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When the Whoop 5.0 and MG launched back in May, one of the buzzy new features was Healthspan, which aims to calculate how your body is aging. It was a feature only available to Whoop members who had the new 5.0 or MG —but now it’s coming to Whoop 4.0 as well.
The Whoop 4.0 is still a great tracker . Most of the value of the 5.0 is in its longer battery life and, until recently, the Healthspan feature that the 4.0 didn’t get. If you prefer to hang on to your 4.0 (for example, to make use of your strap collection, or just because you haven’t wanted to pony up for an early upgrade) this announcement is great news.
What is Healthspan?
Healthspan is a Whoop feature that calculates your “Whoop age” (younger is better) and your “pace of aging.” So if your Whoop age is 5 years younger than your actual age, you can feel pretty good about your health.
This is, of course, a made-up number. Lots of wearables and health apps will calculate an age for you, subtracting years if you exercise a lot and have a “healthy” BMI. (Oura and Garmin peg me at about 10 years younger than I really am; Ultrahuman is tougher, saying my true age is nearly the same as my actual age.) I haven’t unlocked my Whoop age yet, since it needs several weeks’ worth of data to come up with its first estimate.
Whoop says that Healthspan incorporates nine key metrics:
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Sleep consistency
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Total hours of sleep
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Daily steps
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Time in heart rate zones 1-3
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Time in heart rate zones 4-5
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Time in strength activities
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Estimated VO2max
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Resting heart rate
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Estimated lean body mass
Healthspan isn’t a scientifically validated number. In other words, I can’t compare the number I get from my Whoop to a “real” healthspan, since there is no such thing. So there’s no way to really evaluate how good Whoop is at calculating a healthspan.
I will note, somewhat cynically, that improving your healthspan involves interacting with your Whoop device more than you otherwise might. If you don’t wear it all day, your daily steps number will be lower. If you don’t log every strength workout in the app, you won’t get credit for those. Much like the Apple Watch’s “stand hours,” some of these health metrics double as grading you on how much you’re using the product.
When is Healthspan coming to the 4.0?
Whoop has been hinting for a while that Healthspan would be coming to older devices, but now we have a date. Whoop announced today that Peak members with 4.0 devices will be able to access the Healthspan feature with a rollout that is starting August 5.
Peak is the middle tier of memberships, the one that you probably got automatically rolled into if you have a 4.0 device and didn’t take any action to upgrade your membership.
