New WHOOP Study: Stress Mindset Impacts Heart Rate, Sleep & Recovery

Boston, MA — June, 2025 — A groundbreaking new study from WHOOP, published in the esteemed journal Emotion, presents hopeful news: how you perceive your daily stress can significantly shape your health outcomes. Drawing on data from over 11,000 WHOOP members, researchers found that the way individuals interpret stress—whether as a threat or a challenge—has measurable effects on heart rate, sleep quality, and overnight recovery.

Stress Perception: A New Frontier for Health

While stress is a shared experience, our mindset in response to it isn’t. WHOOP examined two primary modes of stress interpretation:

• Threats feel overwhelming and unmanageable, triggering heightened physiological stress responses.
• Challenges, although difficult, are perceived as surmountable, activating more adaptive and restorative bodily responses.

This subtle difference in interpretation has striking health implications.

“We’re learning that perception isn’t just psychological—it’s physiological,” said a WHOOP spokesperson. “This study shows your mindset around stress truly changes the way your body experiences it.”

Key Findings

• Threats raised average daytime heart rate by 1 bpm and systolic blood pressure by 1.5 points.
• The night before a stressful event, members who perceived stress as a threat had elevated resting heart rate and lower recovery.
• Those who framed the stressor as a challenge saw lower RHR and experienced more restorative sleep. These findings underscore the body’s different preparation modes: gearing up for a threat taxes the system, while gearing up for a challenge supports resilience and readiness.

You Can Train Your Nervous System

Importantly, the study suggests that you can change your response to stress—even if you can’t change the situation.

“Shifting from ‘I can’t do this’ to ‘This is hard, but I can handle it’ isn’t just a mental shift. It changes how your heart beats, how you sleep, and how you recover,” the spokesperson said.

How WHOOP Helps Reframe Stress and Build Resilience

WHOOP equips members with the tools and insights to build this mindset of flexibility and resilience. Key features include:

• Journal Logging: WHOOP’s in-app Journal lets members log perceived stress as a threat or a challenge, among 160+ behaviors. Over time, WHOOP identifies patterns and Recovery Impacts to help members gain awareness and control.
• Stress Monitor & Breathwork: On high-stress days, guided breathing techniques can shift the body out of fight-or-flight mode. The WHOOP Stress Monitor recommends science-backed breathwork to promote calm and recovery.
• Prioritized Sleep Strategies: On days with anticipated threats, WHOOP encourages members to protect sleep through actionable behaviors—earlier bedtimes, screen time reduction, and wind-down rituals.
• Weekly Plan: Members can set weekly intentions around stress management strategies—breathwork, mindfulness, movement, and sleep—and track their follow-through as the week unfolds.
• Trend Tracking: WHOOP Trends help users visualize how RHR, recovery, and sleep respond to stress perceptions over days, weeks, and months.

Resilience Is the New Recovery

The WHOOP research reinforces a larger truth: stress recovery is not just about rest—it’s about resilience. And resilience comes from shifting your relationship with difficulty.

This study gives members a roadmap for training their nervous systems, reframing stress, and building adaptive strength from the inside out.

Start Your Resilience Journey with WHOOP

WHOOP continues to lead the way in personalized health coaching, offering 24/7 biometric insights to help individuals train smarter, recover faster, and live better. With tools like the Journal, Weekly Plan, and Stress Monitor, WHOOP empowers its members to actively shape how their bodies respond to life’s toughest moments.

Discover WHOOP membership at www.whoop.com and start building your inner resilience today. 

Interview time with the researchers is available upon request. 

About WHOOP

WHOOP, the human performance company, offers a wearable health and fitness coach to help people achieve their goals. The WHOOP membership provides best-in-class wearable technology, actionable feedback, and recommendations across recovery, sleep, training, and health. WHOOP 5.0 and WHOOP MG offer groundbreaking health innovations, including cardiovascular health features; Healthspan which quantifies Pace of Aging and provides members with their WHOOP Age; and first-of-its-kind wearable Blood Pressure Insights. WHOOP is the perfect health companion for anyone looking to optimize their health and performance. Founded in 2012, WHOOP is based in Boston and has raised more than $400 million in venture capital. WHOOP is available to ship in 56 markets worldwide and the WHOOP app is available in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish (Latin America). WHOOP can be purchased on Amazon across the U.S., U.K., and Australia, as well as Best Buy (U.S.) Dick’s Sporting Goods (U.S.), Flipkart (India) and Virgin Megastore (GCC), and more.  

To learn more or start a one-month free trial, visit whoop.com and connect with WHOOP on Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. 

Contacts

press@whoop.com