125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research

31.305 - 43.395 Kristen Holmes

What was really interesting is ice bath, regardless of when you do it, is sleep promoting. And basically what we saw, the fitter you are, the more you ice bath, the less good it is for your recovery. Big data.

43.655 - 47.437 Kristen Holmes

combined with artificial intelligence, is going to absolutely lead the charge.

47.537 - 61.963 Kristen Holmes

We're getting so close to not having to guess. When we take this back to our original conversation with my athletes, I didn't want to have to guess, right? I just wanted to be able to keep them healthy. I wanted them to be able to thrive. If we want to manage load over the course of a season and keep athletes healthy, you need that data.

62.103 - 68.085 Kristen Holmes

For someone that is genuinely interested in optimizing their health, where do they start? What kind of actionable steps could they take?

68.305 - 71.927 Kristen Holmes

If we really want to optimize our health, the place to start is...

187.833 - 188.033 Gary Brecka

Yeah.

188.713 - 205.878 Kristen Holmes

And it was kind of maybe that realization, right, that we're exercising these athletes and we're training them, we're strength training them and we're training for different positions and we've gotten really good at speed and agility and timing and strength and coordination, but it had no predictability to how that athlete was going to show up the next day.

205.978 - 208.799 Kristen Holmes

So can you talk to us a little bit about that, that,

209.119 - 229.569 Kristen Holmes

Yeah, it was definitely like the epiphany, you know, when we started, um, you know, having lots of different types of technology that we could measure, you know, what was happening, the adaptation during a training session, you know, and really I was in an Ivy league school. We only had the athletes for at Princeton. We only had the athletes for a couple hours.

230.069 - 241.735 Kristen Holmes

Um, and I think we just over indexed on, um, what those two hours were actually doing to the athletes. And, you know, we had internal load, we'd external load, we had some, you know, subjective markers. Right.

389.799 - 399.726 Kristen Holmes

You know, you even talked about how you would apply some of these metrics during a game, like to see, you know, when should I be taking athletes off the field so that we always have fresh legs.

399.786 - 421.964 Kristen Holmes

And I've heard you talk about how we never got late into the game or deep into a game, you know, the last quarter of a game and lost because of fatigue, which, you know, you see this happen in fights and boxing and you see it happen in every sport, you know, sort of... you know, over utilizing that athlete during their performance time and not knowing, hey, when do I back off of them?

422.324 - 429.811 Kristen Holmes

Give them a chance to recover in real time and then put them back out on the field. And I'd love to talk a little bit about that. And then I'm gonna go deep down the rabbit hole in some of the science.

429.831 - 451.195 Kristen Holmes

Yeah, and I mean, it's, you know, it's really, I think having, and this is what Whoop has done so brilliantly is, you know, understanding capacity going into a match, right? So lots of factors are gonna influence how capable I am today to be able to handle the demands of a match. So you've got kind of that baseline readiness level.

451.375 - 458.384 Kristen Holmes

So measuring and quantifying that is kind of table stakes at this point, right? For the most part, we have access to that information if we need it.

342.081 - 361.004 Kristen Holmes

No, we absolutely weren't. We knew that we were leaving something on the table. I think that's where, as a coach, I didn't want to leave anything on the table. I really wanted to help my athletes optimize their potential on the field and off the field. I felt a lot of my responsibility as a coach was to educate them, right?

361.044 - 375.851 Kristen Holmes

To help them understand what are the factors that are going to impact your attentional capacity, your energy production, your motivation. Like I, you know, I wanted them to learn, not just, you know, win championships and be a sensational hockey player. Of course, it's more than that, right?

375.911 - 388.418 Kristen Holmes

It's really providing a performance education over the course of the four years that helped them understand exactly how it is they need to apply their effort so they can take that education and then have it with them for the rest of their lives.

389.799 - 399.726 Kristen Holmes

You know, you even talked about how you would apply some of these metrics during a game, like to see, you know, when should I be taking athletes off the field so that we always have fresh legs.

399.786 - 421.964 Kristen Holmes

And I've heard you talk about how we never got late into the game or deep into a game, you know, the last quarter of a game and lost because of fatigue, which, you know, you see this happen in fights and boxing and you see it happen in every sport, you know, sort of... you know, over utilizing that athlete during their performance time and not knowing, hey, when do I back off of them?

900.088 - 917.636 Kristen Holmes

And it was astounding to me the paucity of realization that people had about the importance of sleep. And so we just did something very basic. And we got a baseline and a couple thousand people. And We ran this sleep challenge. It was a three-day sleep challenge.

917.976 - 936.889 Kristen Holmes

And we did simple things like, okay, we're going to develop a routine, not eating two hours before bedtime, cooling the temperature of the room down, darkening the room, taught them a breathwork technique to do while they were in bed, no screen time in bed. The things that I knew that everybody could do without spending any money or buying any other fancy equipment other than the Whoop to track it.

937.469 - 960.641 Kristen Holmes

And what was pretty interesting was we saw, again, anecdotal in this big group, but about an 18%. increase in their sleep score, um, which obviously led to improved, um, you know, recovery and strain, reduced strain, improved recovery. And, uh, because we just brought their level of consciousness about sleep, you know, to, to the forefront.

960.761 - 960.941 Gary Brecka

Yeah.

961.241 - 981.887 Kristen Holmes

And it's interesting cause I, you know, I open up our, we still, I'm still in this whoop group and, um, My sleep score gets uploaded in there every day. So now I'm like stressed about sleep because I'm like, heck, it's my group. So if my sleep score is crap, you know, then people are going to be like, ah, he's a charlatan. So I do make sure that I go to sleep, you know, routinely at the same time.

1414.733 - 1415.053 Kristen Holmes

Threatening.

1415.093 - 1415.173 Kristen Holmes

Yeah.

1415.213 - 1440.61 Kristen Holmes

It was your day threatening, you know, like, yeah. Um, and, and what we saw was, was really interesting. So folks who perceived their day as really challenging actually had lower blood pressure as measured by our stress monitor, which is not surprising. Um, and, um, had better night sleep the prior night. So I think what that tapped was, you know, feelings of self-efficacy.

1440.69 - 1459.105 Kristen Holmes

So feeling like you have the skills and resources to tackle tomorrow are going to help you sleep better. Your preparedness kind of going into the day is going to help you sleep better. Right. So all of these feelings of challenge. But what was really interesting is is we our hypothesis was that people who perceive stress challenge are going to have lower stress.

1460.166 - 1460.506 Gary Brecka

Wow.