It doesn't matter what it is. And that gives the commander or overall person in charge the certainty that he or she needs in order to have mission success. And that's really what this is. And at the end of the study, I hope that Woop is able to give the United States Army a blueprint into what makes a more resilient soldier. So I just have to thank you publicly again,

because we don't take that responsibility lightly. And it's something that here at Woop, we are extremely proud to put our stamp on and say this is what we think it looks like based off of the scientific data and the thousand plus folks that have been gracious enough to be vulnerable but more importantly help the rest of their counterparts in the army and rest of DOD and let's just be honest the tactical space in general and learn from each other in a way that just hasn't been done before so thank you for that well i want to thank you for that and also tell you uh you know that's reciprocated on our side oh i cannot tell you how humbled I am and my leadership is not only to work with Whoop, but to do this for the soldiers

as well. So it really becomes twofold. You know, the leadership and myself were happy to actually do something for soldiers. Most of us will spend our careers in the Army doing things. And there's, you know, you're in for 24 years and you get out and a couple of years down the road, we start to forget what you left behind. So to have an opportunity towards the end of my career to work with just such a magnificent organization like WOOP to actually leave a legacy behind that could support. There are no words to say how humble I am for that to help the soldiers. But then on the WOOP side of the house as well, you know, when we started having a conversation about this study, it became a big ask for the military to whoop, which I'm sure

you're operating at a detriment to a business. But the energy behind WUK to support us at all costs, you know, where it has been set up time over time again, money doesn't. matter for this study. This is about American soldiers. This is about American lives. And because that has been the core premise of this study and how we've operated, I think it's allowed us to do something truly unique and just magnificent at this point in time. And again, we could never thank whoop enough for being that organization to help us work through this at all cost to your team as well. Now, thank you. We, at least I can say for myself, and I think I can speak for Kristen here. We are humbled to be able to do this because this has been a dream of ours for

years. Again, Phil, I want to thank you for your time. More importantly, I want to thank the collective group up there in Alaska. And, you know, I would love to do this again once we get the results of the study. I think it's going to be amazing. And when we are able to hand the U.S. Army, that blueprint, I'd love to get you guys back and talk about what we found. Good, bad, are indifferent. I think the folks listening here would love to hear the end result of this of this study and the amount of data that we got out of it, we could be talking about this for years to come. So so exciting, Kristen, your unwavering support here in the tactical space. Not many people know that you champion this from the very beginning. And I just, again,

I feel like I'd be amiss if I didn't thank you here as well. For everybody else listening out there, thank you for listening to this. If you guys like this, please do us a favor. Leave us an honest review on any of the platforms that you're listening to. And when you do listen to this, if you want to reach out to, and just for everybody around the horn, you know, I'm on LinkedIn. So it's Robert Mueller on LinkedIn. Let us know what you think. If you got value out of this and you want more of the tactical content, please by all means, let us know you should be getting more podcasts like this soon. And Kristen, how's in what is the best way if you want to reach out if they have any questions about this or anything else? Oh, yeah. Definitely.

LinkedIn, just Kristen Holmes, whoop, you'd find me. And then, you know, I do some educational content on LinkedIn, sorry, Instagram as well, just Kristen underscore Holmes 2126. Not super active, but every not again, I'll post something about my own data and try to kind of make connections there around kind of what it means and how folks can think about their own data. Yeah, those are are probably the two best areas. And then, you know, lots of stuff on the locker, which is our knowledge center. So, yeah, there's lots of, if you just literally go into the locker and, you know, type in heart rate variability, for example, all sorts of knowledge will come up in the form of written and podcasts. And so I definitely encourage you to, you know, to dig into that,

you know, that source of knowledge as well. That's amazing. If anybody listening hasn't been to the whoop, you know, dot com locker page, please, please, please go. there and type in anything that you hear us talking about. And it's just a armory of halt of just amazing data written by people that are way smarter than me and break it down in the simplest, simplest terms so everybody can understand it. So I definitely implore everybody to go over there and check that out. And wrapping it up, not last but not least, Phil, what's the best way to get a hold of you? I'll share my civilian email and LinkedIn out there as well because my As we said, after 24 years, my time is limited.

But PhilRank at g-emal.com is the easiest way to get a hold of me. And then I am also on LinkedIn at Phil Rank, P-H-I-L-R-A-N-C-K. And I check both of those regularly. So there's usually the easiest way to send me questions or any way that I can help anybody that hears this from the tactical side. And it doesn't matter what branch of service, I'd be happy to share, you know, how we do through that, how our leadership supported that, and how we sold that to the community,

to soldiers to everybody. I would love to share that with anybody that's willing to listen. I'd like to thank both of you. I know this was a long time coming, and there was a lot of work, not just with the three individuals on this podcast, but a lot of individuals in the background. I'd like to thank them as well.

University of Queensland, Dr. Villavon Hipple, Nadia Fox, Dr. Gemma King. You know, we would not have been able to spin this study up, run it through ethics and the way that we did. I mean, we really did all of that in about four months, and, you know, which is kind of a Herculean effort. And it were truly, so without, you know, Bill's direction, frankly, and Gemma and Nadia would, yeah, they've just been, you know, incredible supervisors through all this. Yeah. So thank you to the UQ team. That's, uh, you guys know who you are. And, uh, thank you, everybody that's listening. And we will talk to you

guys soon. Thank you to Phil for coming on the WOOP podcast. I want to reiterate just how proud we are to be partnering with the Army and helping serve these brave men and women. A reminder, you can use the code Will Ahmed. That's WI-L-L-A-H-M-E-D to get 15% off a WOOP membership. Check us out on social at WOOP at Will Ahmed. And stay healthy, folks. Stay in the green. I don't know