Whoop has introduced VO2 max estimation, giving users access to one of the most important markers for assessing cardiovascular fitness and aerobic endurance.
The feature is now available to Whoop 4.0 users in the app, providing weekly, monthly, and six-month trends and offering a clearer picture of performance over time.
For the uninitiated, VO2 max measures how efficiently the body uses oxygen during exercise and has long been a key metric for evaluating fitness levels. We have a handy guide on everything you need to know about VO2 max scores on wearables.
Whoop says it estimates the insight using a proprietary algorithm incorporating heart rate, movement, recovery data, and demographic factors.
Traditionally a wildly varying metric on fitness wearables, the brand is also keen to point out in its announcement blog post that it has a mean absolute percent error of less than 8% compared to the gold standard, which is a lab setting.
Interestingly, the brand has also added the ability for users to manually input lab scores to help refine the platform’s calculation.
Users can access their VO2 max estimate within the Whoop app’s ‘Strain’ section or by customizing their dashboard to include the insight.
Whoop’s AI Coach can also compare your scores against others in different demographic groups is also possible, providing additional context for fitness levels. However, since it’s a relatively slow-moving metric, we would say it’s more of one to check in on infrequently rather than daily.
As always, we’ll be putting Whoop’s VO2 max readings to the test over the coming weeks, comparing them against our established estimates from Apple, Garmin, Oura, and others to see how the figures stack up. Stay tuned for more on that.
