Monday Motivation - November 11th
Good morning,
Did you sleep well? Do you feel rested? What is your actual recovery score from yesterday after your long boozy lunch or epic adventure running/cycling/walking through the amazing autumnal scenes?
I've been introduced to two pretty cool bits of hardware/software in the last month and was impressed enough to share with you guys.
1. Whoop - a wrist strap heart rate variability (HRV) and sleep tracker which measures your recovery from the day before.
2. HeadRest from Thought Beanie - a head band worn overnight to measure your brain waves and not only record your sleep patterns but work at trying to enhance deep sleep.
So I found Whoop from a cardiologist friend of mine who highly recommended the product. It's designed for people who exercise loads but honestly is a great way to measure your recovery and stress levels from daily activities whether you exercise or not. I've been a subscriber/user for two weeks and I'm learning to listen to my body more by watching what it gets up to each day.
HRV is the measure of the different lengths of time between heart beats, the more irregular the timing the healthier we are (better able to adapt to our environment). The more stressed we are the more metronomic our heart beat. The app gives you a recovery score each day and a sleep coach to set a target of sleep each night.
It's a wrist device (with no watch) like the back of an Apple Watch or the back of a Garmin watch. You get one by paying a €15 - €20 monthly membership for 6-18 months (no fee for the device). The whoop guys do a pretty cool podcast too.
HeadRest is a product that is brand new. Unlike HRV where there are loads of devices, this is a brand new tech start up. It's a head band worn overnight and actually measures your brainwaves using EEG sensors in the head band. Effectively like having a sleep lab in your bedroom each night. The pretty cool difference is it has micro speakers in the headband and plays white or pink noise to help you drift off to sleep or once your get into REM sleep helps keep you there longer.
It was shown to me by Alyn a buddy from my skiing connections and he's developing the tech himself in conjunction with the Universities of Leeds and Manchester. If you are keen to get in at the beginning, this link will save you 50%.
I can't help but feel the tone of the MM is very salesman like, however I can assure you everything we share here each week we get no kick back* or benefit, we simply think things included here will make you healthier or improve your life in some simple way.
Anyway, sleep well and see you next time,
Craig
*Alyn did buy me a lovely lunch with a fab bottle of Pinot.