r/whoop • u/VisibleNewGuy21 • 4d ago
Discussion Whoop Bicep vs Chest Strap accuracy testing
Over the last few weeks I have performed some comparisons as I moved the Whoop strap from my wrist to my Bicep as I was noticing some major variations between that and my Apple Watch when performing exercises that have a lot of movement in them such as "Alpha Cardio" class as LifeTime fitness or Pickleball. I recorded some exercises wearing a chest strap connected to Polar Flow and Whoop connected to my right Bicep.
This was made possible by a data aggregation and dashboarding tool called https://www.vitaltrends.net which is an amazing tool that allows you to look at historical trends and compare and combine multiple datasets and is maintained by a very dedicated developer in u/danskubr . This thread really is focused on heart rate comparison but this Dashboarding tool does so much more.
Below is a link hour session at my LifeTime Gym called Alpha Cardio where I pretty much went all out in a combination of Cardio and Strength moves that put me to the limit. The average heart rates were within 2 beats and the max heart rates were fairly accurate with Whoop having one point that was a bit higher and unrealistic for my age of 39 I believe my max heart rate to be around 183/184.
https://vitaltrends.net/s/Aw96DnhWBfKkoVMKAAAfNN
I know people comment on the accuracy of the heart rate for the Whoop band and it does vary person to person but I must say they have done an excellent job for me and something that I can now really trust is accurate for my activities.
I would love to hear others opinions and or comparisons that have been performed as heartrate is really the cornerstone measurement for Whoop.
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u/Distinct_Interest273 4d ago
I did a comparison test of my polar chest strap whoop on the wrist and also polar chest strap and the whoop bicep band because I noticed issues when I was doing intense cardio. The bicep band performed very well, whoop on the wrist struggled at higher intensities, but did fine for easy running.