Plastic fitness tracker frees surf journalist from idealogical prison of hard work and into a guilt-free and dreamy languor resulting in injury-free surfing

VAL sourness from tongue gone, too!

Until recently, I was a devout believer in the notion that success wouldn’t come unless I was immersed in the reservoir of hard work.

Put the time in, don’t slack, rewards they come. 

The result, a salad of injuries, back, a hip, broken teeth, temporary blindness.

This has been highlighted over the past year as I’ve thrown an already genetically weak body, a slim, small and somewhat ridiculous figure, into combat sports and by surfing only a spot famous for its collisions and hierarchal breakdown.

Driven by ego, position, identity and competition, of the metrics available to the WHOOP user, sleep, strain, recovery, I used only the first two (read “Surf journalist discovers “antipatico” towards fellow surfers key to improved performance!” here). 

But what if I leant over to the recovery side of the ledger and trained and surfed only when the meter read green? Might the replenishment of the well mean less pinched nerves, tweaked knees etc? 

Recovery, of course, as pertaining to WHOOP “reflects how well prepared your body is to take on Strain, and is a measure of your body’s return to baseline after a stressor. The size of these stressors, illness, exercise, psychological stress or sleep deprivation, determines how much your body needs to recover. When your Recovery is high, your body is primed to take on strain. When your Recovery is low, you may be at greater risk for injury, or overtraining (during intense workouts).”

Four metrics make up your recovery, heart rate variability, resting heart rate, respiratory rate and hours of sleep. 

Your score is either green, 67% or above, “body primed to adapt to a larger training load,” yellow,  34% – 66%, “body able to adapt to high training load but might be compromised based on the lower end of the spectrum” or red, 33% and below, real easy to blow out.

I adapted around each colour.

The results were three-fold. 

Upon waking if WHOOP was below thirty-three, it gave me permission to give in to the urgent softness of my bed, a throwaway text message to my biz partner indicating I’d be unable to work for the day. Result, an avoidance of injury due to safety of bed. 

Second, it freed me from the idealogical prison of hard work and put me in a guilt-free and dreamy languor. Less stress.

If green or yellow, which came relatively seldom, I’d surf longer and with more intent, the breaks in getting in the water removing the VAL sourness from my tongue and the growl of violence from my gut. and found a notable improvement in performance.

This is the third benefit of swinging to the rhythm of WHOOP.

Buy your WHOOP here, fifteen percent discount if you use the code BEACHGRIT at checkout.