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Fall race season is almost here, and for a lot of people that means the trip to the start line involves a flight and a few time zones. If you’ve ever flown to a race, you know the problem: you’re trying to get your sleep, fueling, and taper right while your body thinks it’s a completely different time of day.

The WHOOP Performance Science & Health Outcomes team recently worked with researchers and sports medicine clinicians to review research on travel, jet lag, and athletic performance and what you can actually do about it.

A few takeaways that stood out for marathoners:

1. Adjustment takes time.
The review cites roughly 1 hour of circadian adjustment per day as a general estimate, though there’s individual variation.

What you can do: Build adjustment time into the itinerary when you can. The review recommends roughly one recovery day per time zone before competition. If you’re flying in the day before or only traveling for a short weekend, another option is to stay as close as possible to your home time zone for sleep, meals, exercise, and light exposure rather than trying to fully adjust on a tight timeline - a strategy referred to as time zone maintenance.

2. Direction matters.
Eastward travel generally creates more severe jet lag because shifting the body clock earlier is harder than shifting it later.

What you can do: Before crossing multiple time zones, gradually move your sleep and wake times toward your destination schedule. The review suggests shifting by 30 to 60 minutes per day for 3 to 7 days before travel.

3. Light is one of your most powerful tools.
Light is the primary cue your body uses to set its internal clock. Getting light, and avoiding it, at the right times can help your circadian rhythm adjust to your destination.

What you can do: Be intentional about when you get bright light after you land. The right timing depends on your direction of travel and biological clock, and getting it wrong can actually shift you in the opposite direction. Strategic bright light, paired with light avoidance at other times, can help shift your circadian rhythm toward your destination.

4. Your fueling plan should travel with you.
Travel can disrupt appetite, meal timing, and digestion, making it easier to underfuel at exactly the wrong time. Circadian misalignment can also affect how your gut functions, which may help explain why eating normally can feel harder after crossing time zones.

What you can do: Start the trip well-fueled and pack familiar, easy-to-digest snacks so you’re not relying on whatever you can find at the airport or on the plane. Once you arrive, shift meals toward local time and prioritize foods you already know sit well.

The full paper gets into the evidence and practical strategies. It’s peer-reviewed and open access for anyone who wants to dig into the research: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-026-02455-y

For those who’ve done destination races: how many days before the race do you try to arrive when you’re crossing time zones? Anything you’ve found that actually helps?

Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Josh Leota, Senior Research Scientist at WHOOP and a sleep and circadian researcher at The Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and Monash University in Australia. Join me on Thursday, June 25 at 8:00 PM ET for an AMA where I’ll be answering your questions about the latest research on sleep, recovery, exercise timing, and jet lag.

Recently, I’ve been involved in research exploring how evening exercise relates to sleep and recovery, including how workout intensity and timing relative to bedtime can influence sleep quality and heart rate. We’ve also examined the relationship in the other direction, looking at how when you sleep and how long you sleep for relate to exercise behavior the following day. Together, these findings help provide a more practical understanding of how sleep and training influence one another.

I’ll also be discussing new research on the physiological effects of travel, including how changes in sleep, circadian rhythms (e.g., jet lag), hydration, recovery, and cognitive performance can affect how we feel and perform on the road. Whether you’re an athlete, frequent traveler, or simply interested in optimizing your health, I’m looking forward to answering your questions and sharing practical, science-backed strategies you can apply in your daily life.

We’re starting a new rhythm this year. Every few months, we’ll share an update on what’s new, what’s coming soon, and where we’re investing next.

Here’s where we’re focused this spring:

1. Coaching that knows you
WHOOP is getting better at understanding more than just your physiology. This includes your goals, your routines, and the things happening in your life that affect how you perform and recover.

Memory brings your goals, habits, and life events into one place so coaching can reflect what actually matters to you. You can access Memory in your Profile.

Proactive check-ins reach out based on what’s in Memory, keeping you accountable to the goals and habits you’ve shared.

Journaling is also improving, with options to log by voice or text and suggestions that evolve based on what is working for your body.

The goal: coaching that’s specific to you.

2. Stronger training, better connected

We said last year that strength exercise progression was coming. It took longer than we expected. It is now shipping in the next few weeks.

This comes to life in Strength Trainer with trends and personal records. You will be able to see how your lifts progress over time and track PRs across movements. The goal is to give you a clearer view of how your training is evolving, not just what you did on a given day.

We are continuing to build better tools for how you train, and improving how WHOOP fits into the rest of your routine.

This includes deeper integrations with the apps you already use, so more of your activity flows into WHOOP automatically. That leads to a more complete picture of your day and better context for recommendations and guidance.

3. Even more accurate, every activity

We never stop pushing accuracy forward. We’re delivering another improvement to the heart rate algorithm this summer, with improvements across all activities and everyday wear.

Workout auto-detection and classification is also improving so more of your activity is picked up without manual input.

4. A deeper picture of your health

We are starting to connect your daily WHOOP data with your broader health context.

For members in the U.S., medical records integration with HealthEx will allow you to securely connect your records inside the app so recommendations and guidance are in context of your full medical picture.

Also, we’re introducing a new paid add-on service: on-demand video consultations with a clinician fluent in your sleep, activity, bloodwork, and medical records so you can have a health conversation that doesn’t start from scratch.

Some of what’s above, like Memory, proactive check-ins, and Journaling improvement are already in your hands. Other features roll out over the coming weeks, with additional details to share as we get closer to launch.

You’ll see updates in the WHOOP app and we’ll keep sharing them here as well.

Alcohol’s impact on sleep and recovery is one of the most consistent patterns people notice in their WHOOP data..

You have a few drinks. Recovery drops. HRV plummets. Sleep is disrupted.

We wanted to understand that more clearly, and at scale.

Hi Reddit, I’m Greg Grosicki, PhD, Staff Research Scientist at WHOOP. My work focuses on using large-scale physiological and behavioral data to better understand how daily habits show up in recovery, sleep, and performance.

In two recent studies linked here and here, our team analyzed over 16 million days of data from more than 50,000 WHOOP members to look at two things:

1. What alcohol does to your overnight physiology 
2. How drinking behavior changes when people can track these effects over time

At a high level, alcohol consistently disrupted recovery. Even one drink was associated with increases in resting heart rate and reductions in HRV, sleep, and next-day activity, with larger effects as intake increased.

We also saw meaningful differences across age and sex, with greater disruptions in females and younger individuals., And we saw something that you don’t often get to observe in lab settings: when people clearly see how alcohol shows up in their data, many gradually adjust their behavior over time.

That combination of physiological impact and behavior change is what makes this area interesting from a research perspective.

I’ll be hosting an AMA on Thursday, May 7th, from 1 PM - 2 PM ET to answer your questions about:

• Alcohol and recovery
• HRV, sleep, and physiological disruption
• Individual variability and why responses differ
• What our research showed about consistent tracking and changes in alcohol intake, and how to interpret what you’re seeing in your own data

A few quick notes:

I can’t provide personal medical advice.
I’ll focus on research, physiology, and interpretation, not technical support.

If you’ve ever looked at your data after a night of drinking and wondered what’s actually happening, ask away.

Drop your questions below, and I’ll answer as many as I can!

The impact of alcohol on recovery is one of the most common patterns WHOOP members notice in their data. So, our research team decided to look at it at scale.

Across two recent studies, we analyzed >16 million days logged from >50,000 WHOOP members to understand two things:

1. What alcohol does to sleep and recovery overnight
2. How drinking behavior changes when people track it over time

We found that alcohol consistently disrupts recovery. 

Even one drink was associated with:

• Higher resting heart rate overnight
• Lower heart rate variability (HRV)
• Shorter sleep duration
• Lower next-day physical activity

The effects were dose dependent. More alcohol meant larger disruptions.

We also saw differences across groups. Females showed more physiological disruptions than males at similar intake levels, and younger adults showed a bigger response than older adults.

One thing we found interesting: when people consistently see how alcohol affects their HRV, heart rate, and recovery, many gradually change their behavior over time. Drinking days declined from 23.0% of days to 17.2% — a 25.2% relative drop. Members who logged drink counts reduced intake by ~1.1 drinks per week on average. That equals about 50 fewer drinks per year.

These habits lasted more than a year, showing that when people can clearly see how alcohol shows up in their sleep and recovery data, many make real changes.

If you do drink, we found a few habits to back your hangover hack: drink earlier in the day, prioritize longer sleep afterwards, avoid hard workouts or high strain on days that you drink, and stay hydrated.

We’re curious what you’ve seen in your WHOOP data. Have you noticed a consistent HRV or Recovery Score after drinking? Have your drinking patterns changed since wearing WHOOP?

Want to learn more? Explore the research here and here.