23/08/2025
I often get asked which tracker is better: Ōura or WHOOP, - so I decided to share my experience after three months of wearing both.
My experience
ŌURA Ring and WHOOP band: Three Months In
For the past three months I’ve been using both Oura and WHOOP on a daily basis. Before that, I never really thought much about heart rate variability (HRV) or how strongly my daily habits could influence it. Now it’s become one of the most insightful markers for me.
ŌURA
I really value the way ōura tracks women’s health and the menstrual cycle. I also tend to trust its sleep tracking. The only challenge: Ōura often pushes me further than I would go myself. Because its recovery score relies so heavily on sleep quality, my readiness score is always high — it tells me every single day that I’m “ready to climb Everest.” In reality, I can still feel muscular fatigue from the previous day of climb to Everest 😅
Ōura CV age - PWV: it’s a fascinating metric. But once you’ve set the bar high, you want to keep it there — so I felt quite disappointed when it dropped after a period of improvement. When I was fully carnivore, it showed -16.5 years; when I shifted back toward a more flexible diet, it dropped to -12.5 only It’s a sensitive marker that clearly responds to nutrition and lifestyle shifts.
WHOOP
The most valuable feature for me is the training load recommendations. They help me keep balance and avoid overtraining — even on days when I feel like pushing harder. Another strength is the daily journal: being able to log habits and then see how they impact sleep, recovery, and readiness is incredibly useful.
Both trackers revealed one crucial insight: Nutrition as the key lever.
After returning to a strict carnivore approach, the changes were striking:
• HRV jumped from an average of ~90 ms to consistently above 110ms, with a peak of 205 ms.
• CV Age moved back into a significantly lower than calendar age. But once you’ve seen it very low, you want to keep it there — so I admit I felt quite disappointed when it dropped during my more flexible diet phase.
• WHOOP recovery now stays in the green most of the time, with only three dips into yellow during last 3 weeks.
Final thoughts
In the end, I’m glad I have both devices. They look at recovery and performance from different angles, and together they give me a fuller, more reliable picture. That’s why I recommend them to my clients too: for those who are more interested in general wellbeing and health awareness, Ōura is an excellent choice. For those focused on athletic performance and training optimization, WHOOP is hard to beat.
