“Go To Bed & Wake Up At The Same Time”
This episode is all about maximizing performance in our everyday life, especially when it comes to heart rate variability and sleep.
Kristen works with thousands of the best professional and NCAA athletes in the world. If your favorite athlete is having trouble sleeping, she’s the one they call to help understand and interpret their WHOOP data. Along with that, Kristen is a fantastic athlete and coach in her own right. She’s a former member of the U.S. National Field Hockey Team and one of the most successful coaches in Ivy League history, having won 12 league titles in 13 seasons and the first national championship ever for Princeton University and the Ivy League.
In this podcast, The Best Measurement of Health – Heart Rate Variability, we cover:
- How to optimize your genetics in everyday life
- The ways you can improve lifestyle for fitness results
- The importance of sleep performance
- Why heart rate variability is a great way to measure well-being
- How you can optimize the way you recover and train through analytics
Optimizing Your Genetics
For starters, we all have a genetic code; it’s not something that we can change. Fortunately, we all come to the table with skills, expertise, and knowledge. These things are influenced and nurtured by different coaching and mentoring levels from the folks you’re around daily. However, whether you can leverage your genetics is primarily based on managing physiological and psychological components. That way, you have the platform to optimize your genetic skills and expertise. However, you might be leaving something on the table. If you’re not deliberately considering your lifestyle, then there are ways that you can improve.
Most people don’t necessarily know what to measure or what’s essential for lifestyle choices. Luckily, there are ways you can start to apply your effort effectively. So, think about this: what’s influencing your motivation day-to-day? If you can effectively manage psychological and physiological variables, you can build a framework around your day. That way, you will be able to leverage your genetic potential and your skills optimally and consistently. Plus, there is a way you can quantify the zone. If you understand the factors and apply a bit of discipline and effort, then there’s no reason you can’t perform consistently day-to-day.
Improving Lifestyle For Fitness
When we think about improving our lifestyle, we need to consider how we are sleeping. Are you getting enough time in the deep stages of sleep? If not, you need to think about how you can fix that. Another thing to consider is the strain you put into training. Is your strain consistently exceeding your capacity? Perhaps you are overtraining. Find someone who can let you know your capacity so you understand where your limits are. Next, it would be best if you started asking more intelligent questions about your behaviors and how they might be influencing the markers that we track. So, it’s an excellent opportunity to use data as a human being.
Basically, when you know your capacity and your load, then you’ll know at which volume and intensity you can take on to meet your desired result. Sometimes, if you’re trying to get fitter, you would expect to see a suppression of heart rate variability and an increase in resting heart rate. Overall, that means that your body responds and adapts to the volume intensity you’re putting on.
Suppose you are simultaneously taking on the volume and intensity, not getting sleep, drinking alcohol, eating like crap, not getting hydrated. In that case, your body isn’t going to be able to accept that stimulus. Next, suppose you’re trying to functionally overreach, as measured by heart rate variability and resting heart rate. In that case, you can use those metrics to understand if you’re in that sweet spot of functional overreaching. At the end of the day, you’ve got to live right to get to peak fitness.
The Importance of Sleep Performance
You don’t need to think about how much REM sleep you get versus slow-wave sleep; both are important. The percentage of time you spend in REM versus slow-wave sleep will be driven by what your body needs. From a restorative standpoint, the harder you’re working out, the more your body is going to guide you towards slow-wave sleep because that’s the time where you have the physical restoration. While on the other hand, if you’re overworking yourself cognitively, then you may end up spending more time in REM. The science is not super conclusive on this, but your body will drive sleep based on your needs. You want to spend about 50% of your total time in bed, in deeper stages of sleep. All in all, that’s a worthy goal to shoot for when it comes to bedtime.
Measuring Heart Rate Variability
Heart rate variability is a function of the heart, but it originates in the autonomic nervous system. The healthier your cardiovascular system, the more responsive it will be to the autonomic nervous system’s demands. Plus, the more recovered you are, the more responsive your heart will be to inputs. The less prepared you are, the less responsive your heart is going to be to demands. So, when you need to deactivate, your heart’s going to be slow to deactivate. When you need to activate, it’s going to be slow to start.
Overall, you want a balanced autonomic nervous system, and heart rate variability is going to be a measure of how responsive your heart will be to inputs. If you’re trending low for your heart rate variability and stress is high, then that means you are not handling stress very well. You can take stress better by playing with lifestyle factors. Then, you can work to bring the heart rate variability up so that you’re managing your stressful environment differently. Generally, your heart rate variability is going to reflect positively in a more balanced autonomic nervous system.
And when I researched you one of the things I’m I’m an ex-athlete, as is Jessica and many of the people in our, in our, in our team, and holy cow, you have an impressive field hockey story. And the question that I have for you is 1313. What was it 13 years at Princeton as a coach, and you only lost four games? Okay, what did you do differently? What is it that gave you the superpower of winning like that?
Kristen Holmes
Yeah. Oh, gosh, that’s a great question. Um, I think there are a few things at play that really did provide a bit of competitive advantage. I think number one, just the our framework in terms of how we thought about learning and development was potentially a little different. We’re really just, frankly, so engrossed in our own learning our own development, we kind of this whole notion of competition, kind of, we were almost like immune to that, like it was really never about the opponent for us. And I think what happens in conference play, is you create all of these rivals, right? Like we’re one game is more important than another and we kind of in in our thinking about, you know, how we wanted to be as a team and how we want to approach the game. Kind of philosophically, we thought more about, you know, how do we just get better every single day? How do we control our own behaviors in a way that helps direct our thoughts and intention and attention in a way that is going to help us be a better version of ourselves. And you know, this isn’t just about the techniques and tactics of what’s happening on the playing field. Of course, all that really matters. But it’s really that that time away, where you’re tasked with having to make a choice that’s either going to kind of upgrade or downgrade your capacity. And I think that’s the framework that we kind of approach the team with, and how we centered our education was very much around, you know, this concept of self rule, you know, what are what do you need to know about the physiology and the psychology as it relates to your motivation and effective effort? And, you know, your attentional capacity, you know, what are the big influencers, and building a framework around that was really our foundation. And I think we probably did that better than anyone in the country. Frankly, if I can obviously, say,
Dr. Mindy
more statistics, feedback, you know, I Yeah,
Kristen Holmes
I do. I do think that had a big bit that foundation, I think that we laid had a big difference. And just taking that concept of our opponent off the table that wasn’t really for us to consideration it was it was how do I step on the field and really impose my will on the opposition? And what does that mean about my choices leading up to that moment? And, you know, how do I need to think about the game tactically, we, you know, we had very interesting tactics, and that we’re always trying to score, right. So we kind of made our framework of what we’re trying, everyone on the field was always trying to score. So every decision that we evaluated was, was this decision that could lead to a goal. And that informs how we defended how we attacked. So we had this very, very simple task orientation that everyone on the on the team could latch on to. And that gave us a platform to be able to evaluate how we were, how we were going. So we had, you know, a couple things like that in place that I think were big differentiators for us.
Dr. Mindy
Amazing, amazing, I and I can’t help but make a parallel to what you’re now doing with whoop. And a lot of what we’ve been trying to do in our community is get people to stop looking at measurements, like the scale, or other measurements that may not be helpful to understand what their how their body is performing on a day to day basis, like we have entered this whole new world of health care, where we can see performance on the on a on a moment by moment, aspect and really analyze it and decide what we want how we want to make different lifestyle changes. And one of the things about your past that really is interesting to me, is this idea that Somewhere I read that you said that physiology and psychology are more important than skills. And if you can elaborate on that, because I think if you asked me what it takes to be healthy, I feel like it’s not your genetics, it is how you treat your body and your mindset, it’s it’s coming at health from a very similar approach that you came to athletics. Can you kind of dive into what you meant by that statement?
Kristen Holmes
Yeah, I think the thesis around that is that, you know, we all come to the table with a certain type of, you know, we have a genetic code, right. And that’s relatively, you know, not something that we can change, right? We all come to the table with some skills and expertise and knowledge. And, you know, it’s definitely influenced and nurtured by, you know, different levels of coaching or, you know, mentoring, you know, the folks who you’re around on a daily basis, you know, kind of I think can can certainly amplify that. But I think what, whether or not you can leverage your genetics and your skills and expertise is largely based on how you manage these physiological and psychological components, right, that gives you the platform to be able to really optimize your, your genetic and your skills and expertise, like whatever that potential is. And that’s always you know, when I talk to professional athletes and tackle athletes who are already really leave, you know, top surgeons in the world, I’m already really good. You know, what, what can you really offer me? Well, what I can offer you is that you might be leaving something on the table, right? If you’re not considering your lifestyle and in an intentional way, and you don’t necessarily know what what to measure what’s important, how to apply your effort in an effective way. You know, what’s influencing your motivation on a day to day, you know, if you don’t, if you can’t answer these questions, you’re really just, you know, your chances of performing consistently are diminished, right. But I think the opportunity is, alright, how do I, number one kind of a really, you know, kind of take this notion of flow or the zone that’s, you know, arbitrarily I’m hitting it arbitrarily like ever Every now and again, kind of take that off the table and think about this from the standpoint that performance really is a choice, right? If I can effectively manage these psychological and physiological variables, I know what they are. And I know how to build a framework around it, I can consistently leverage my genetic and my skills and expertise in a way that is optimal. Right. So I think, you know, this is very much and this has been the basis of my research for the last 20 years has really been around this notion of kind of quantifying the zone, you know, like, it’s not, it’s, there’s no guesswork, and from my point of view, having been around the best athletes in the world and have oceans of data, and, you know, having done this for as long as I have, like, I feel really confident that performance is largely a choice. And if we understand the factors, and we are, we can apply, you know, a bit of discipline and a bit of effort, and we know how to focus our attention. There’s no reason why you can’t perform consistently day to day, there’s no and,
Dr. Mindy
and I would say on that we also for the everyday person, the person who’s not like trying to achieve amazing things necessarily in their life, they just want to have optimal health. What I’m seeing with whoop, is that you guys have put together something amazing for people to take where they’re at, and and amplify their performance in life. Is that kind of the slant you came at with? whoop? Yeah, I
Kristen Holmes
mean, I, you know, I know when will Ahmed, the CEO of whoop, and, you know, founder who’s just an extraordinary human being, and has just this amazing vision for the product always has, you know, I remember one of our first conversations is, you know, while this started, you know, at the tip of the spear with, you know, the most elite athletes on the plan, and, and really, you know, thinking about this product from a training and adaptation standpoint, you know, how do we help folks train optimally, it has really evolved to a product that is for everyone, you know, I know, you’re a former athlete, I was a former athlete, but shoot right now, I’m just, I’m a mom, I’m trying to look good naked.
Unknown Speaker
possible, like, those are Michael.
Unknown Speaker
Um, you know,
Kristen Holmes
and but, but really, it’s about, it’s about being available, it’s about showing up with as much, you know, presence as, as, as you can. And, you know, that’s how I really evaluate my success is how can I show up for the things that matter to me, right, with it with a level of presence and clarity? And, and, you know, attention that that feels good, right? Like that. That’s, those are my values, right? And, and for me, a path to that is understanding how Madame acting to external stress, and that’s what measures right, like your stand, how you’re adapting to external stress, and without that knowledge, and without that, without that understanding, it’s just really hard to understand how to apply your effort. Right? Like, I don’t, I don’t have a million hours, like none of us do. We’re all busy, right? And I What, what whoop, does is it really helps you understand, okay, where’s my sleep? Okay, I’m not getting enough time and deep stages asleep? How do I fix that? Right, we help you with that, we get that. Right. You know, am I am i is my strain consistently Exceeding my capacity? I am I overtraining, you know, we tell you that, like, we tell you what your capacity is. And if you are experiencing a downward trend, you know, in your metrics, you know, looking at resting heart rate and heart rate variability, and you know, the recovery algorithm, if you’re consistently on a downward trend, something is happening, right. And you can start to ask more intelligent questions about your behaviors and how they might in fact, be influencing those markers that we track. So it’s just a really good opportunity to use data as a human being to to just be more present in your life.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah. Oh, for sure. I’ve had whoop now for about three months. And for starters, it took me a while to figure out all the things that are there. So. Yeah. So we started with a group of my staff, and we all created a team together. And I’m going to give a shout out to Jessica’s husband, because he has been like the papa bear the team. he analyzes all of our HRV and, you know, it lists every day like the order in which I don’t know exactly if it’s based off strain. But his HRV is ridiculous. Like his HRV goes up. Jessica, what was like the highest was like 150 or something. I’m like, I’m just trying to get mine to 50. So what is the highest Jessica?
Unknown Speaker
He’s gotten like 180 or something?
Dr. Mindy
Yeah. So I asked him and I did two things. One, I joined another group because I was like, I need a group of women that are my age. Like, I’m not gonna To compare myself to a 35 year old man, I need to figure out what I, but he did something really smart. And I think this is how you designed the band to be is that he’s a Spartan racer. And so what he wanted to do is make sure his workouts or not his biggest workouts were aligned up with what the strain coach told him to do what his recovery was, is that how you is that that’s how you guys designed this to be?
Kristen Holmes
100% Yeah, and that’s really the strain coach feature, you know, that’s the the Genesis behind behind strength coach is really helping you understand, you know, what do I have in the tank, you know, what’s my capacity, and, and really helping you understand, you know, how much harder how much further you can go based on, you know, what, what you have in the tank, and, and that’s really, you know, staying in that sweet spot of training is really, you know, how you, you know, how you optimize, you know, how you how you really make the best fitness gains, you know, is really mapping, you know, that, that exertion level with, you know, in making it line with your capacity.
Dr. Mindy
Awesome. And so the goal is not to get the highest strain number that you possibly can in a day,
Kristen Holmes
no, no, and a lot of things influence, you know, your ability, you know, so if I come in, if I come to a workout, and I’ve got a 14, you know, percent recovery, then I’m probably and I have an I go have a super, you know, high volume, high intensity workout, I’m gonna have my strength is gonna be through the roof, because my body to do that workout is having to work so stinking hard, that, you know, I’m basically going to have a really high strain, right, because my cardiovascular system, my, you know, my, my, my muscles, my co2 capacity, all of that is going to be all my biological, you know, functioning is going to be compromised, right? Because I don’t have, because I’m under recovered, right? For whatever reason. So I’m not going to be able to adapt to that stimulus in a functional way, in the way that someone who’s coming on coming into that workout with an 80% recovery, right? That we could do the same exact recovery be the same exact age is the same exact weight. And you know, the person with a lower recovery is going to end up with a higher strain. So it really is, it’s fitness level, it’s age, it’s, you know, it’s all of those things that influence, you know, what your strain ends up being, but certainly going for the highest strain is not, you know, it’s a more complicated matrix, than than just simply of getting the highest strain. That really doesn’t mean a whole lot.
Dr. Mindy
So are you seeing big changes, like you work with a lot of competitive athletes, a lot of NBA professional players? Are you are you seeing that they are learning how to hold back in their workouts so that they don’t push themselves on a day that their their body wasn’t ready for that?
Kristen Holmes
Yeah, we definitely see that starting to play out more. I mean, you hear this this term load management, right? Like, it’s hilarious, because I was thinking about this a decade and a half ago, because I was using all sorts of technology to kind of understand, you know, capacity. But yeah, so there’s definitely been in the I think the last four or five years, and I think booth has had a huge piece of has really been a huge piece of this conversation is really helping folks understand that if your body isn’t, isn’t, you know, prime to adapt to a stimulus, you are not going to be able to get the benefits of that workout, like your body simply doesn’t have the resources to allocate to accept that. Yeah. So yeah, so I think you know, this Sorry, I keep freezing.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, no worries. No worries. Yeah. As you’re so on. Yeah. So I think.
Kristen Holmes
Keep going, though. So I think this this concept of management, folks are really starting to grab to grasp onto it and actually use data to better understand how to maximize training opportunities. And that’s at its core, you know, what, whoop is just really, really good at helping folks is, Hey, this is your capacity. This is how much load, you know, volume and intensity you can take on to meet your desired result. And sometimes, you know, if you’re trying to get fitter, it’s it you would expect to see a suppression of heart rate variability and an increase in resting heart rate, right, that means that your, your body’s actually responding and adapting to the volume intensity that you’re putting on. But if you are simultaneously taking on the volume and intensity, not getting sleep, drinking alcohol, eating like crap, not getting hydrated, your body isn’t going to be able to accept that stimulus. So you kind of have to really live right? If you’re in fact trying to functionally overreach, as measured by you know, heart variability, resting heart rate, you can use those metrics to really understand, you know, if you’re in that sweet spot of functional overreaching, versus, you know, versus a, you know, maladaptive type of training effect. Right and But you’ve got to really live right in order to kind of get to meet that
Dr. Mindy
revolutionary thinking. Cuz I mean, when I played college athletics 30 years ago, the idea was you just pushed yourself every single day. And you just did more and more. Yeah, more and more. Strain coach to Justin showing me on my whoop, like, Look, your strain coach will tell you how hard you’re supposed to work out. And I’m like, that’s, that’s a whole nother idea. Yeah, it’s crazy. So I want to go through some of the things that you guys analyze, because we have a lot of questions on it. And I want to help our audience get the most out of whoop, like I said, what we’re starting as a group are what we have, we call it the reset. And we’re starting a group that will be able to see what happens to everybody sleep and HRV resting heart rate when we fast together, because we’ll have, you know, magic 1000s of people all doing the same fast. And then we can start to analyze the data. So we’re geeking out on this with you. So let’s start with, let’s start with like, okay, what’s more important your total sleep, or deep sleep and REM sleep? Like, what do you do? My Jessica can get her sleep performance to 100%. Like, every day, I can’t, but I can get my deep sleep over an hour. And sometimes the other day went two hours and 23 minutes in my deep sleep. What it What should I be looking for at sleep? Is there a piece that’s more powerful than others?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, well, so
Kristen Holmes
just to break it down. So sleep performance, the number that you see in your whoop app, is basically just how much sleep you need versus what you actually got.
Dr. Mindy
So Jessica, is listening to what you’re telling me? Yeah.
Kristen Holmes
Jessica, hey, you need to spend eight hours in bed, she spends eight hours, you know, she spends enough time in bed to basically fulfill, you know, the time that she spends in actual sleep, meets whatever the recommendation that whoop puts out. So that’s the, you know, that’s that, that that percentage that you that you get, it’s that ratio. So in terms of what’s most important, your body is going to drive your, your knee. Okay, so how much time I need to spend. So don’t think about it, how much you know, REM versus slow wave sleep, both are really important, the amount of time, the percentage of time that you’re going to spend in REM versus Sleep Sleep is really going to be driven by what your body needs. From a restorative standpoint. You know, I think it wouldn’t be too out of line to say that, you know, the, the harder you’re working out, you know, the more your body is going to drive towards sleep asleep, because that’s the time where you have the physical restoration, if you’re just cognitively like really like I know, days that I where I’m like working a ton and really having to apply my brain power, I end up spending more time in RAM. So I don’t you know, and I think that the science is not super conclusive on this, but I think we can say conclusively that your body is going to drive your need. So you want to think about on the whoop platform, you want to spend about 4040 to 50% of your total time in bed, in these deeper stages of sleep. And that’s a good goal to shoot. So if I’m, you know, if woop says that I need to spend, you know, roughly eight hours in bed of that eight hours in bed, I really want to try to spend at least 30 minutes, only, you know, less than 30 minutes awake is kind of what I’m hoping for, and I can tell you how to get there. You know, the other bit is gonna bite. And then and then the, the rest of the time. So roughly, you know, three and a half, four hours, I’m hoping that we’ll be divided in some way some, you know, percentage of, you know, 40% of that of that time will be in these deeper stages of sleep. So that’s kind of how we think about it and what we consider optimal. Okay,
Dr. Mindy
I interviewed Dave Asprey. Do you know, David, Dave Asprey, the bulletproof? Yes. Well, I interviewed him a couple of weeks ago, and he’s quite a character, and he gets on on the ready for the interview. And he’s like, Oh, I’m gonna be amazing today cuz I just got three hours of deep sleep. And I was like, how did you die three hours of deep sleep. That’s crazy. So and what I know about sleep is that deep sleep is where your brain detoxifies, and that that’s where you actually your brain the brain will shrink and the cerebral spinal fluid goes up and washes the brain out. So the deep sleep is something that I’ve always been watching. But I also my other sleep is not as good so I haven’t been paying as close attention to those. How when you say how do you go ahead,
Kristen Holmes
deep sleep split, it’s split into so there’s four different kind of phases of deep sleep. So we just characterize it as you know, REM and sleep sleep like that’s and then we give you percentage of time that you’re spending and both so So if sleep is the physically restorative time period, that’s when you release human growth hormone, I think, you know, almost In fact, like 95% of your human human growth hormone is released during sleep sleep. So, you know, important piece of the puzzle, and that’s where, yeah, the, you know, the origin is producing, all sorts of things are important things are happening, um, during that timeframe. And REM is when, you know, amyloid protein buildup gets released. So you’re talking about this brain detoxification that happens during rapid eye movement. So yeah, I mean, all of these stages are important and central and have a different function. And I think just, you know, to note is that, you know, sleep is a really, it’s a highly active, so, you know, it’s a lot going on, you know, so it’s really important that we, we put ourselves in a position to actually, you know, capitalize on on all these stages, right, and that, you know, very much is tied to our daytime behaviors, you know, not just what’s happening right before bed, but really, the moment that we wake up, we need to start thinking about how my behaviors are actually going to influence my sleep, because they do, you know, the things that I’m doing during the day are either going to kind of help my my, my ability to get to these deeper stages of sleep, or they’re not. So thinking about it in those terms, I think a couple of things
Dr. Mindy
we’ve noticed is that if you eat dinner, and then you go to bed, like you wake up the next morning, and your whoop is like you suck like
Kristen Holmes
you are so spot on. I mean, we’ve been observing this in the data for years, right. So this is a recommendation that I’ve been pushing with my athletes for for years that we’ve been working on, because we’ve seen that so obvious in the data, when folks are eating, you know, within a couple hours of bedtime, it’s just it has such a math, almost the same influences alcohol, you know, not quite but but you know, the wrong content and quality and timing, will 100% influence your sleep and in very similar way to alcohol. And it’s it goes back to this process that you know, sleep is really active. And when you’re asking your body to digest, whilst it can’t digest and recover at the same time, it just can’t do both of these processes. So it’s going to allocate all the resources toward digestion, it’s going to do that until it’s fully until you’re fully you know, digested, digested, and then it can focus on REM, and sleep, sleep and all these other processes that need to be happening. So you end up basically, as you’ve seen in your data, and as you vote, you know, all the folks in the platform have seen, you know, is that you basically end up with a much more fragmented sleep experience when you’re eating clothes, because you’re, you know, having to do both of these things at the same time. And you can’t do that. So you know, the resources are going to go toward digestion first, because that’s just
Dr. Mindy
been so motivated for both my husband and I, we were eating dinner early, the two of us are going to bed early, like all from whoop, we’re like, oh, my God, and my other day, my parents were over, I had to kick them out of the house, I was like I got you’re gonna affect my whoop, score, you need to leave now. It’s definitely gamifies that for you.
Kristen Holmes
It really does, I think exposure to that data. And you know, just the elegance, I think of the UX and the UI, like just the way, you know, just our product folks are just like out of this world, you know, and just get better every single day. But yeah, I think the behavior modification, I think that is just literally the biggest differentiator or anything else on the product is that on the market is that, you know, we’re not just, you know, we’re helping you understand how to modify your behaviors, so you can get the outcomes that you want in your life, you know, whether it’s to, you know, lose weight, or Well, you know, it’s to get fitter, you know, train optimally or be healthy, like, we can help you do all of those things, right. And we’re because we’re going to create this really robust foundation that allows you to efficiently layer on these other protocols that you can then, you know, really capitalize on whether it’s your exercise protocols or nutrition protocols, but really, at the foundation is to some of these core things.
Dr. Mindy
My 20 year old daughter is in college, and she was having trouble waking up to her alarm. So I got her a whoop. And I was like, let’s look and see where you’re in deep sleep. Like what same thing, it just has really worked on helping her understand how she can control her quality of sleep. So I would agree with you on that. And it’s just been what, just before we leave sleep and jump into HRV, which is my favorite discussion. What do you how much of a time period between dinner and going to bed do you think is best for sleep performance?
Kristen Holmes
I think two to three hours is is a good buffer. But yeah, and then yeah, and you said it, I’d be remiss not to mention it but you know, sleep consistency is kind of the most important behavior as it relates to, you know, in addition to a cold, dark, quiet room, very important as well, but that’s more on the hydrated But in terms of an actual behavior that really drives time and deeper stages of sleep, it’s the regulation of when you go to bed and when you wake up, you just want to make that as consistently as humanly possible. And it’s, it’s amazing. Yeah, we’ve done, you know, we’ve seen this manifest in the data, you know, with the kind of enterprise type folks that we have access to, we’re doing a lot of analyzing, but we’re doing some some massive research looking at, you know, this concept of resilience. And the number one marker that predicts resilience on of our members is the degree to which they go to bed and wake up at the same time. Wow. So it’s kind of emerging as like canary in the coal mine as like this single most important behavior. That helps, I think that really is the key to kind of longevity and health and, you know, immune function and, you know, staving off disease and mental health issues like sleep, like timing, just it sets your circadian rhythm, it just basically, you know, just Is this the most predictable kind of cue that you can give your body that, you know, tells your your biological kind of systems what they need to be doing, and when they need to be doing it. And it’s, it’s really probably the best, the most important behavior that people can latch on to, I think, if they want to see immediate results, so
Dr. Mindy
powerful. Okay, let’s go into HRV. Because this is the one that is baffled me. So everything I’ve read, it’s the scale just to fill people in, it’s a scale from zero to 100. And everything I’ve read is you shouldn’t compare.
Kristen Holmes
Recovery is zero to 100. HRV, I
Dr. Mindy
thought it was 100. What’s that? What’s the range on HRV?
Kristen Holmes
So HRV can be
Dr. Mindy
mapped to one 8150. Yeah.
Kristen Holmes
Yeah, exactly. It’s Yeah. So it’s very unique to each individual. It’s, you know, it’s, you know, it’s dependent on part size, and age and genetics, and, you know, all those things are going to influence like, what your kind of Max heart rate variability, okay? Could be. So that’s going to be and your behaviors kind of leading up to the moment they get on loop, and you actually start to understand or realize what your every variability is, you know, how you live your life, how you’ve lived your life previously, you know, did you smoke, can you drink a lot of alcohol, I mean, all those things are going to kind of impact, like, where you come in at. And then obviously, how you treat your body thereafter is will dictate whether or not it, you know, improves or declines. So your behavior, yeah, and this is
Dr. Mindy
why I want to because I have some interesting behaviors that we’ve been trying to unpack with HRV. But the first thing I want to just be clear on is you’re not supposed to compare your HRV to anybody else, because it’s unique to you. Is that correct? Yeah.
Kristen Holmes
Yeah, it’s really just, you know, social comparison, in general is not super healthy, but you know, definitely as it relates to HRV it’s just not not the correct way of thinking about the the marker, it’s really, it is you against you. 100%. And it’s, and, you know, it’s like when you get on the platform, it’s layer II, this is major IV, I’m just going to try to adopt behaviors that are going to play HRV because we know that better HRV bestows you know, the more variable, your your your heart rate, right? The more the more variability you have, the more adaptable you are to external stress, the more capacity you have to adapt to external stress, right? So the less variability, the lower your heart rate variability, the less capable you will be able to mentally physically adapt to that environment. So it’s in all of our best interest to have as much variability as possible. So we can optimally respond, the higher
Dr. Mindy
the number for you, the more the more your body is able to adapt to stress. Would that be your nerve? It’s really your cardiovascular system and your nervous system. Your nervous, okay.
Unknown Speaker
function.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah. Yeah, don’t might not know.
Kristen Holmes
Yeah, so hard variability. It’s a function of the heart, but it originates in the autonomic nervous system. So you kind of alluded to the fact that your your heart is is, is always like it’s you. The more healthy your cardiovascular system, the more responsive it will be to the demands of the autonomic nervous system. So you’ve got the parasympathetic, and the in the in the sympathetic branch of the nervous system, right? They’re both competing to send signals to your heart. The more recovered you are, the more responsive Your heart will be to both inputs. So if I need to activate, my heart’s going to be responsive to that demand, because I’m really well recovered. If I need to deactivate My heart’s going to be responsive to that demand. Because I’m highly recovered, the less recovered I am. What can we measure that with whoop, recovery, right we give you that’s the scale of zero to 100 The less prepared you are, the less responsive Your heart is going to be to those demands. So when I need to deactivate, my heart’s going to be slow to deactivate, when I need to activate, it’s going to be slow to activate. So you really want a balanced autonomic nervous system, because that is the it would that and that’s going to be measured, or that will be higher heart rate. variability is basically going to be a measure of how responsive Your heart is going to be to both inputs. And that’s going to is really reflected in more balanced autonomic, beautiful that was. So all of the you want to deploy are ones that are going to help bring balanced thought.
Dr. Mindy
Okay, so then is it fair to say, if you’re trending low for your heart rate variability, and stress is high and you feel like you’re not handling stress very well, that the one way you can handle stress better is to play with those, the lifestyle factors you can work with to bring the heart rate variability up so that you’re handling your stressful environment differently.
Kristen Holmes
Without a doubt, yeah, and then I would say one of the biggest influencers on on heart rate variability is because this behavior, I think, influences your sleep as well. And your sleep onset latency, kind of how quickly you you’re able to fall asleep, is really the degree to which you’re able to buffer stress with appropriate bouts of breast during the day. So this concept of autonomic control is is really, frankly, in my opinion, is kind of the keys to that, right, if you can control your autonomic system, you could pretty much tackle Whatever you need, right? Because you’re going to be responsive to the demands of your buyer, right, you’re going to be able to react in a way and reacting in a novel optimal way, whether you’re trying to get out of the way of moving car, or, you know, or give a great presentation, like, you know, it bestows a survival advantage, right? When you have, you know, when you’re responsive to when you can be responsive to the demands of your environment. So, you know, one of the ways to kind of help facilitate that is to really take control of your stress during the day. And simplest way to do this is to just deploy some very simple breathing techniques, where, where you, you know, consciously bring your heart rate down. So we call this D activation, right? And this is, because when you’re, when you’re activated constantly, that’s when you end up with, you know, this chronic kind of sympathetic, this, you know, chronic inflammation, you, you know, you because you’re you’re releasing cortisol, you’re probably not sleeping as well as you can, even if it’s subtle, and new, you know, you don’t really perceive it, you’re probably not getting the sleep that you need. Because you’ve got this inflammation, you’ve got this chronic stress that you’re not managing and dealing with, it ends up manifesting in subtle ways. But one of the metrics that can track it is heart rate variability. So one of the best ways to mitigate that is really is to deploy, you know, breathing techniques proactively throughout the day. And it doesn’t have to be forever, you know, we do it, you know, you do it for about a minute, you know, it takes about a minute for the vagus nerve, which is the pair of the path to the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system, it takes the biggest nerve about, you know, a minute to 90 seconds to pick up on long expansion when you’re doing intentional breath work. And it releases acetylcholine, which is the chemical that tells your heart rate to decrease. So that takes about a minute to 90 seconds to happen. So you know, all you have to really do is, you know, just, you know, breathe in for four seconds, hold for seconds, breathe out for four seconds, wait four seconds, do that for 90 seconds, and all of a sudden you’re buffering stress off with appropriate amounts of Oh, right. And that’s just Well, yeah, I mean, it’s super simple. But what happens when you when you don’t do that is you get what’s called this negative stress accumulation right. And and when you have negative stress accumulation, that’s when you know, you’re ruminating on stuff, you’re lying in bed, you’re thinking about your day, you haven’t been proactively, kind of, you know, taking care of yourself really is what this is. And then even if you’re so in sleep, that you fall asleep quickly, you’ll end up with a much more fragmented, you know, nighttime sleep experience than if you were actually buffering stuff
Dr. Mindy
that actually is the most helpful thing I ever learned about HRV and we’re now going to try that because my understanding was that it’s like you’re going into this parasympathetic state technically in at sleep so I was thinking that it was everything leading up to sleep, but a couple of things that I’ve noticed is hydration so hydrating during the day and even I’ll take it even one step further. I started adding in some minerals into my water and I all of a sudden saw some strange and I don’t know it has magnesium in it so I don’t know if the magnesium was making but my heart rate variability went up quite a bit. The timing of when I eat before I go to bed also not only affected sleep, but it affected heart rate variability and but I’d never really I was looking at everything prior to sleep and what you’re saying I love this idea of the buffering like just having moments of parasympathetic activity is going to make a big difference. And is that that’s what you’re saying?
Kristen Holmes
Yeah. Yeah. 100% and water stimulates the vagus nerve. Right? So um, yeah. Water solves a lot frankly, like the like water is amazing, right? There’s so many good things from you know, boosting metabolism to you know, your skin health and all that but um, but yeah, water actually in the gut on cold water stimulates the vagus nerve. So and which is not the path again to parasympathetic activation. Yeah. But yeah, that the gut is, you know, and you’re finding us that the gut as obviously is a huge piece of the puzzle, right? What we’re putting in our, in our gut, really influence our, you know, our, our autonomic control. And you know, what’s happening from non nervous systems. Dan,
Dr. Mindy
one of my favorite books is called accessing the Vegas nerf. And it has all these little hacks for your Vegas nerf. And one of them is like, is like gargling at night.
Unknown Speaker
laughing
Dr. Mindy
so maybe I’m gonna try some of those little tricks and see if that changes. HRV
Kristen Holmes
I definitely. I mean, I, I’m a huge, like, Seinfeld fan, I like love it. And yeah, I literally will just like, or, you know, I’ll watch like, a 510 minute clip or whatever, and just laugh my ass off. And right there like it. You know, it’s just so you’re laughing is a huge? Oh, my gosh, yeah.
Dr. Mindy
I love it. Okay, what about resting resting heart rate. So and I specifically want to talk a little bit about it in terms of COVID. Because there are some things that you can see. And I had heard that resting heart rate was one of them that when your resting heart rate goes up, that and your respiration rate goes up those two can be indications that you’re either dealing with COVID, or, or you’re dealing with some infection of some kind. And I know there were studies that originally when COVID was came to all of our attention that they were using technologies like loop to see if you had been infected. Is that still an accurate statement? Yeah.
Kristen Holmes
Yeah, so we actually just published a paper on this. And it’s, it’s pretty epic, you know, just the fact that, you know, we’re able to actually see in respiratory rate on that. And that, and that ends up being, I think, a more specific marker of COVID than in fact, resting heart rate, because if I’m, if I’m non COVID, sick, my resting heart rate is going to increase and my, my heart rate variability is going to decrease, right? respiratory is going to stay pretty stable, it’s actually not going to move a lot. I’m COVID, sick, my heart rate variability is going to decrease my resting heart is going to increase just like a non COVID. Stick would, right. So these are nonspecific markers. But respiratory rate jumps off the map, okay, in a way wall doesn’t for a non an COVID is a is a lower respiratory tract infection. So it, it your your respiratory rate only seems to move in those times, right, it very rarely is going to move for anything other than a lower respiratory tract infection. So, so that’s what I think has been so novel, and what we’ve been able to contribute to, yeah, and in these times, is that we’re the only wearable device that has, you know, third party validation around respiratory rate, and that is the key marker, you know, the, the marker that moves the most in the presence of a COVID-19 infection. So when you if you see, you know, we track this in recovery, we track it in sleep as well. And, you know, all you do is you click on your respiratory rate, we’ve got a band, if you’re outside the band, you know, that’s when you self isolate, monitor data. And, you know, if it’s, if it, you know, persist, definitely get tested, that we have, obviously, just tons of stories, but, but the recent peer review, breaks all this down and kind of shows that, you know, for 20% of the cases three days prior to symptom onset, we can accurately detect Kobe’s and one day after symptom onset, we’re detecting accurately 80% of the time. So it really I know it’s a pretty amazing kind of feat, I think for our data science team to kind of be able to uncover these insights and and then obviously be able to push it through public you know, peer review and get published is really is really pretty incredible for us. But But yeah, respiratory rate is really the key marker you want to track just because it’s specific rest, resting heart rate is not specific and that it’s gonna, you’re working or it could be it could just be drinking alcohol, it could be you know, like it’s going to be impacted, whereas respiratory rate doesn’t change, okay.
Dr. Mindy
So when you say goes off the charts, it’s not like it goes up by one or two points. You’re saying goes up by like,
Kristen Holmes
by like 17% relative to baseline is like the the average increase in what we’ve seen with folks who have our COVID-19?
Dr. Mindy
And are you guys trying? Are you looking at this? I mean, this is what I want to go back to my community and say, okay, so until we have testing at home, that’s really easy. This would be a great way if you’ve been exposed to understand if, if your body’s fighting it off. Is that how you guys are looking at this? Yeah.
Kristen Holmes
Yeah, definitely. And certainly, you know, it’s, it doesn’t replace it by any means. But, you know, because of the strength of, you know, of what we’ve seen in the, in the data in terms of what what actually happens to your respiratory rate in the presence of a COVID-19 infection, it’s a great extra layer, you know, you know, there’s no way you shouldn’t be monitoring this data point. And if it does, if you do see substantial increases, it could, it could be non COVID. But, but you definitely, that is a moment where you, you absolutely want to self isolate, you know, keep track of your data. And, and, you know, see testing as soon as
Dr. Mindy
beautiful, it’s beautiful. Okay, other questions that we have are, what about, like the EMF on it? If I put it on Bluetooth? And it’s just like, reading me throughout the day? Are there? Do we know if there’s any EMF that are coming off of it?
Kristen Holmes
Yeah, we found nothing deleterious. Related to that, um, you know, I kind of plead the fifth a little bit in that. I don’t know, I don’t, you know, I don’t think there’s enough testing around that, frankly, to say something conclusive, but, um, from what I understand and the knowledge I have, and the conversations that we’ve had internally, there seems to be nothing dangerous about, you know, whoop, and the interaction with these other people. And
Dr. Mindy
does it matter like I just because of my knowledge, I’d put it on Bluetooth all day. And then I just pair it before I go to bed and I parent when I get up, so it’s not on Bluetooth. Also that so my phone and my whoop, are not pairing with each other all day, that won’t change the data at all.
Kristen Holmes
No, no, it’s we can collect up to three days, as long as it’s charged, we’ll collect three days on your strap. So you can be away from your, you know, your Bluetooth for 48 hours, you know, and reconvene, it will take a little bit as it takes some data. It’ll take a little bit to load, but you know, that’s fine. Um, but yeah, that’s, that’s, I think, an awesome feature that, you know, we were able to store that data new, like you’re not losing a second of data. It’s all there. And when you reconvene with your phone, will will get you Yeah, my phone
Dr. Mindy
decided to take a hiatus on Monday, and I done everything right to get a good sleep score. So I was so excited to wake up Monday to see my phone was broken. And I kept remembering like, what you guys had said that, like, it’ll store it for 24 hours. I’m like, okay, it’s stored in there. I’m just gonna take a deep breath. It’s all gonna be okay. For three days, three days, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. Okay, does it matter what arm you put it on?
Kristen Holmes
It doesn’t know. Okay,
Dr. Mindy
does not matter if it should be on top. In fact,
Kristen Holmes
I, I definitely recommend at night I always like I, you know, I change requests. I literally as soon as I get in bed, that’s just like my routine. I just just, you know, just so I’m not on the same wrist all day. Yeah, that’s my that’s my little routine.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, and you guys band thing is really cool. Like, whoever thought that up, please give him our compliments. Because here in my office, we’re all like, Oh, do you see they have a new band? Like I got last night at nine o’clock, one of my dogs in my office sent me Oh, did you see these bands. So you definitely have made it really fun that way.
Kristen Holmes
Or just design team is just like, next level, they’re so good. And in this prone, it is just like, it’s just really good technology. You know, like, it sounds so trivial that you know, just like, Oh, it’s just like a band. But this is like some serious technology to like be able to hold to the skin in a way that isn’t uncomfortable. That feels kind of breathable, but then allows like, enables a good signal quality, like holy cow, like they really just they’re just I can’t speak highly enough about them. There’s unbelievable,
Dr. Mindy
you guys did a great job. My other question on just like logistical kind of things is these groups that you’ve created. That is also amazing. And like I said, we have a group of my whole staff that’s in one grip. And now we have all our our resellers in a grip. Is there any way to chat to each other within the group? Because we’ve been trying to figure out how to point out if somebody could say, hey, my HRV went up today, this is what I did, we could have a really cool interaction.
Kristen Holmes
We definitely want to build that, um, it’s something we’re thinking about. We’re talking about, we’ve got, you know, tons of feedback from folks, you know, wanting a feature inside the community. So, yeah, that is definitely We’re marching toward that. 100%. Okay. We know how powerful that would be and how important that is. And yeah, and to be able to have those conversations like um, You know, testing out cold thermogenesis, like you know, this is what this is what the impact is seems to be having on me It only thing I’ve changed and you know, my heart rates up 20 milliseconds, right you know, heart rate believes uptime is you know, things like that like that kind of banter back and forth can just accelerate wisdom and help people like really dial in on the behaviors that are actually most efficacious as it relates to, you know, kind of improving your situation.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, we have in our clinic, we have a bunch of biohacking. Like we have a hyperbaric oxygen, we have a PMF machine and infrared saunas. So we’ve all played with those pieces, like we were like, in the hyperbaric what happens to your HRV? And your deep sleep? If you go on the on the PMF? Yeah. And we found that actually, it’s not 24 hours later, it’s usually 48 hours later that we start to see some changes. Do you feel like it takes time, it’s the repetition of all activities in order to see a change? It’s not necessarily one thing?
Kristen Holmes
Yeah, I mean, you’re some of your habits. Yeah, you know, there’s no question about it. Like, I think it all, you know, just kind of the average of what you’re doing is is gonna, is gonna add up and kind of help you’re not. So I think in the bowl, like, you know, most of these interventions that we’re talking about are not going to do right, right. And it is difficult to your point to isolate which one is really influencing unless you’re kind of doing a more controlled experiment. That’s where a lot of the research that I’m doing with external partners, you know, to look at the influence of CBD on the influence of CBD THC, the influence of float tanks, you know, what does Infrared Sauna do and in creating kind of a controlled scientific experiment, you know, that will go through peer review, and that’s probably properly so we can start to unpack like, you know, what, what are these behaviors, right, that we can really help members understand, our most our most impactful, on average, you know, and people are still going to do but it’s experimenting, but we’d love to be able to distill that down for you and provide that knowledge. We actually have this and really incredible study with Stanford University. I don’t know if you know, Dr. Andrew, Superman. I
Dr. Mindy
know, I can’t Yeah, we know him on on Instagram. Yeah, I love his work.
Kristen Holmes
Are you just like such a star. I just, like, love him so much. But um, anyway, he’s just such a great source of knowledge and so bright. But we’re doing Yeah, we have a study right now. It’s actually an analysis. But we’re looking at at heart rate variability measures during breathwork, and different types of breathing protocols along with meditation, as the as a control and understanding its influence on sleep architecture. So we actually have quite quite a few insights in terms of what is most efficacious as it relates to helping folks get into deeper stages of sleep. So we’ll have we’ll provide some of these insights. Yeah. So anyway, a lot of external research we’re doing is really trying to unpack everything you’re talking about, from infrared to, you know, to float tanks to all these different modalities that exists that that have an influence on hurry variability and see,
Dr. Mindy
well, I we will, after we get enough data of all of us that have been fasting and using this, well, we’ll report back to you and let you know what we find. Because I love it. It’s like once I understood it for me, and for my team at my office, I was like, Okay, let’s open up to our online community. And let’s see what we can see with the different fasting styles that we teach them. So okay, last couple. What are you go ahead?
Kristen Holmes
Yeah, I’m curious because I, it’s funny. So one of the researchers that we work with, who I have so much respect for, she’s really against fasting for women in particular. And she’s one of the thought leaders on female physiology. So I really do take her advice seriously, but I noticed for me, I am a way higher functioning human being when I narrow my feeding meadow. Like, there’s no question about it. I feel it’s just it is night and day, how I feel. And it’s also like an anchor behavior for me, like, when I last like I am more intentional about you know, when I eat I eat less like I don’t take on as many calories that I don’t need. Um, you know, uh, you know, less snacking, you know, all the things that kind of rail you less emotional eating? I don’t know, I just I just feel way better.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, well, so to the first point, women have to fast differently. So we have to really look at our cycle and there are certain times in our cycle we should not fast and there are times we can fast, amazing, amazingly, but the longer you fast, the more you get like GABA production. So it calms the brain, you actually reset the dopamine receptor sites, your body goes into this really parasympathetic repair phase. So you know, I haven’t worn it yet on like a three day water fast, which we do as a group, but I’m kind of curious to see what will happen to my HRV and my deep sleep. On over a couple of days of fasting, because
Kristen Holmes
oh, man, yeah, I’ll
Dr. Mindy
let you know, I will let you know for sure. And when we do the fast because we have found that fasting definitely raises HRV. That’s been number one. But the biggest complaint we get is sleep. And so what I don’t know is what part what part of sleep isn’t trade off? Is there a way can we give a mineral supplementation before and our community is 300 and some 1000 people, so I want to I’m trying to get one of these on everybody so we can get them into our resetter groups, and we can look at this.
Kristen Holmes
Well, it would be interesting to actually stand up like a proper research study. Um, you know, looking, looking at these questions, you know, a great, um, you know, there’s no reason why we couldn’t, couldn’t do that. We’ve got the got the group, you know, have like a control group. I don’t know, we could we could set it up. You know, really cool. I love that.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, we would, we’ll reach out to you. We would love to do that. Love to do that. Yeah,
Kristen Holmes
but I definitely thought, you know, Tim Ferriss talks about this a ton, and I just listen to podcasts. And I’m by no means an expert on fasting. Not even remotely. But I definitely salt. You know, just literally pink Himalayan salt in water. As the winner seems to actually help. Okay, um, I don’t know why, what the physiology is behind that or what’s happening biologically, but um, but yeah, just like salt water is supposedly really good. Wow. Wow. Yeah.
Dr. Mindy
Okay, last couple questions. I know you got to go. And I just saw my computer’s about to die. So we’ll make this quick. But okay, tell me what you know, like you personally, when you look at your your whoop in the morning, what are kind of the biggest drivers that you use?
Kristen Holmes
Yeah, I definitely go to I go to my sleep first. And I look at you know, how much time I spent a week. Okay. Um, that’s and and i think one area that I’m actively trying to manage is my sleep debt. If I keep my sleep debt below 30 minutes, um, I know that my, my my chances of illness and injury burden go down. Like 100%. Like I in all the observations I’ve had in the data over five years, you know, looking at tactical elite athletes. If you have less than 30 minutes of sleep debt, you’re pretty much bulletproof. I hadn’t been sick and for Wow, like four years, and you have kid guy, like, Did I hear you have two kids? Well, how old I am 213 and 12 or 18 months apart?
Dr. Mindy
Okay, so when they were little that was hard to affect your sleep debt had to be? Yeah.
Kristen Holmes
Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. Well, I wasn’t I wasn’t actually when they’re young and not, you know, at an age where they were, you know, still their sleep was still inconsistent. Um, yeah, I wasn’t actually tracking unfortunately. But right. Yeah. So I kind of had, you know, stable sleep and yeah, so I’ve switched in that regard. But, um, but yeah, I think
Dr. Mindy
you guard your sleep. You guard your sleep? Yeah, I’m, yeah.
Kristen Holmes
That it like, yeah, I mean, my family, will they, they laugh at me, but but their, their sleep is dialed into. I think we’re all we’re all on board. That’s awesome for ya. But um,
Dr. Mindy
okay. And then you’ve had some really interesting people that you’ve been analyzing their whoops. And professional athletes who’s the most interesting and what have they? What have they been able to accomplish from just understanding their whip?
Kristen Holmes
Oh, that’s an awesome question. You know, I think what’s what’s hard is, you know, we generally can’t reveal right now. We’re, we’re Okay, with that. It’s hard. But I have a funny story with one of the athletes I was working with. He came onto the platform. And, you know, he’d been on for a couple weeks. And, you know, he texted me He’s like, Hey, can you can you check my data and let me know what you think. So I look, I look at his data. And I’m like, I’m like, dude, like, you’re waking up like, every single night for like, a couple hours like, What the hell’s going on? Like, literally, like awake. So you wake up and then like, the next part of his sleep would be either sleep again or as a nap. But never had consolidated sleep. And he’s like, I wake up with a night sweats. I have my whole life. Like, what do you mean you wake up the night sweats and so I was lists of course start asking the obvious questions of like, what are you eating? And sure enough I mean, the guy would have like, a bag of Sour Patch Kids. Oh my god bucket of I know. I know the worst diet
Unknown Speaker
he’d been like for three years
Kristen Holmes
Wow. was operating out like literally half his capacity. Wow. Like I’m telling you already. So good. Like that’s what that’s what like it’s like what are you actually leaving on the table? Yeah, and this guy is so good. Right like he played a lot of minutes and you know, had some injuries here and there but for the most part was doing okay. But once we once we fixed his nutrition, and the guy started actually he’s the first time it is first and his whole entire life that he actually slept through the night. Wow, just using this one thing that he literally had made no connection. Yeah, no one has like, had made this connection for him. So cool. So I think it’s you changed his life, he ended up making the all star team and, you know, for the first time in his career, you know, was was basically went from like, doubled every category of you know, in terms of assists and steals and rebounds and points and free throw percentage, like, it just all got better, like, literally within weeks, like it was just like the most insane. So I think that for me, like was like, one of the, like, coolest things I had been apart I love that guy’s one of my baseball players on, you know, super close with to this day. But, you know, this is like, gosh, three years ago, um, you know, was really low HRV was on all sorts of medications like sleep meds, and just like, cold turkey, just quit all that and just stopped drinking alcohol just like dialed everything in and, you know, ended up extending his career, he’s an older athlete, you know, really, I think, ended up giving himself probably two more years in the league that it wouldn’t otherwise have had, had he not like dialed in on all and you know, use the data to really inform some of this behavior. So that was, that was a really cool, really cool story.
Dr. Mindy
But I mean, all of that from this is what I’m seeing in my family is that just the so called tracking it, we’re like making changes, it’s so cool. Okay, let’s, what about mindset? So I want to kind of end on the where we started, which is, who do you who’s inspired you the most? When it comes to mindset, you don’t, I don’t think you come out of the womb with the mindset that you have somewhere along the line, you learn to have that kind of mindset, who who’s been the most influential for you.
Kristen Holmes
I would say to individuals that I met back at the University of Iowa, I think were most central and informing kind of my thoughts around performance education, and just how to think about the physiology and a psychology. They were just so ahead of their time, Dr. Molly Marty and Dr. lockets, Stewart, they were PhD students at the time and, and I was working inside the athletic department, I was on the you know, I was a Olympic, you know, athletes, I was playing on the US national team and competing, and anyway, I got I got, you know, kind of funneled to these to these folks where I met them. And I ended up being a research assistant for them and worked really closely with them for like three years. And that was really my foundation around, you know, performance and just starting to think about performance and more in a more intentional way. But just from everything from being able to kind of actually define, you know, performance and understanding that our mindset, you know, our ability to have a growth oriented, you know, positive mindset is 100% contingent on how I sleep, our cover how I train, how I move my body. It’s it’s contingent on, you know, the extent that I have purpose in my life that I, you know, feel like I have the skills and resources do what’s asked of me, you know, do I have control over my day? You know, mindset doesn’t just appear for us, right? Like my ability to access my mindset is contingent on how I manage these physiological and psychological variables. Right. And if we’re not, if we’re not helping folks understand that we’re, you know, we’re missing the whole we’re missing the whole Oh, Foundation, right? So basically, I think, yeah.
Dr. Mindy
Especially this year, when anxiety is so high for people to see what they can control is so powerful. Yeah.
Kristen Holmes
It’s hard to talk yourself no better future, you know, when you’re not, you know, when you don’t have this framework?
Dr. Mindy
Yeah. Amazing. Okay, last question, then we’ll let you go. If you had one message for the world that you could get into everybody’s brain, what would that message be?
Kristen Holmes
Go to bed and wake up at the same time as often as humanly possible. Love it.
Dr. Mindy
I love it. That’s awesome. Well, thank you, Chris. Literally, I’ve been, you know, you’ve been on my calendar for weeks. And we’ve been gathering questions and we just love the whoops. So please let everybody back at your office know how grateful we are. And we will reach out about fasting because we have so many people that are trying the different pieces that we’d love to be able to share what we’re doing. It would be so fun to do just a little observational study, you know, just, you know, get some get some understanding around these different types of protocols, you know, and see, you know, what works for men and women and what the differences are and it would be really interesting,
Kristen Holmes
so just awesome. Bring me up. You’re ready.
Dr. Mindy
We will. We will. Okay, thank you have a beautiful night. You too.
Kristen Holmes
Take care.
Unknown Speaker
Bye bye.
// RESOURCES MENTIONED
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- Whoop Band, Get your First Band Free
- Whoop/ Covid article
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