When you wake up on Saturday morning to watch your favorite college football team, you’re seeing the finished product. Those four quarters are the culmination of a lot more than a few practices throughout the week. To be your best, a delicate balance of study, nutrition, rehab and mental prep must be achieved.
An element easily lost in the mix is sleep. That’s why Penn State football started using a device called WHOOP.
WHOOP brings a scientific approach to performance by tracking sleep. Amount and quality of sleep directly correlates to effectiveness in practice — something Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin acknowledges.
“I think we all realize, the better sleep you get, the more your body is going to recover and the more productive you’re going to be the next day,” Franklin told reporters. “What’s nice is if they are not sleeping and they are up too late, I can tap in and my face pops up and I can yell at them to go to sleep — no, I’m kidding.”
Franklin said using the wearable is not required, but for players that sign off on using it, Penn State staff can track their sleep.
“I can get up in the morning and see that a guy has been tweeting ’til 4 o’clock in the morning,” Franklin said. “Now instead of me just looking at their Twitter or whatever it is, you can actually see: He went to bed at 11 o’clock or he went to bed at 1 o’clock, or he went to bed at 11 o’clock but tossed and turned all night and long; why does he toss and turn; does he have sleep apnea, what is it. Now we can study that to help him.”
It seems many Penn State players are taking advantage of the tech.
“It’s kind of weird being able to put numbers to your sleep,” wide receiver DeAndre Thompkins told reporters. “So it was kind of like a weird situation being able to go on your iPad and track how much sleep you had, how many times you woke up and stuff like that.”
As a device that’s meant to be worn at all times, WHOOP measures strain throughout the day based on workouts and overall exertion. It can suggest to Thompkins how much sleep is needed to recover, along with a breakdown of time spent in REM and other waves of rest.
“But as we kind of developed with it more and kind of understood it better with our strength staff bringing us in individually being able to look at our numbers and talk about things that we need to improve on or things that we’re doing very well, kind of helped us as a team be able to come out every day and peak at the right time; as Coach says, every day,” Thompkins said.
Indeed WHOOP is helping the Nittany Lions peak every day. It’s the first product with physiological markers indicating each players’ readiness to perform.
“My numbers are pretty well. I get in the green as much as I can,” Thompkins said of his sleep. “There’s times where practice and studying and school gets in the way but for the most part, I feel like as a team, even as a unit, as a receiver unit, we get very good rest.”
WHOOP is used by players in the NBA, NFL and MLB as well as Olympians and many others.