Episode · Feb 4, 2026 · 1 hr 55 min
Trauma, Recovery, and Human Performance
with Dr. Kristen Holmes
Dr. Kristen Holmes is a former elite athlete and the Global Head of Human Performance at WHOOP.
“I want to be present and engaged with my kids in a way that feels really good to me.”
Summary
Holmes traces how instability and neglect shaped the way she sought safety in sport and achievement. She describes becoming a high-performing athlete, coaching and building a career around sports science, including work at Princeton and her move to WHOOP. Her conversation with Ken ranges from HRV, training feedback and sleep to the pressure of Division I competition and the limits of treating performance as a numbers problem.
Later she discusses trauma she kept hidden from family, the point when anger and exhaustion forced her to seek help, and the work of therapy and forgiveness. Holmes connects everyday choices such as alcohol use, recovery and strength training to long-term health, while stressing the value of noticing how the body responds rather than pushing through every warning. She explains that people can stay ambitious while building a steadier relationship with themselves.
Show notes
This week I sit down with Dr. Kristen Holmes — scientist, former elite athlete, coach, and the Global Head of Human Performance at WHOOP.
Kristen built her life around performance early. Sports became structure. Discipline became safety. Achievement became identity. But long before the titles and credentials, she was learning how to survive instability, neglect, and trauma — and carrying that nervous system into adulthood.
We talk about what high achievement can hide. How drive is often born from pain. And how never asking for help eventually catches up to you. Kristen shares the unglamorous work that came later: therapy, forgiveness, rebuilding identity, and learning how to live with peace without losing her edge.
We also get into sleep, recovery, alcohol, HRV, and why the nervous system never lies — plus how those lessons now shape her work with elite athletes, teams, and everyday people trying to function better in a demanding world.
This episode isn’t about optimization.
It’s about alignment.
And what it actually costs to earn it.
Transcript
Made from YouTube's automatic captions and lightly corrected, so a few words and names may be off. Click a time to play the video from there.
Ken Rideout
Kristen Holmes, chief scientist at chief sports scientist at Whoop and my favorite scientist in the world and probably the most attractive scientist in the world.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
That's very
Ken Rideout
I'm just trying to embarrass you. Thank you for being here. I appreciate you coming all the way down here to Nashville just to see me. It
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Is my pleasure. I'm so happy to be here. can
Ken Rideout
Before we get into um talking about all things health and wellness, your book, your work at Whoop, I thought of a I don't know if it's a quote, but someone said this to me the other day and it really resonated and I think that you'll like it. They said, "How would you take care of your body if you basically knew that you were trading places with one of your children and you were living in their body and you had to take care of it for the next 5 years?
What would you do? And how would you care for it knowing you have to give this back to them in the next several years?" And for me that resonated because I'm like I do and have done not so much anymore have done things to myself where I'm like I would never treat someone's vessel like this. But when it comes to our own thing, whether it's like abusing drugs and obviously the extremes, that's one thing. But even like eating a giant piece of chocolate cake before bed, I'm like I I really want that cake.
But then I start to think, what's it going to do to me? not only how is it going to make me gain weight and feel, but like how's it going to affect my sleep? All thanks to you and Whoop. I'm like this is going to screw up everything. So anyway, I just wanted to set the stage before we start and think like I think carefully about how I take care of my body and how it's going to how that's going to resonate for the years to come.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. I mean, I think about that all the time and that's really my motivation for taking care of myself is because I want to be present and engaged with my kids in a way that feels really good to me. And I know that if I don't take care of myself, if I'm waking up, you know, underreovered and um, you know, hung over or whatever it might be, you know, I can't I can't be the parent I want to be, I can't engage with in the work that I want to do with quality.
And so, yeah, I mean, I think that drives certainly my choices um in in a big way.
Ken Rideout
It definitely uh puts an emphasis on delayed gratification because you're basically sacrificing today to enjoy tomorrow and it's like going to the gym for the first month, for instance. you can't see any difference. And it's hard to like have that just dogged work ethic and belief that this is working even though I can't see it every day. And that's a powerful trait. And I think that that's why when we see people who are super fit, we know so much about them just from looking at them.
And it's something that I like take pride in is showing up. And if nothing else, the things that I can control, my conditioning is on point. And let it let that represent and be part of my resume or a cover letter almost. was like this is how I take care of my business.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. I think you know it's worth acknowledging that you know modern life is not set up for us to be successful.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
In so many ways and you know even from an evolutionary perspective where you know we see like the berries in the wild. We want to hoover up all those berries, right? Because we don't know when the next berry is going to come along, right? So things like that, we're just we're wired in a way that, you know, now we have access to food 24/7, right? So we have this default mechanism in our brain that actually no longer is necessary for the most part, right? Um but it's there.
So we have to fight it, right? And that's that's a big reason why GLP1s are so successful, right? is because it basically reduces all of that craving, right? That noise that's associated like that we were are hardwired to eat everything in our path, right? That gets muted and that's, you know, so it's just that's just one example of, you know, the modern world like making it hard, right, to have willpower and and be consistently um be consistent with our behaviors that ladder up to kind of health and overall overall um you know, kind of well-being.
So yeah, just lots of challenges.
Ken Rideout
Yeah, your brain also wants to preserve all its energy. So it's always telling you to like rest, recover in case there's an emergency. So going fighting against that like self-preservation setting, default setting that we all have is what makes getting up and running so hard because your brain is like, well, let's chill. Let's rest. What if there's what if we get chased by a lion?
Dr. Kristen Holmes
I need to save my energy, right? I know we have to just rewire our brains. We have to kind of rethink. But I I do think having that knowledge and that understanding, you know, I work with an evolutionary psychologist, one of the most famous in the world. Uh he's on my team and offers just such a brilliant perspective on on basically everything. Dr. William von Hipple, he wrote uh a couple books um most the social paradox and then just recently released a book uh last February um on autonomy and and connection and the need for that.
And um but I um I have him on my you know in my reign all the time kind of contextualizing a lot of the modern day issues that we have you know and he kind of brings me back to you know the savannah
You know and and I you know it's very clear to me that you know we have to the more we understand why we are doing the things that we're doing in this cont in in the context of modern life I think helps us at least have an understanding of of why we're doing these destructive things and give us the ability to make choices, right?
Ken Rideout
That's right.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
So, when we know better, you know, generally we can do better, right?
Ken Rideout
Yeah. Definitely. As one thing as I've struggled with when I was struggling with addiction and getting sober, it's like the it was almost the most painful part of it is I know what I'm doing is wrong and I know that every time I do this, I'm reinforcing this bad habit. And eventually, the cycle has to break. And it's as simple as like taking the first step, which is why the first step is always the hardest.
Ken Rideout
I want to uh get into your background and how you got into sports science and we have so much in common that we'll get into about this constant like need to succeed and be successful and then being successful and it's never enough. It's like but like you said being aware of it is the first step.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
It is.
Ken Rideout
And so where did you grow up?
Gosh, I moved around a lot growing up. And let me just say quickly, I was lucky enough to read your early manuscript of your new book, Align. It's already available for pre-sale, right, on Amazon, Align by Dr. Kristen Holmes. I want to set the stage that I've like been able to read this and and kind of base some of the questions on like what I learned in the book because it's fascinating.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, I moved around a lot. Um, I was born in western Massachusetts in a little town called North Adams and then my family moved to Tennessee and then we moved to France and then we moved to Maine and then we moved to Massachusetts. So, lots of movement uh throughout my life.
Ken Rideout
And was it just you and your mom and and dad or
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. And my I have an older brother as well. He's three years older.
Ken Rideout
Yeah. Because in your book you said you spent time in France and in Maine and I was like I don't I didn't know this.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. Yeah.
And bounced around a lot. What did your parents do for work? Um so my dad was in finance and um he his background was in accounting and you know I think just trying to make a life you know for for our family. Um he had opportunities to kind of move and um provide his skill set in various locations and he kind of always said yes because it was a way to advance his career. Um but as a result he you know he traveled a lot like he was really not home during the week
Um and then would come home on the weekends which was amazing. Um but yeah, it was uh yeah, so my my mom was kind of left, you know, to uh to kind of care for us. Um most of the time,
She was stay at home. Yeah. She um she and my dad got married really young. Um so she dropped out of college. Um she's brilliant, you know, genius level. Um so complicated in a lot of ways but I I think it was you know as I'm I look back in hindsight at just on her life um she passed away you know quite young of um cerosis of the of the liver. Um but when I look back on her life you know I I can see how important that self-actualization actually is.
You know, Maso's hierarchy of needs, you know, and she just didn't have the op she didn't have an outlet for her intelligence and her um, you know, she was just always, you know, thinking and she's always inside books and um, you know, definitely very much an introvert, but, you know, just never had the opportunity to uh, develop herself, you know, and and I think fulfill um, have an outlet for for all of her skills. So, I I think that that really contributed to the struggles she had throughout her lifetime.
Ken Rideout
It's heartbreaking to hear that because I'm sure as a child with your mom probably drinking excessively. It was probably confusing for a kid and now with the with the knowledge that you have to reflect back and just almost with a sympathetic view of like man to give up college, give up all her basically dreams and aspirations and and you know pe having a family and raising kids is great too but I tell people all the time like when you decide to raise children like your life as you know it is over.
It's not necessarily for bad but it changes and it's never going back. That's the point is I think I wanted kids desperately and I still have moments where I'm like this is so hard and I feel like a baby because I'm like I just need to be selfish for a few minutes and it's just not happening. So, but with your when you were a child, did you notice that that was it troubling that she was drinking like that? Cuz my parents abused drugs and stuff in the house with us and it was it was mortifying to me.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah, it was it was it was very troubling, you know, and and uh yeah, you know, you just wanted her to be up and awake and, you know, and and uh I guess my my youngest memory was was really in France where uh I would I would walk home from school. I I went to a little village school in France and um and I would come home and and she was never awake. You know, I was kind of like left to my own devices, you know, you know, kind of fending for myself in in all ways, but she just did not have the tools.
You know, we've talked about this like your parents didn't have the tools like
And you know, she's severely depressed. You know, obviously those go, you know, kind of hand in hand and
So she's constantly self-medicating and um yeah, I mean, it's just
It's it's a it's a really tough environment to to grow up in. Um but you just, you know, I was really fortunate. I had, you know, other families that, um, kind of took me in and, you know, I made lots of little friends and, um, you know, would kind of hang out with them and hang out at their homes and they would feed me. Um, you know, it's like crazy like the things that you remember. But I was I was with my brother uh a few weeks ago around Christmas and he's like, "Remember we used to eat dry pasta because there's no food." I was like, "Oh my god, that's why I have like an a stomach of iron." Like I but it's like you you remember those those like little moments and you're like damn that's like [ __ ] up,
Ken Rideout
You know? It's it when you're saying that all I can think is like it's it's just when I hear someone else story I'm like it's so sad. I just you just your heart breaks knowing kids are going through that and and I don't even think I recognize what I dealt with myself. Maybe you felt like this. What brought it home for me is I went to on-site workshops, a trauma healing center, like a fiveday impatient psychotherapy place. And um I was in therapy and the woman was asking me, "Oh, what happened?
How was your childhood?" I'm like, "Listen, I don't I didn't have like a really traumatic childhood. I just, you know, I just I think I could be happier." So she I started telling her about my childhood. and she said to me, "How would you feel if any of your children were subjected to any of the things that you just described, getting hit with a belt, being in this really dodgy situation, like with adults and seeing someone get, you know, hit with a hatchet and all this crazy stuff and I'm like I literally just like broke down.
I'm like, "My children could never deal with this. They're like not they don't they're not wired for this." And the woman left, she's like, "You think that you're different? Like somehow you're special like as a kid you had superpowers. Kids are resilient in general, but it just for some reason that really resonated with me when I think and I'm sure you do this too. You're like, "Yeah, listen. I dealt with what was in front of me." But if you think about your own children in that situation, it it it made me be a little bit more sympathetic to the situation that I had been in.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Oh, yeah.
Ken Rideout
I don't know if you feel like that.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Oh, I definitely do. You know, I think about the environment that I I I'm creating for my kids all the time, you know, and and very conscious and aware of that.
You know, that said, like when you know, it does build a level of resilience. you know, I when I finally got some help, you know, in kind of early adulthood, I recognized that I I needed some help, you know, um you know, after my mom passed, like kind of my world crumbled and and I started confronting, you know, a lot of like the maladaptive behaviors that I had developed, you know, from, you know, just all the things that happened during my kid, my childhood. And I I realized I needed to develop a healthy relationship with myself first or every single relationship thereafter was going to be, you know, messed up.
Yeah. And and so, you know, that was really, you know, when I started a path, but it it it definitely made me way more aware of of how um my behaviors were influencing the people around me, you know, and and you know, and definitely I think living in that kind of environment like brings it to the surface in ways that um
You know, can be uh can be maladaptive at times, but I think overall if you if you understand it and you get curious about it and you build a framework around it, it can be quite a superpower in some ways.
Ken Rideout
Yeah. I hope that people listening to this recognize that what you're sharing and some of the stuff I've shared is that when you're faced with making the changes, you've got like dos and don'ts. And what's more important? Do I start doing the dos first or do I cut out the don'ts? And for me, I've always started with the don'ts. Like what's the behavior that's sabotaging me? What's the behavior that's causing this? Like let me stop the [ __ ] and then I'll get to the stuff that I can do to improve.
But but before anything, I have to stop what I'm doing. And I think that it's a it's to your point is a superpower to be able to recognize I need to get help with this. I can't do this on my own and you know going through addiction. That's the first thing you have to realize. It's like okay I've tried this my way and it's not working. So I have to acknowledge that I'm powerless. And a lot of things in life are like that. Once you aren't afraid to ask for help and start to get the the healing process, it can be um life-changing.
And it at least it was for me.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. A big part of that is you have to kind of recreate your identity a little bit. you know, your identity is formed in in conditions that are suboptimal, you know, and you kind of have to, all right, if I'm going to if I'm going to move through this and and beyond it, I need to kind of rethink who I want to be in the world, you know, and and do my behaviors support that or not, you know, and that's that moment of just
Honesty, you know, with with the self, you know,
Ken Rideout
And you turned to sport, like me turned to sports, although I think you were a much better athlete than I was looking at your resume, but you turned to sports and that's where you got a a lot of your uh kind of gratification. That's where you kind of identified as an athlete.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah, definitely.
Ken Rideout
And that resonates with me. Talk about your sports journey
Cuz it's impressive.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Well, looking back, I I kind of I think I wanted
Uh I wanted my dad's attention and he was a football player in Nebraska. Um played baseball. Yeah. He was like a sick athlete.
Yeah. And so my brother, he was always trying to like, you know, he'd draw routes, you know, on his hand and, you know, have us running, you know, different plays and, you know, and he was always really focused on my brother. And I could kind of see early on that, oh wow, he's like really into sports. And I just wanted my dad's attention cuz he just wasn't around a lot. So when he was around, I'm like, you know, I just wanted him to be hanging out with me, you know, and like do things with me.
I I think I realized that, oh, this is like a really good path. And so when I lived in France, you know, we we would have recess and there's a bunch of really good soccer players, boys.
So I started um I started playing soccer and got like really into that. And
When we moved to Maine um I got on this little wreck team and you know was like scoring like 10 goals like and a half, you know, and like one day my dad came to the the game. He was on a business trip and like you know hustled to kind of get there which was amazing. and I was on the bench and you know he goes he goes to the the coach like is hey you know I've been traveling like for a couple weeks like you know I just want to see my daughter play.
He's like oh she's already scored seven goals there we um no so I I ended up actually playing field hockey. My best friend played and she was like hey like let's play field hockey. So I started playing field hockey in seventh grade. Absolutely loved it. Played basketball. I ran track. I completed my first 10k when I was eight.
Ken Rideout
I love it.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Um I was I just loved loved running and then uh played in high school. played tennis and track and ran track high school.
Um, so I I went I have half my time was spent at Stanford High School in Maine and then the other half at in Bridgewater Reum in Massachusetts. So
Ken Rideout
Okay. Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah, I know.
Um, yeah. So I I just I love being a part of a team. Um, but it's one of those things where, you know, it's it's like you get so much it was the tension. It's what got me through, though. Um, I had somewhere to go, somewhere, you know, to not be in my house. Um, you know, and and just uh yeah, I I just I really appreciate all of the amazing coaches and teammates I've had over the course of my life. Save me.
Ken Rideout
I can relate to that cuz that's exactly what I did. I mean, I played like you. I played two sports in college. It would be it was completely foreign to me, honestly, to come home from school or anything and not have some form of practice or a game in the day. Just even a day off would be like so foreign. And not that I didn't enjoy it, but it was I just
Whether it was subconscious or not, my days were filled. Three sports in college in in high school all all four years and then two sports in college for half the time until I got into drugs and sabotaged myself. But um where did you go to university?
Dr. Kristen Holmes
University of Iowa. And I played field hockey and basketball. Yeah. Wow. Big time.
Ken Rideout
Two division one sports.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. Yeah. I played so I didn't actually play I made the US national team when I was a sophomore in college for field hockey.
Ken Rideout
Oh my god.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
So I was playing um playing on the US team. So while going to college and then um and obviously playing field hockey and then uh I took a year off for uh to train uh in the for the Olympics.
And then um when I came back to campus I actually that's when I played basketball. Um I which was which is I just walked onto the team.
Ken Rideout
That's crazy. a random student at Iowa just walks on.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Well, I mean, I was I was heavily recruited for basketball. Okay. So, I was I you know, I had actually I was had opportunities at University of North Carolina for Silia Hatchel. So, you know, I had really great
Basketball prospects as well. Um but but yeah, I I really loved field hockey and that was my path to I was going to be a a very a good division one player for basketball, I think. Um but but I was much better at field hockey. Okay. and and that was my path to the Olympics and you know that's where I I felt like I could really um and I just I just I really love the sport of field hockey.
Ken Rideout
I just love everything about sports like I could I could talk to you just about the field hockey process for like two hours. So tell me about the Olympics.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Um well so I was like
Ken Rideout
My dream that never came true.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Oh my gosh. Well no I mean same you know I mean I was uh lived in Atlanta um and uh right before our Olympic trials I broke my wrist.
Oh my god. We had five test matches against Korea as our kind of try out for the Olympics and my wrist was healing. Um I played all five of the test matches with like a broken wrist. So I couldn't hit the ball.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Um as a right midfielder right back it's a problem, right? Like you need to be able to hit the ball. But I just adapted and ended up being a f first alternate.
Ken Rideout
Okay.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Which is kind of a pretty devastating position in that you're just kind of waiting for someone to get injured.
Yep. Um, but you do everything, you know, like you kind of are a part of all of the
Ken Rideout
You go to the games, you go to the ceremonies,
Dr. Kristen Holmes
You do everything, but you just, you know, it's basically you get called up if someone get injured. No one get injured. Um, so I never played in Olympic games. And then in 2000, um, we lost to China in in overtime
Ken Rideout
Qualifying.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. That the Olympic qualifier in B in Birmingham, England. Yeah. So that was kind of So after that uh I retired and then ended up coming back when I was in when I was like 31.
Ken Rideout
That's awesome.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
I know. I was actually coaching as an assistant coach on the US national team and I was pretty fit. I was playing indoor for the US team.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
And we were kind of preparing for we were doing Olympic qualifier, a World Cup qualifier. So I was I was coming off that. I was really fit. Um so I was coaching and we had just a really young team. there's a lot of turnover and so I was playing with the the athletes and um and the coach was like hey will you we have to go to New Zealand and we just need more bodies like would you want to play? I was like sure I was like head coach at Princeton at the time.
Ken Rideout
It's so great.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Um so I was like okay. So I go to New Zealand and I'm kind of player coach and you know I'm playing and then um we have a champions challenge uh you know in the US down in Virginia Beach which was super cool. So we hosted uh six other teams and um played in that. So, I just like kind of kept playing. So, uh yeah, and then it ended up officially retiring. I got pregnant with um my son. Um so, I stopped playing.
Ken Rideout
How'd you end up coaching at uh Princeton?
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah.
Ken Rideout
And at the time, were you just was that your career path? You were like, I'm going to I love field hockey. I'm going to be a field hockey coach and this is it for me.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
I loved coaching. So, I was literally when I was super when I when I just made the US team um and I maybe I was like 21, I was the head head coach of the United National team. I was like, I loved coaching.
Yeah. And and not that I liked it more than playing, but I I really I loved working with athletes. I loved seeing them, you know, grasp a new technique or, you know, you know, deploy a new, you know, tactical scheme and like see them execute it. And um yeah, I just draw drew so much like energy, positive energy from that and and just felt like I was like making a difference in in someone's life. And
It just was so rewarding and and fulfilling to me. So yeah, I started um I I started I was coaching actually while I was playing on the US team. I was coaching University of Iowa. So my my alma ma I was an assistant coach and kind of head of recruiting. So when I think back I'm like god there's like simultaneously a lot happening but um but yeah loved my coaching experience at Iowa and then I ended up starting a business called Champions Edge which ran for 17 years.
Ken Rideout
Oh my god.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. It was the very first of its kind um kind of mobile camp where I I basically had 17 different locations across um the US at the height of the company and I did camps, I did clinics. I would basically rent out a private school y
And you know there you know dorm space and you know what what now like is a normal model for camps um was kind of like you know pre Nike I think they stole my idea. um you know it was the very very I mean this is like you know a decade and a half ago. Um, so that bit I started that business, you know, took a little like mini loan from the bank and and just like got that going and and it ended up being like really successful.
But my whole idea was like bringing uh the sport to these underserved areas and you know that don't have field hockey, don't have a lot of coaching. So I would hire I had you know 100
Plus contract subcontractors that I had in my ecosystem and I would pay them really well. I'd fly them out, you know, people who could afford it would pay money. And um yeah, we just run these clinics like, you know, St. Louis and Texas and, you know, Illinois and all these little pockets. And um it just like grew like wildfire.
Ken Rideout
It doesn't surprise me. You're like the ultimate overachiever. And one of the things that you talk about in the book is like being aware of how driven you were and how goaloriented to the to the point where even when you achieved your goal, it was never enough. And and that resonated with me because I feel like that I've won races and my and I usually I go to these races by myself cuz I need to like I'm a pain in the ass to be around, but but I also want to be focused and I remember one time I won the Myrtle Beach Marathon.
I called my wife and I was like, "Hey, what's up?" "Yeah, I won." And she's like, "You won your age group?" I'm like, "No, I won the whole thing." And she was like, "Oh my god, that's incredible." Blah blah blah. And she was like, "How what was your time?" I'm like, "230 and change. I could have gone under 2:30 and I didn't do this. She's like, "Are you crazy? You won and you're like worried about the time." But I was like, wasn't for effect. It was
In that moment I realized like this sucks. Like I can't win. Even when I win, I'm down about something and if I didn't win, I'd be like pissed off that I didn't do better. So when I read this part in the book, I was like, "Oh, that pain sucks."
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. I think it happens to, you know, a lot of I suppose high high achievers. I think especially when you couple that with like trauma. um you know it's it's like a a recipe you know for uh basing your self-worth on outcomes and and that's really you know one of the aspects I explore in the book and one of the things that I've thought a lot about is you know how do I how do I uh strive you know and but detach my selfworth from that striving
Ken Rideout
Yep
Dr. Kristen Holmes
That to me has been like the project
You know and and you know one of the frameworks that I use in the book is is called team. It's creating a positive relationship with things like time. So you're, you know, the fluidly being able to kind of move between the past and the present and the future really tightly um connected or linked to positive psychological functioning. So I I explore that. And then the E is expectations. And I always had an expectation of what was going to happen and what I was going to get and you know what doing that thing was going to yield for me.
And and I know that that is a common way to think about the things that we pursue in our in our lives. But for me that came with expectations that it basically like that was driving my motivation.
And what I could see is that that was creating, you know, a a confluence of just really second and third order unhealthy behaviors, right? And was feeding my work my kind of workaholic nature. Mhm.
And so I I think for me it was like I need to think about the things that I'm pursuing and manage my expectations and that you know I'm not doing it for a specific outcome per se. I'm really thinking about the process and and ensuring that like it's the process that I love and it's the process that drives me. And I know we hear that all the time. It's such a cliche, but I don't know that there's really anything more important than that is really like finding something that you genuinely love.
And it's like there's a purity to that. And I I think that's what I was chasing is just that that purity, you know, and and so I really again, you know, that awareness of like, okay, this this is my blocker and this is the thing that I need to make right in order for me to live a life that's healthy and that feels, you know, good. that it doesn't make me want to shower at the end of the day, you know, like it, you know, it's it's that
It was really about um recognizing that, you know, all of these external things
Have nothing to do with my internal peace,
You know, and and just in separating those and and and that has been the work of, you know, the last couple decades for me.
Ken Rideout
Yeah. I heard Lance Armstrong describe one time about winning the tour and he would said something to the effect of the the race was already won like months before. He's like and he was a with when it came to his training process. I know he was uh I I've trained a little bit with Lance and friendly with him and the way that he trained and just went by himself in the Alps and would sleep high, come down the mountain, train and just was like a dogged training animal.
And uh I remember him saying to someone that I know, oh uh how you going to do at the tour? And he said, um the only person that has a chance this year is Yan Oric. and he doesn't have any chance.
He was ruthless,
But he talks a lot about the processes, everything. And I mean, it seems obvious, but when you see like no one lived it more than him, like he didn't focus on the other tours. He didn't get caught up in side quests. He had one goal, winning the tour. And I mean, I always think just to win something seven years in a row, you don't get sick. You don't get food poisoning. You don't like slip on a banana peel or step on a rake, you know? Like, it's crazy.
It's like a blessing and a curse because your work ethic is what's put you kind of on a world stage now. And we'll get into the new Ferrari deal and everything else you have going on.
Ken Rideout
So you're working at Princeton, head coach at Princeton, and then you started another company.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. Um, Actis.
Ken Rideout
Actis.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. So this was a a technology company. And
And just to back up a little bit, I I think, you know, being being responsible, being a head coach of of a team was most most important thing I've ever done in my life. It's it's going back to like, you know, your opening story about, you know, what did I want? Like when I think about my student athletes, you know, and I think about how my behaviors affect them and how I role model behaviors, like how that affects them, the environment that I create, does that keep them healthy?
Does it keep them safe? Does it allow them to flourish under my guidance? You know, like you you it totally reframes like how you how you think about everything, you know, and and so for me, this idea of of process um I I became just absolutely obsessed with it. Yeah. at Princeton. One of the reasons why we were so successful um and able to just repeat that success so many years was because we were actually truly process driven. You know, we were living our values every single day and we had so many I think safeguards in place that um prevented us from being outcome focused.
I have tried to take a lot of those learnings and apply them into a lot of these environments that I've been in in the last decade. you know, the surgical teams and the military operators and, you know, most recently, you know, uh, F1 and and and it's been really cool, I think, to to be in these environments to see how this outcomebased mentality trips these teams and organizations up. And it just had reinforced like, wow, you know, the process actually really really matters. and getting and and creating a culture um and a in a in a set of principles that allows an environment to actually be in tune with the process.
That's what I see missing in in most of these high performing organizations.
Ken Rideout
Tell me about Actis cuz I know you were like kind of ahead of the curve on in terms of gathering technology and analyzing and applying it to like things like sleep recovery and applying it to your uh student athletes.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. So, I guess in right after we won the national championship in in 2012, I guess 2013, I started I started really getting into technology. Um, and so heart rate monitoring, heart variability, I was testing out uh some of the early technologies like Omega Wave. Um, and ended up buying uh ended up purchasing for my team First Beat uh which is, you know, just a chest strap. It's basically an in-game monitoring device where you look at heart rate uh and it was it's very sophisticated technology.
It's beautiful technology. Um I think it's since been acquired um by Garmin I believe but um but first Beat was ahead of the curve in terms of taking you know training data and synthesizing it in a way that allowed you to basically interpret it and give you insight into adaptation. we were able to tell like excess post oxygen consumption, epoch, like they're they're just markers of recovery that I I think are not even really being used to the full extent today. uh we were using in our environment and and basically what I started to do like I I I I built over the course of the time that I at Princeton I built this performance education framework which the book um kind of in in the the the second part of the book um I go into depth on on this performance education platform but a core feature of that of that platform was being able to there's obviously the subjective pieces but there's also
The external and external load that are super important to understand so first beat was a marker of external load and I was also looking at um I had catapult as well. So I was looking at at GPS so how fast and how far the athletes were running. So I was taking internal load, external load and subjective load and building these really robust models to understand um how my my athletes were responding and adapting to the stress of training. Um and and what I realized really quickly is that I wanted to operationalize this performance education.
So I raised some angel funding about a4 million dollars and uh and started building a mobile application where that basically pulled in. So these all had open APIs. I pulled in all the data and was synthesizing it into and had algorithm I built with in collaboration with statistic machine learning and computational biologists at Princeton hired a bunch of PhD students. We started building these algorithms to synthesize um things like sleep. So we had Fitbit HR so we're open API pulling that in. Um I was able to uh we also had weather data so Yahoo pulling in their API.
So basically could understand and and from first beat we had training effect. So basically in practice how hard were my athletes working and they were having a daily HRV score. So I was able to kind of get a rough estimate of of their readiness and then we had their sleep data. So basically my my idea was wow if we could quantify this notion of readiness I can do a better job of you know um organizing practice and training plans and maybe keep them healthier like you know avoid injury I kind of built this really quite beautiful mobile application and we're also looking at psychological kind of aspects around purpose um the core psychological needs purpose efficacy autonomy uh connection control um and you know giving the athletes an opportunity to kind of subjectively rate you know where those fall a few times a week.
Um we're looking at uh alignments uh between values and behaviors. So basically for every task that they would input into their calendar, a drop down of their values would pop up and they could click kind of which value um that task helped fulfill. How is that task an outlet for the thing the thing that they value? And so at the end of the week they could kind of see an output of like wow you had 80 80% alignment um or 70% alignment or 50% alignment. And actually my own data was one of the reasons I actually left Princeton.
Ken Rideout
Okay.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Um but but anyway so it really it kind of took this performance education framework around the the eight things that are really important to kind of understand and think about and put it into a mobile application. So it was really operationalizing this performance education framework that I had built and giving my athletes an interface to interact with so they could have more control of their performance. And so I kind of got the toward the back end I was like and I realized I'm like I I need to build hardware.
And so I kind of was thinking about this next version and that's when I uh I met someone at Princeton who was an early investor at Whoop. And he's like have you met Will Ahmed? He's building something similar. And I was like no someone else is building this. I had no idea. Um, and literally 48 hours later I was uh in New York meeting with Will and we were kind of sharing the things that we were building and they already had h hardware were really way ahead of of where I was um in terms of having this like package.
Um ended up going to Boston. um we did kind of a you know uh exchange exchange information and kind of shared the things that we were building and then kind of at the end of the trip he offered me a job and that's where I was like yes you know I these are things I want to be able to scale this notion of recovery
Ken Rideout
You know
Well a couple things first we will come back to this in a second but you said that some of the data is what le some of your personal data is what led you to accept the job but before we get to that how much of the information that your athletes were getting like actually became actionable, meaning, okay, your uh HRV was super low last night. This is this. We have a practice, but I want you to take it easy today. Cuz like I wake up sometimes and my heart rate variability was crazy low.
My recovery score is like 21. And I'm like, this doesn't make sense. And I've noticed too, my recovery and sleep goes in cycles. Good days, bad days, good days, bad days. And they tend to come in like groupings. But I've never altered my training in accordance with my Whoop data. Meaning if I have a long hard run and the recovery says 21, I'm going. And I've Yeah, I can tell you I have never noticed a correlation. Like meaning I never thought that workout sucked. It's because of this.
Now I never really spend get deep into thought thinking about this, but it's one of the things that frustrates me is I'm like why? I can't figure out what is making the HRV high or low ever when it's really good. But I'm like, what did I do to make this good?
Dr. Kristen Holmes
I know. I know. Well, heart rate variability, which is the time interval between heartbeats, higher heart rate variability is better. Um, lower means that you might be struggling to adapt. Um, agreed. On a daily basis, HRV is not that actionable. And to your point, it's very non-specific, right? So, so many things can impact heart rate variability, right? It could be you just peed, right? Or like, you know, it's or you're slightly dehydrated or so when you measure is really important. And that was one of the problems with our first beat reading was we had to take it because of the athlete constraints.
Like I couldn't get them
I couldn't go to their like this was this was um in person, right? Like it wasn't like remote HRV which is what we have now. So basically 5 minutes they get to the locker room,
You know, we all just I'm like, "Okay, we just have to calm down. We all the kid all the athletes would lay on the ground and we'd take an HRV reading to kind of see where it was." But to your point, it didn't. It was really, really hard. And this is one of the things that made me so excited about Whoop. And I found out that they kind of had this really 247 picture in place and we're we're passively detecting heart rate variability. And um with this 247 kind of window of time.
So there were so many things that they were doing that I was like, "Yeah, this is the future. This is the direction um that you know were that were real limitations to your point in terms of really being able to modify training in response to readiness." And I would say the better way to think about heart rate variability and something I've learned over the course of the last couple decades inside these kind of type of data is that a weekly um snapshot and actually looking at the coefficient of variation.
So the day-to-day variability in hor variability for trained athletes is a better indicator of adaptation. So in hindsight go and this is you know as a sport scientist working with all sorts of teams today we use heart rate variability coefficient of variation. We look at week weekly adaptation as opposed to kind of day-to-day you know hanging on the HRV from today to you know to the next day. It's more of looking at okay how much is it varying across the day. What are acceptable magnitudes of change that you know if I'm in a fun functional overreaching period for example I would expect my heart rate variability coefficient of v variation to be higher which from I know I just said hurry variability higher is better but when we're looking at the coefficient of variation lower is actually better.
So sorry that's confusing. It's just math. But so anyway, um you know, were we able to use heart variability to interpret uh and to make actionable changes? Not so much. Um what I did take at the end of every training session was heart rate recovery. Um and that actually was quite a good proxy. So um I and I had lots and lots of um heart rate recovery data. Um and we were able to use that as a model. Um which was quite good. It wasn't perfect, but um it did actually when I was able to kind of control for a lot of the other confounders, um hard variability was actually quite predictive.
That said, college student behaviors are so all over the map that there's a lot of challenges. But, um you know, in the morning, you know, I'd kind of taken all of these data, um none of which I showed the athletes, right, but was just in the background, right, for me to model. And every morning they would get a training effect assignment or they would get a training effect notification on their Google calendar. So I would invite them to a training effect for a 4 p.m. practice.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Okay. So um so training effect is basically was basically for first beats um kind of version of strain, right? And that would be and in practice you get into kind of in practice or in-game, you know, training effect how hard you essentially had to work. And based on all of these factors, how much they slept and all these other data that I have, I would assign them how hard they're going to work in practice. Okay? And then use those data to basically organize and construct my practice.
And they would accept that training um effect invitation. And then they would subsequently get how much hydrate, how much water they need to take on board, how much food they need to eat in order to meet the demands of that training effect. Yeah.
So one of the things I talk about in my book is fueling for the activity. Such an important way to think about food. That's right. And such an important like you know especially in today's as we talked about earlier on like this you know just really messed up kind of modern environment right when we start thinking about okay I have this activity I need to fuel so I have appropriate levels of you know um energy to meet that demand is such an important way for an athlete and for any human I think to think about food.
I kind of had that embedded. Um, and they knew based on, you know, ambient temperature and all these other factors like how much water they need, um, how much water they need to bring on board. I did sweat rates. I did, you know, like I knew so much about about their bodies. Um, which which helped me keep them safe, you know. I think one of the reasons why we were so successful is we just didn't we had very few injuries.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
You know, so, you know, was this data perfect? No. But did it help me plan practice more effectively? No question. Did it help me think about the individual athlete in a way that I think honored them that made me feel good at the end of the day? Absolutely. You know, I did everything that I could to keep them healthy and safe and, you know, pursue their goals with, you know, energy and joy and and all that. So,
Ken Rideout
As you're describing this, I'm thinking for the parents listening out there, please recognize what a commitment it is playing a division one sport in college. This is a full-time job while you're going to school. No question. Right. the pressure at that level
Is and listen some people love it and other people are like super talented and they're like yeah I'm going to play and like you with basketball you're like I'm going to walk onto the team at Iowa and it's like but you get athletes like that that are just really good and then maybe like you know and then you get the athletes like you that are like I'm doing I'll die to win and it's like you get this mix of kids and it's like
Where coaching becomes so challenging is helping the kids that don't necessarily want to die to win to realize like you're on a team and some of these kids will die to win. Like I say that obviously metaphorically, but course like like
Let's go. Like this is a this is a full-time job. And I always say when I've spoken to like I spoke to the hockey team at UNH and some other division one sports programs. I always say
Even if you don't want to do it for yourself, that guy or girl over there, the coach,
This is his job. He'll get fired. He'll get fired. Like if you if nothing else, you should honor this person who recruited you and wanted you here and be like, "Where are we going, coach? I'm like we're behind you." like
Leading the charge.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah, it's funny. So, one of my very first conversations when I arrived at Whoop, um I was at Liberty University. I was talking to them about this idea of integrating technology into your environment. And the soccer coach was like, "Well, what if the the athletes, you know, you know, don't want to manage and track their their data?" And I was like, "That's a recruiting problem. That's not a technology problem." And and that's that's where I think we did a really good job. And I I could just write a book about this, but I think where where teams the reason why teams can't repeat success and why they have so much attrition, you know, I had one kid in 13 years leave my program.
Ken Rideout
That's awesome.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
She had a degenerative hip issue, needed to go closer to Penn State. Didn't even leave my team for a reason. Like it was like it wasn't like I hated Princeton. Didn't want to feel like it there. It was.
So, but that's that's because we knew how to recruit.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
We didn't over glamorize the P. I mean, it's hard. Being a student athlete at Princeton University is so hard,
Ken Rideout
Especially a national championship team or on that level where if you're not winning, you're in the mix. I think
Dr. Kristen Holmes
We're competing with, you know, Stanford and UNCC and Michigan and, you know, all the Big 10, all the ACC for sure.
Um, but I think you have to you have to say, you know, I was really clear in terms of what the expectations were in our in the program. And that said, I did give them a lot of autonomy and I and I read about this in the book. So there's there is this balance, you know, said, I'm going to, you know, if you kind of make it through the the gauntlet, the recruiting gauntlet, right, that I'm going to put you through, um, and you you're you survive, you get to the end and you're a candidate, then, um, you've kind of passed that first that first test and and as a result, I'm going to trust you.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
I mean, I gave my athletes like the keys to our program. They helped um they you know I'd give them a lot of the data in terms of like you know obviously what the season looked like but they were helping to plan when we take recovery days like they knew hey there's a big football game they want to be a part of that like celebration like all right we're not going to train on Monday you know that where we normally would right like so I I really wanted them to be a student athlete you know and go abroad if they want to go abroad like you know I I really and I think as a result they felt like I was I I wanted them to develop as a whole And so they gave me everything.
Like they they they they worked
So hard. Like there's not one kid who wouldn't like run through the brick wall, you know? And I think a lot of that though is is that we recruited in such a way where that's the kid we attracted. And and and in laying it all out there, I'm like this is how we're going to roll.
If if this isn't for you, it's okay. You can go to Harvard. You can go to like there's lots of other options for you, right? But if this resonates and this feels good, we're going to win, you know? We're going to win a lot, you know, and and we're going to and you're going to love this process.
Ken Rideout
the idea of uh well first of all recruiting at Princeton like you you're probably getting the cream of the crop because you can't get into Princeton unless you really have your [ __ ] together like you're doing
Dr. Kristen Holmes
And we're all fighting for the same kids you know Stanford you know a lot of these other schools Harvard obviously all the
Ken Rideout
Yeah Stanford probably same academically at least I think of them all kind of like PR Stanford in that Ivy League sphere right but the kids that can actually get into those schools that's a limiting factor and so you've got a lot of things working in your favor that by the time they get to you, these kids are probably like super mature for the most part. I mean, obviously not everyone, but uh what a freaking treat that must have been for the kids to go to Princeton, arguably one of the best schools in the world, easily.
And to play for someone like you, win a national championship or at least be in the mix every year. Like just I think about a student athlete like what an awesome perfect storm to be at that school competing at a high level with other good people. Yeah.
Must have been so much fun.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. It it was really fun. I mean it was is the biggest honor of my life, you know, to to be a part of their lives, you know, and and to have the opportunity to learn from them. And
When I when I look back on that time, you know, it isn't the winning, you know, and and everyone says that, but I mean it was Yeah. It was so cool to be able to win 12 Ivy League championships in 13 years, you know, and and and have, you know, an unprecedented amount of of success in in that league. But it's it is all the little things, you know, it's it's just the time on the bus and like, you know, the little conversations on on the side and, you know, just all the one-on-one work, you know, that we would do uh with with the athletes and um yeah, all the side conversations like hearing about their dreams and their goals, you know, going to their weddings and, you know, all those things.
Ken Rideout
It's crazy. My father-in-law went to Princeton and uh I know that people and him and all his friends the pride that people have I mean a lot of schools but in Princeton in particular going to their parade and all their costumes it was uh
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Look at their endowment you know I mean they it's just but but that's a reflection of the experience right like you don't get back to a school you hate
Ken Rideout
That's right
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Right and and I think yeah I think the reunions are
That is there's no uh surprise in that design in that you know that's the basically after after you graduate, there's this huge reunion and you know the obviously the graduating class is highly featured in that but basically um you have like you know a 5-year reunion and a 10-year reunion. They've got these big reunions right which are like every five years and then everyone else kind of comes as well and the the the campus just transforms and it's it's right around graduation and you know all the alum come back and it's just literally a party for like 5 days.
Ken Rideout
I love all the sports coats and all the like orange and black.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Every class has their own like kind of jacket, you know. Yeah. Motif. It's so lots of like really cool um traditions at at Princeton that keep their alumni engaged and Yeah. And just really everyone's really proud of um I mean it's it's not easy to graduate from there. It's not easy to get in. So that's right. Yeah.
Ken Rideout
Well, what what was it about your experience or your own personal like journey that you said that through your own data collection is what influenced partly the decision to go to Whoop, what was going on? Yeah, I mean I I started uh just really auditing my behaviors and and I I started doing this more intentionally like after it was right after my daughter was born and I was definitely not um I was had a lot of balls in the air and um and was not very healthy at that at that point.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
So gosh, this was like so this is 2008. My daughter was born in in in June, the end of June, and early July, I found out that my my grandmother was going to die and she was in um went into hospice. And so I was executive of her will, so had to tend to all sorts of details. And then on top of the despair, just knowing she was um didn't have long to live, you know. So I had two kids, you know, under two at the time.
Um and we have this seasonal business and my my husband at the time was running that business. So, he was basically gone. Um, so I was driving back and forth from Jersey to Massachusetts and I fell asleep at the wheel. Literally almost killed my my kids myself. Like,
You know, hit the hit hit the the gr, you know, there's those bumpies on the on the side and, you know, hit the grass and
I slammed on the brakes and, you know, uh, and I was like, I need to change my life. Like that that was just like the moment, you know? I was like, what I'm doing right now is not working.
And and I and I what's always what's always been so hard for me is to ask for help.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
I'm just horrible. I always have been so bad at asking for help. I've always taken care of myself and obviously it's just a product of
My upbringing, you know? Like I I just feel like, all right, if I can be quiet enough, if I can just like take care of everything and like keep the house clean, like everything's going to be fine, you know? And and so that just transferred, you know, into but but it creates so much emotional distance from people around you cuz,
You know, like no one feels like you no one ever feels like you need them, you know, like and you make them feel like they don't you don't need them, right? And it just it's not great, you know, and and I I just all my life just came crashing down in that moment, you know, and
And so I actually that's when I really started to get into sleep.
I watched a TED talk um by Dr. Russell Foster, who's this uh incredible sleep and circadian scientist. Um he's I think he's at Oxford or Cambridge. He's in he's he's in England. Um but I was like, "Wow, sleep." And then I started thinking, gosh, sleep for my athletes. I was, you know, sleep is so messed up at in college just generally, you know. Um so I was like, "Wow, this could be an enormous advantage, you know, for my athletes if they could learn how to think about their sleep more intentionally.
They could, you know, reduce injury risk and have better cognitive functioning, like um, you know, get sick less, like just all of the benefits of sleep, right? I I I just I just didn't know. I had no idea. And so I just started reading everything I could get my hands on and just got really into sleep. And that obviously informed, you know, my um desire to kind of I added that to my performance education framework. And like
Ken Rideout
Did you already have your PhD at this point?
Dr. Kristen Holmes
No. So I had um so well that was another thing. I was as you know I was getting my masters while I had like two kids in so it was a hybrid exercise physiology and and sports psychology.
Got it. So this is one of the things like you know when you're coaching college and you're kind of on a you know it's not that we didn't have resources but you know we you kind of have to be the one-stop shop like you need to know not just the technical and tactical aspects of your sport and be you know world class at that but you you know I think I also kind of felt this calling to like all right there's more we can do here and I I felt like I had a responsibility to understand the psychology and the physiology and and what are those influences right that my student athletes need to think about and that that's really you know a Part of the book is what are those influences, right?
That that impact our attentional capacity, our energy production, our motivation and if we can understand these influences and we can build some routines and strategies around them, we can choose our level of performance, you know, and that becomes such a an exciting prospect, right? And um so that's that that fueled my um desire to go back to school is like I really wanted to understand exactly what these influences are just formalized my understanding have to have the structure of of formal education to kind of do that.
Um so anyway I got my masters um and then I I pursued my PhD while I was at Whoop.
Ken Rideout
And where did you get your masters at Princeton?
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Um so University of Arizona.
Ken Rideout
Okay. Remotely.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yes.
Ken Rideout
Okay. Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
And then PhD. University of Queensland.
Okay. Yeah.
Ken Rideout
So, you you Okay. So, you was studying um at Whoop for the PhD and um to your point about sleep. I just want to say like I've noticed that um as more information has become available because of people like you and devices like Whoop. It's like completely eye opening like and it influences everything that I do not just for myself but for my children. They're like, "Dad, we want to stay up. It's Friday." And I'm like, "I don't care. It's 9:30. By 10:00, we're all in bed.
And and if the kids, you know, my Initially, it's funny when you have kids, you're like, "Oh, you got to get up with the kids at 5:00. I can't do it." Now I'm like, "It's 9:00 in the morning. What time are these kids?" But I never
Stop them from sleeping. I'm like, "Sleep as much as you want." Cuz all I can think is all the scientific stuff like his growth hormones pumping. My 10year-old, he wants to sleep. I'm like, "He's got a wrestling match." I'm like, like a lunatic. And it's almost like the more the more you know can sometimes be hurtful. But I know
The funny thing is with the sleep stuff, like my friend um Todd Anderson at Dream Recovery, I've literally like I look crazy when I'm going to sleep if I'm doing everything right. I got a sleep mask. I got his nasal strips. I've got a uh his silk pillow case. Like we've got uh aroma therapies going. I'm like a crazy horse. I've got an eight sleep. Everything is controlled. But it's like I noticed that
Thing. It's not just marginal gains. Like it's transformative. It's like the number one performance-enhancing drug,
Sleep, and it's free,
Dr. Kristen Holmes
But it's crazy how many people the data, you know, I mean, I I just can that Yes. It's the biggest competitive advantage and survival advantage.
Ken Rideout
So, you go to Whoop and you've never really had that kind of job before. You've only been a You've always been a coach or
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. I mean, I owned I owned a a a club. So I I ran like a 250 person club at Princeton and then I had my my business Champions Edge um which was kind of running over the course of 17 years and then I had Actis. So I had you know some startup experience you know obviously when you have to raise money and like you know pitch and and then you know hire uh folks to kind of help build your product and
Ken Rideout
You were in a corporate environment going into an office.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Absolutely not. No.
How was that adjustment? It was it was actually like I think because it was a startup like we were all just scrambling and and just trying to figure out our way like I mean I was doing I was doing customer support like talking to people on the phone like it just like you'd end up literally doing every aspect of the business. Um, but it was amazing. You know, I I I I knew, you know, I'd been coaching for 16 years at that point, a few years at Iowa, and then 13 years at um at Princeton, and I and I just really got I I got uh just so into that technology is a way to foster performance, you know, and just felt like there like I'm like this is really the future.
Like if we can understand our body, right, if we can understand um we just all of a sudden like there we can actually spend less time thinking about it, right? when we we understand what these signals are telling us and and I I think the other thing that got me so excited about Whoop was this idea of recovery and that like even you know when I my early days at at Whoop like it was still a novel idea load management still a novel idea and I said load management
Yeah okay we need to get all the professional athletes thinking about this but this is a concept that every human should be thinking about right because life is busy right and it's hard And um we need to understand how to infuse appropriate levels of rest relative to our demands.
Ken Rideout
Yes.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Right. And if we can get that balance right, you build a robust autonomic nervous system which allows you to respond and adapt to stress in a functional way. You can show up consistently with joy and engaged and present, live your values. like all of these things that I think are make kind of life worth living. If we can just, you know, manage our physiology a little bit more proactively, we can change the course of our life, you know. So, I just saw this like promise. And so, yeah, I at Whoop, it was it was kind of a wild start.
Yeah. kind of being in this corporate environment having to do P&Ls and all sorts of you know just I was running enterprise for a while like enterprise sales
When we had no validation but um but had so many like early adopters like Florida State University I mean I worked with all their
I worked with seven of their teams we won just multiple national championships like I got a ring um for soccer um did all of their travel optimization um we're using the data obviously to inform our training and use it in in combination with CAT catapult which you know I I love you know this kind of in practice kind of load monitoring and then having Whoop kind of running alongside and be able to kind of use those data sets together super fun. And so I was doing all sorts of like novel, you know, analysis around these different interactions.
And um but I but I, you know, when you look at the teams that I've worked with across, we we're working the farm system, you know, uh the the all major league baseball essentially has used Whoop. And I've pretty much been inside every single one of those organizations. Ice hockey, you know, the the Flyers, the Penguin, you know, name it. Clippers, Knicks, like boom, everyone. Um and and so I was working with all these folks and just like learning so much about the environments about just how hard it is actually to integrate data.
Um, you know, a lot of folks don't want to know, you know, um,
Ken Rideout
I've definitely fallen into that category.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Four beers last night, but then, you know, and so I had to really figure out, okay, what is this message, you know, to to people who are already really good,
You know, what do you tell LeBron James, Mike Vincas, you know, I talked to them like one of my first conversations and, you know, he's like, "Well, LeBron's pretty he's already pretty good." I was like, "Yeah,
He is already good, but what what is he leaving on the table?"
Ken Rideout
That's exactly what I was going to say.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
That's the opportunity. And and when you think about these pro aletes who are already close to performance ceiling, you know, if you can just do, you know, when you look at the data, it'd be like it's so clear. I mean, I it takes me eight minutes to look at, you know, three years of historical data, I can tell you exactly what you need to do. Yeah.
To just move the needle a little bit. Yeah.
Right. That might reduce risk of illness, reduce risk of injury. Those kind of repetitions, you know, that I've gained over the course of the years. Um, I think kind of right now like I I don't know there's been a more of an an exciting time I think for me like to to be able to I think influence, you know, certainly teams and athletes. Um, but I think the regular Jane and Joe, you know, who are just looking to, you know, just be more engaged in their life more
Ken Rideout
100%. And I, it's funny, I I've never been a huge data guy. Like when I raced my bike, I had a a power meter that was several thousand dollars and I'd look at heart rate and then I'd be like, "This is hurting my brain. I just want to go out and kill myself." and like you know like just suffer. And uh my friend who actually produces the show, Rob Moore, who's H Andrew Huberman's producer, who's like one of my closest friends, he we've had
Dr. Kristen Holmes
You guys kind of look like brothers.
Ken Rideout
Do you know how many times we've been out? This pisses me off. We've been out. So I went out to dinner one time in in Texas. We did the Iron Man Texas and I was there one night. Rob come in the next night. We go out to dinner and some guy goes, "Oh, do you brought your son?" And I go, "Are you out of your effing mind? You think he's my son? I'll kill you. I'm like, this guy's like 10 years younger than me. More than once, someone has said, "Is he my son?" I'm like, "Come on, man."
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Like, come on.
Ken Rideout
And I didn't even have a freaking gray beard when the guy said that. And this was years ago. But, um, one of the things he he's like a big data guy. And when early days, and we've been wearing I've had this thing like I'm now like a diamond status or whatever that is. And he would tell me like he was really he was really into it and in the different communities and had a bunch of finance guys that were out living that lifestyle. and he's like, "Look at my buddy's.
He's got a 1% recovery." And I'm like, "Oh, I'm having an anxiety attack just looking at it." But one of the things that we noticed was that people that were getting CO
Were we're noted like you could see it right away. You'd be like, "Oh my god, look at your heart rate variability, your recovery."
Dr. Kristen Holmes
We published these data. We're able to detect um COVID with 80% accuracy 3 days before symptom onset.
Ken Rideout
That's exactly right. That's what I was going to get to is that this thing is such an indicator. Like sometimes it it pisses me off because it causes me more anxiety sometimes than it's where than I should.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
That's where you just need to get into the a cadence of just like paying attention versus not like zooming out. Yeah.
Ken Rideout
I can tell you with 100% certainty when something's wrong with me, this reflects it. If I'm really sick, this thing will tell me I'm really sick and it never misses.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
What's crazy is it's not just it's a psychopysiological mirror which I talk about a lot in the book and and and I go through all the data on heart variability and psychological functioning and
Like if you were to go through like a really hard breakup or something or like you have a knockdown drag out you know fight not obviously physical with your wife but just a big blow up fight
Ken Rideout
That's right
Dr. Kristen Holmes
That will manifest in your heart variability like quite profoundly even if you feel like you sleep well your autonomic nervous system is going to be suppressed
Ken Rideout
Yes and that's the problem is that then that causes me more anxiety than I had before I saw the data. NOW I'M LIKE, "OH, I WAS hoping I slipped through the cracks, but this is telling me, nope, we got you."
Dr. Kristen Holmes
But that's a source of insight that all right, I need to deal with this. Like, I need to I need to get myself back to neutral. And
You know, part of uh you know, in chapter 12, I talk about these rebalancing rituals, right, which are basically 22 things that you can do to kind of get your autonomic nervous system back online. Yeah.
And and these are things that obviously you don't need to do all 22. You can just pick three, right? But these are the 22 most efficacious protocols that will improve your autonomic nervous system functioning, which I think is one of the most important um when we think about kind of health and and wellness. Um to me that that's the thing to pay attention to because you you can't when you have a robust autonomic nervous system, you can't die.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Right. You can't respond and adapt to your environment. Like that that's basically like why are we even alive here, right? So I I think like it's important for folks to understand the power of the autonomic nervous system um in terms of your daily functioning but most importantly like what you need to what you can do to influence it you know and um you know there's there's a lot of ways to influence it right you know just being in nature. Yeah,
Like you can boost your heart rate variability significantly, right? Just by engaging in nature just listening just you don't even have to do anything. Just immersing yourself in nature is enough to reduce cort cortisol, reduce inflammation, you know, all the the the markers, you know, are going to improve if you spend 20 minutes in nature, right? So, there's lots of little things that you can do to kind of get yourself back to neutral. And and I think that's where the data can be a powerful source of insight.
If you're going down a path where wow, okay, my my HV has been suppressed for, you know, a couple weeks now.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Like that's worth paying attention to.
Ken Rideout
Yes.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
I put this in the book, but I I got this um
I saw it on Reddit. Someone forwarded it to me. It was it was this post of this uh this gentleman who had been battling depression and it basically just showed his graph of when he started therapy and um and 6 months later and it was like his HRV was like 24 and just going through and battling beating his depression 6 months later it was 92.
Ken Rideout
Oh, I dream of 92 heart rate.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
But I think that's a great example that, you know, this is not just a physiological indicator, right? It is that, but it's it's it's also a a measure of of how you're functioning psychologically. And I think the the real takeaway is that
The path to improving your psychological functioning is actually through your physiology, right? And that's the case that I kind of make in the book. all of this stuff, you know, healing, you know, I talk about the one of the frameworks I have in the book is heal, heal your heart, which is really thinking about, okay, the role of the autonomic nervous system in in the the healing process and and I I I pull on um Russell Vanderook, who's done incredible work in the space. Um so other you know, just thought leaders um who who really see different types of trauma as a an injury to the nervous system.
So if you don't actually address your nervous system health, you can't quite get on that full path of healing, right? So um I I love that as an entry point, right? And um and and that's really I think one of the core thesis of the of the book is is that this this path to kind of healing is is through the autonomic nervous system and dealing with your energy which is you know mitochondrial health obviously very interrelated. Um the A is you know seals for autonomy like how do we actually build autonomy
Uh in our life that feeling of agency. Uh you talked about willpower and motivation before like you kind of have to start with all right what is what does agency actually look like and where is agency being taken away from me and where am I giving up my agency.
Ken Rideout
That's right.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
And then the L is is love. So this this idea of like self-love
Which sounds you know kind of cheesy but that compassion toward the self
You you and I our selft talk is probably really we have to check ourselves probably I can only imagine
Ken Rideout
I don't think it's cheesy at all. I think it's like the most of everything we're talking about might be the most important thing. Yeah,
Cuz I talk to myself in ways I would never talk to you or talk to my friends or my children
And I'm like why do I deserve this abuse that I heap on myself and it's
It's traumatic and uh you know you can easily gloss over that and say tell someone toughen up cool I'm okay toughen up but I know that the reality is I couldn't toughen up enough like it and I turn to this trauma healing center I'll come back to that in a minute but I just want to highlight that the the name of the book is perfect a line and it's like unlike like so many health and wellness books, like I loved every second of this. There was just enough of your personal stories in there tied in with these like therapeutic um modalities and and all the different, like you said, ways to realign yourself.
And you know, you can dismiss this and be like, I like things the way they're going. Cool. If things are working for you, don't do anything different for for the many people out there like us that are looking to get better. There's like a ton of stuff in there that could, you know, even if it causes a few small changes, like you only need a few incremental changes. Like I think about it when I was in that trauma healing center, they said, "Think about a ship on the on the ocean." If you change the the direction by even one degree, which looks like nothing,
Dr. Kristen Holmes
The rudder just
Ken Rideout
See where you are in 6 months. You're in like another part of the world.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. Has a a powerful compound effect that Yeah. And it's just I think it's knowing like part of it is understanding how to apply your effort you know and and that's where I think I mean that's that's been my life's work you know is is you know a lot of trial and error but you know a lot of research to kind of testing ideas and hypotheses and and kind of at the end of the day you know I feel like there's a pretty good framework you know to like hey these are the the influences right and if if you can build a framework and understand
You know where you sit um you can you can then take control
Ken Rideout
you The autonomy part resonates with me too cuz ultimately like you're in control of you. And I've said this on other shows like if you don't like your station in life, effing change it. No one can tell you what you you live in the greatest country on earth. You can do anything you want to do.
And you know the show is called the other side of hard because we're trying to do hard things. And I think that you are a perfect example of that because it's easy for people to look now and be like, "Oh, she's the scientist that must be nice." That's like my favorite. Must be nice. Yeah, it is nice. And guess what? Guess who created this? Me. People can look and and not recognize like all the hard work that you've done. And one of the topics of the book is healing trauma.
And I know you write about this in the book. I don't know if you want to touch on it, but just like hearing other people give examples of how they dealt with similar trauma, at least for me, when I've talked about trauma, people don't care about me winning races. They don't care about my running. But when I talk about my addiction and my childhood and things, people like connect with that. So, I don't know if you want to talk about it's in the book, but I don't want to make you uncomfortable, I guess.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
No, no. Yeah. I mean, so I was sexually abused. This is kind of my first time talking about it publicly, but but I I do mention it briefly in the book, but yeah, for like the first 10 years of my life.
Sorry. I know. I know. Um, you know, it's it's one of those things like you think about like your own kids.
Ken Rideout
I'm sorry I had to deal with that. It's it's always heartbreaking to hear about innocence being stolen and obviously it triggered something in you positive that you refuse to be a victim and that
About you is what I admire so much. I love people that are not going to be victimized.
You can do something to me but I'm going to pick up the pieces and do the best that I can. And um it's important for people to recognize that like you don't have to be a victim. you've been victimized, but it's up to you to determine. You can't control anyone else, but you can control your own reaction to a certain extent and do your best to like heal. And how much of your journey do you think that that influenced in terms of later in life getting into therapy and like dealing with that?
And I I ask because if someone might have gone through something similar and hasn't dealt with it, like how'd you deal with it? What should people know?
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. I mean, I I think I mean, your point about choice, you know, I I thought about that a lot, you know, um and you know, one of the things that he held over me um was my my my grandmother was struggling. So, it was my grandfather abused me. My grandmother had cancer at the time. She had breast cancer and um she was diagnosed I think when I was seven and she ended up passing when I was 10. But he held that over me, you know, just be like, "If if your grandmother finds out or, you know, if you know, he just used that as a lever to manipulate me essentially." Um, but after she passed when I was 10, I was like I felt like this empowerment and freedom almost, you know, obviously I was devastated that she was gone, but at the same time I was like, well, he doesn't have that hold over me anymore, you know, like um cuz she's passed,
You know, and and so I think that was when I really, you know, just did everything in my power to make sure that I was never alone with him. And you know, like it it was hard, you know, cuz sometimes, you know, my parents obviously didn't didn't know um you know, cuz he said, you know, your your dad will kill me and I'll end up in jail or he'll end up in jail forever. Like you'll never see him again, you know. So just stuff like that.
Like you're like what? You know, but this is just what predators do, you know? So I think like it's when you when you're abused and you think things are going wrong, like you end up holding a lot of anger. And I think my competitive I I used I think competition as a way to like I didn't play angry per se, but I I think that that just gave me like this outlet,
You know, but it I just went to the extreme. I mean, I trained all the time, you know, I was just like constantly, but that made me the the athlete that I was to a degree, you know, but I think after my mom passed, my sophomore year in college, I told my parents because my grandfather passed away and I and I and that's where I just like um I remember it was summer and I was sitting outside on the porch and I was like, I have to tell them cuz I can't go to the funeral.
Like I I couldn't Yeah. Like I had this just, you know, this just like um I broke out in hives and like you just like had this like panic attack almost and you know I had quite a bit of distance from it at that point you know um I really didn't have very much interaction with him after my grandmother passed and so I I finally you know sat down and told my my parents and
And um you know and I was also afraid of like what that knowledge would do to my mom you know cuz she would recognize that
You know I was just so unsupervised and like left, you know, and there's so many times where she couldn't care for me that I had to be under his care, you know, like
Um you know, but I I was like I just I had to tell them. So, you know, that felt good to to tell them. Um and and I think that helped me a bit. Um it's the first time I'd ever told anyone.
And then after my mom passed, uh that's when I really went to the darkest of of dark places. I think everything just like came crashing down on me. And at that point, you know, I was really, you know, had like the worst possible thoughts. You know, I I, you know, thought about ending my own life and it's bad. Um, but I got help and um transformative for me and I think for people listening, you know, just not being afraid, you know, to get help, I think it's the biggest thing.
You know, it changed a trajectory in my life. Um, you know, I ended up at the time I quit the US team. It was almost like after my mom passed, like I was just like was paralyzed. Like I I couldn't train anymore. Like like something in me like broke. Um, and I think all of those years were just like like I think just an encapsulation of just like her struggles and you know just everything. And you know, one of the things that I explore in the book is just this idea of like, you know, part of the the healing, you know, the self-love is is forgiveness.
And I think that's really what I confronted, you know, early on is is I just like needed to find a way to like move past that, the anger and the resentment and um, you know, I needed to forgive my father. I needed to forgive my mother. I needed to forgive my grandfather, you know. And on the early parts, forgiveness was the most important thing. And and that's like, you know, I pray on that and meditate on that daily, you know, just to have the strength to like forgive.
And and I I I just don't know that there's really anything more powerful than that. And you know, a lot of the work that I had to do was understanding like creating that like um framework of of empathy. You know, like when I think about, you know, people who abuse, it's because they were abused. You know, my grandfather, he was in he was adopted and and moved from, you know, foster home to foster home. I mean, I can't even imagine what happened to him, you know, and he ended up becoming an Episcopalian priest.
Um you know which probably just trying to run you know from his own demons and try to find some sense of normaly and some connection to God like to overcome like just probably the thoughts that he had and you know who knows but I I really tried to you know with the help of my psychiatrist who's actually really wonderful um you know helped me think about it through that lens you know I was like I don't want to be mad I need to understand why someone would do something like this to a And you know that that really that helped me.
And when I feel like that anger bubble upward, I just always I just try to think about that, you know, like life is hard. Being human's hard. And it's it's not set up for a lot of us to be successful, you know, and we have to we can make choices every single day. Um how we think about ourselves, how we love ourselves, compassion that we give ourselves, and we give others. So that that notion of forgiveness is was was massive. And and then I think as I kind of um matured a little bit and evolved and and became more knowledgeable, I think I really started to explore just these emotions of trust and fear, you know, kind of from an academic perspective for sure, but um but definitely more of just like how does this actually apply in my own life, you know, and and just being more aware of of those emotions of fear and and not being afraid of them, you know, and
And because I think I always like pushed those away. didn't necessarily replace them with trust, but just replaced it with work, you know, to deal with fear was really um I think that was the the the kind of at the the what underpinned I think a lot of the relentless work and and just trying to and doing as much as I possibly can just so I don't have to confront any of the pain, you know, and so really tried to understand, you know, the root of emotions as a as a way to just understand myself better and be able to identify, you know, I didn't want to feel that way, you know, I wanted to feel these emotions of trust.
I wanted to feel genuine love and joy and um and you know connection and intimacy and um you know and I I knew that in order to get there like I I had to develop a an understanding of of what these emotions look like and and how I can convert a lot of these emotions of fear or at minimum get curious but you know basically replace them with with emotions of trust and you know it's taken a long time you know to to do that. But yeah, I think for me forgiveness was the path for sure.
Ken Rideout
I would say of all the things of the many accomplishments you have, the fact that you were carrying this around with you and then have the courage now to not only talk about it, to have dealt with it yourself is like one of the things that I love so much about you is just like you're tough and it's not like uh superficial. It's like real real incredible toughness. internal fortitude, intestinal fortitude, but also so much emotional intelligence to recognize all the things that you just stated about identifi replacing fear with love and forgiveness.
And it takes incredible strength of character to be able to do that because I find myself [ __ ] hating people. And then I'm like, why do I hate them? What is it about like they to your point people are doing the best they can? woman, what about them? What happened to them that caused them to treat me like this? Even when I have like a blowout with my wife, I'll be like, what am I doing to cause this? Because she's not a bad person, but right now I'm very angry at her.
It could be anyone. And I always try to reflect. And I think that's a sign of like at least I interpret it as emotional intelligence. And not that I would call myself emotionally intelligent, but it's definitely been a strong suit for me relative to my intellect. And um but I always have a moment of especially when I'm really angry I'm like what did I do to cause this or or even if someone wronged me what did I do to give them the sense that they could do that to me and and in and trying to understand my own behavior but
I just have so much respect for you to be able to share that and I know that people are going to learn a lot from your experience and I hope that people get a lot of courage from your own journey because I know that this stuff is not easy. Not not only easy to deal with, but not easy to talk about either.
And I appreciate you sharing the story and I'm sorry to bring up such painful memories, but I appreciate you and I'm like I'm sorry you dealt with that.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
No, I mean it's okay, you know, like the thing is like it's so common.
Ken Rideout
Yeah, it really is.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
It's so common. like it just, you know, I recently interviewed a gymnastics coach and I mean gosh, this all the abuse that took place in that sport, you know, I mean, it just it's unfortunately it's it's really common place. And I and I think the message is too like,
You know, parents need to supervise their kids, you know, and you just don't know where it can come from, you know, and it doesn't mean that, you know, have to be like crazy, right? But, you know, predators are predators, you know, and and and they find ways to manipulate and and we just have to be more aware, you know, more vigilant. But I think, you know, at the end of the day, when you've been exposed, you know, to to being treated that way,
Your point, you know, you have to you have to come up with a a framework, you know, to that helps you understand it
And I think most importantly, like helps you move through the world in a way that you're proud of.
Yeah. you know, like I didn't want to be like angry and I didn't want to be, you know, unable to access joy and I didn't want to be, you know, just, you know, I I I I didn't want like that experience to define me, you know, and
And it doesn't have to that's that's what's amazing, right? And but you do have to, you know, think about it's an inside out job, you know, like you really have to, you know, figure out, okay, how do I actually bring peace into my life, you know, and a lot of that is is healing the nervous system, you know, that's it's a big pathway, you know, to to finding internal peace and um and then exploring, you know, what is that I really care about? What are my values?
Yeah.
Do my behaviors reflect the things that I say I care about and the the and who I want to be in the world. And so I think that that process of auditing your life a little bit more closely is is worth the effort.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
You know, because that's how you create alignment.
Ken Rideout
Well, that's one of the things I always preach about is take care of your physical and mental health like your life depends on it because it does.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah, it does. People around you
Ken Rideout
100%. You're setting an example for your children, you know. And listen, I might be an extremist and I'd be the first one to say like, "Yeah, maybe I swapped one addiction for another." But one addiction had me ideating on killing myself and one addiction has me sitting here across from one of the best sports scientists in the world. Like I like where I am right now, but I'm not unaware of
That. You know, I might be doing it. I might be a bit excessive, but I just it's a survival mechanism for me at this point. So, I try to find a balance. But um that's the thing about the hard work is like some people would look and say like wow that's really hard to run every day and do this and do that. I said that's nothing compared to what I'm doing dealing with internally and like this the work I'm trying to do on myself. Like that's stuff the physical pain and discomfort I'm like I I got this all day.
Like you can't do anything to me that hasn't already been done because the some of the pain and and and and emotional damage that I've experienced along the way is like that is real pain that I can't you can't see it. I can't tell you about it just you know so it's like
Dr. Kristen Holmes
In the fibers.
Ken Rideout
Yeah. And it's like I know it's frustrating for my wife and my children when I'm acting like a lunatic and then I got to go and apologize for being like too intense and I'm like how do you say like oh feel bad for me I'm dealing with uh trauma but it's no one wants to hear that [ __ ] So it's like it's my own hard internal struggle that no one's going to sympathize with because they can't see it or experience it.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
But what what what's really amazing though is you found you found athlet, you know, outlets, you know, that kind of help you help create that peace, you know, internally as as much as possible, you know, and and so I I think everyone kind of has their own version, you know, of of of things that happened to them that didn't go their way.
And but that's not an excuse to kind of carry that forward. Like you can That's right. You can make
You can make changes.
Yeah. in in your life and you can you can create a new identity, you know, you can be a person who is is values their health, you know, and and who has inner peace and, you know, it's it's just it's understanding, all right, what is the path to that,
You know, and and then just doing it.
Ken Rideout
That's right.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Every day a little bit.
Ken Rideout
Yep.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
You know,
Ken Rideout
Well, one of the things I want to touch on before we wrap is uh alcohol. And I know working at Whoop and I've seen this myself. While I don't label myself a drinker, I've never enjoyed drinking really, but I've had drinks here and there if like special occasions, but definitely not on. I can't even remember the last time I had a drink. But I know when I do have a drink, this Whoop is like, "Yeah, no, we're not doing this." Like it is sabotage a day of your life.
So when you got to Whoop, tell me about like some of the findings from the Whoop data that you saw from people and then talk about this big paper you have coming up about the uh I don't know if dangers of drinking or the negative effects of alcohol.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. Yeah. I mean alcohol I it's really interesting, right? I I think the awareness around the that that just even moderate levels of of alcohol are harmful is I think kind of a revelation um in that
It's just a behavior that has is so normalized.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
You know it's kind of like weird that if you don't drink you kind of explain I mean how many times have you explained why you're not drinking?
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
I mean a gazillion. I can't even count. Right. But I think those tides are are changing and I I like to think that I've had a little bit of a um an impact on that. You know, it's something that I've been talking about for a long time just because the data were so clear that, you know, even one drink within two hours of bed has a negative impact on your resting physiology.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Right. So resting physiology measured by your resting heart rate and heart variability,
It's crushing to sleep. So people, it's a sedative. So people like, oh yeah, I get into deeper stages of sleep, but then the back end of their sleep, their REM sleep is just totally like crushed, right? So that's
Ken Rideout
Anyone who wears a Whoop knows that.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
I know. I know. And you know REM obviously is is you know where all the emotional regulation happens and I there's so many things happening like during sleep right we want to protect it. So the the story there is is definitely if you are going to drink lunchtime day drink you know just try to create as much buffer between your last drink of alcohol and when you intend to sleep. If anyone's looking to kind of hack hack it that's
Ken Rideout
Or have some athletic brewing
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Or just go non-alcoholic. I'm so down.
Ken Rideout
I talked to Bill Shoufel from Athletic Brewing on the show last week. He hasn't published yet, but he's uh we talked a lot about that about the stigma of non not drinking and the trends of
Non non-alcoholic beer and people.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. So, this is a uh we basically looked at 70 weeks 72 weeks. It was 33,000 folks who um started on the WHOOP platform and we just kind of followed and observed their behavior. So, this is people who are tracking their alcohol consumption and we see over the course of the 72 weeks um you know 5.2 2 percentage decrease in alcohol consumption over the course of that time. It's kind of a cool uh finding in that just exposure to the data to to you're like, "Holy cow, alcohol really impacts me negatively." Waking up with that 1% recovery actually is changing behavior, which is kind of cool.
And that's what we you know what the big finding in the paper. But then just looking at the sensitivities of of women versus men versus younger kids or you know like um young adults uh young adults and women are more profoundly impacted by um by alcohol than men actually which is not surprising right men are heavier like have you know different body composition like there's all sorts of things that would you would suspect that make um men more robust to that toxin. Uh and we see that in in the data.
Um,
Ken Rideout
Did you say women and children, like teens?
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Um, no. So, young adults, so 21 plus.
Ken Rideout
Do like 15 to 21 because like I was telling someone this the other day, I've never heard of any. My my daughter is 15. Her friends are freshman high school, but I know all the kids. Like I coached the high school cross country was assistant cross country coach. So, I know the kids. I've never seen or heard of the kids in high school drinking. When I was in high school, when I was freshman through senior, we drank every weekend. Like it was no question like everyone not not not like rageous.
I mean some people were
But the one thing that I noticed is I could drink
However many beers and get up the next day and I wouldn't even like no hangover whatsoever if I tried to do the things that I did then now I like wouldn't be able to function for a week. But it would be interesting to see or even in the young 20s how they rebound versus someone in let's say their 30s or 40s.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. So the recovery like younger kids. Yeah. So I I I have looked at these data with professional athletes and so the days that you exercise there's like a um an amplifying effect of exercise when you drink alcohol. So in that the more you exercise the more dilitterious the effect of alcohol is on your physiology and your sleep.
Ken Rideout
Interesting.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
I know. So because you can imagine like that's a stressor on your body, right? So you're kind of putting your body in a compromised
Position right after you train, right? That's part of the stimulus, right? it's going to make you like fitter and better. The interaction between exercise and alcohol is one that it it you know it basically you will exasperate your recovery potential when you drink alcohol.
Ken Rideout
So it must be like great data for the pro sports teams to be like if you think you're having a hard game and then go and have a few beers, go for it, but recognize that it's going to be like
Significant like recovery uh deprivation.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
I I think what's like so insidious about sleep and alcohol and like all of these behaviors is that you don't really you it's hard to perceive your own declines.
Ken Rideout
Oh yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
You know, like when you're a young kid and you're like, "Oh, I went out and like, you know, played a full hockey game, you know, after I just got wasted the night before."
You know, but again, like what were you leaving on the table that day? And and I think the other thing is that we think we're better than we are generally. Um and so and there is really interesting data out of University of Pennsylvania um David Dingus's lab um where they they do these exact experiments where they just they basically you know sleep deprive five people and um and then you know they're taking tests before the sleep depression deprivation they're taking it after and even though you know the tests very clearly show that they have compromised cognitive functioning their perception of their performance is that it's just fine right so we see that kind of over and over again in these experiments where um it's just very hard to kind of perceive our own declines.
And that's like just what's I think quite insidious with things like you know not getting enough sleep or having consistent sleep chronically is that we just adapt to a lower level of physical, mental, and emotional functioning.
Ken Rideout
Yeah.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
And I think that's what the data can kind of help you understand is that you don't have to just be a lesser version of yourself. You know, like you when you have some of these insight, you can like course correct. Yeah.
You know, and keep yourself at a level where
You're like, "All right, you know, like I'm I'm adapting in a really functional way to the demands of my life."
Yeah. Was there anything from this from the recent study that was like startling to you or anything that wasn't startling? I think the other thing that was interesting is that older guys whose autonomic nervous system functioning is already um suboptimal have no response to alcohol
Ken Rideout
Really.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah. There's a phenomenon that's happening with the autonomic nervous system whereby um
You know if you're already in a kind of compromised state you're just not going to see variability or fluctuation. So that lack of fluctuation is actually a bad sign, right? Because your your your heart isn't even responding to the alcohol at that point, right? So that's when you know you're really unhealthy is if there's no fluctuation. So count yourself lucky if after a night of beer, after a night of drinking, you have a much lower heart rate variability. That's a sign that at least there's somewhere for your heart rate variability to go.
Ken Rideout
Yeah. in terms of the metrics like maybe when you were coaching and that you think of now and I've heard Peter at Tia say like the the greatest indicator for overall health and wellness is V2 max like how much do you subscribe to that?
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah, very hugely. Yeah, V2 max is an amazing proxy for um and a predictor of of longevity and there's so much good data around V2 max. Um, so just how much oxygen you can take in during, you know, um, highintensity exercise. Um, and it's measured in a lab. And, um, we actually passively measure V2 max on Whoops. So, we have accurate.
It's It's not bad. You know, the fitter you are, like the highest fit folks, like the the professional cyclists who are doing the tour to France, we're off probably five or six, I would say. It's it's not, you know, it's it's a little less accurate the fitter you get, I will admit. But for uh elite athletes and and those are like the most elite athletes, right? So the very top
Ken Rideout
When it comes to V2 max endurance,
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Everyone else, we're kind of right there. I mean, for example, I just had mine done in a lab in November.
Ken Rideout
Oh my god, it's just so intimidating even thinking about doing a V2 max test.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Yeah, it it's it's like you got to you got to gear up. Um
Ken Rideout
It's like a race. And to that extent, I I did it with uh Eternal. Alex Mathers has a new startup um who started the athletic um
And I went and did the whole testing all the different strength tests
Dr. Kristen Holmes
balance metabolic rate
Ken Rideout
lactate threshold and he was like yeah we'll do the V2 max and I was like dude I'm not ready for that like I I was like I need to be ready for this like it's a race you know cuz for those who don't know you get on the treadmill and you run at like he was like what's your last race time and I'm like well I haven't run a race in 6 months but it was like a half marathon in 110 which was 520 when he pace and he's like, "Okay, well, but I'm like I like I was like a knife barely prepared for
I was like a knife that had been sharpened. Right now I'm like a butter knife. Like I have an engine but I don't have fine tuning." Anyway, I started doing it and inside on a treadmill. I'm like I guys I'm sorry. I have to take my shirt off. I'm going to be drenched in sweat. Yes.
So that the thing so they crank it up to like you know you warm up then you're running at like six minute pace. You kind of go slow and then you slowly
Then they increase the incline, increase the belt and I mean by the end you'll you run until you essentially collapse
And I had like
I think I was uh low 60s on the V2 max and I was like oh cuz they were like Lance was just in here did 75 or something and I was like 60 oh my god this is terrible and they were like that's like elite elite. I'm like is it the best? And they were like it's it's elite elite. I'm like, I need to come back when I'm prepared, like for a race.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
I know. I know.
Ken Rideout
Same thing with the lactate threshold. You run as fast as you can for like a minute or two, then they they look at your heart rate, then they prick your ear, get the blood, test it for the lactic. Yeah. And I say that to say what is the future of a when I I have had different startup entrepreneurs reach out to me claiming that they have a real time lactate um test with a light that they can measure lactate in real time cuz to me that's the holy grail
Cuz once you stop producing lactate you only have x amount
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Literally a guy just reached out to me on LinkedIn like claim he has one and yeah I mean it must be the founder of the company you're talking about these guys were out of Israel.
He was asking me about lactate and sleep actually. So um and and just what I know about that. But um but yeah, I mean that would be to to passively detect lactate would be that to throw that into other models to be able to understand how you're recovering, how you you know responded to training stimulus. I mean that would be
Ken Rideout
How clear you how quickly you're clearing lactate is the key
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Is the key. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I mean to to think that you could do that passively is not just I would see I could see that that's possible. Yeah,
Ken Rideout
Seems like it's coming because these guys were talking to me about this like in 18.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Do you know how much truth data they have? Like how do you know how many collection? Like so basically to kind of train an algorithm um you need obviously lots and lots of truth data, right? And you need to kind of be testing your model against that truth data to get it refined to a point where okay, this is accurate enough.
Ken Rideout
Yeah, it was a while ago that I was like, I don't know, guys. Like, I know I know just enough to be dangerous and measuring that with a light seems like
I think they'll get there. Like, I think that someone will get there and eventually Whoop will be like, "Yep, we're incorporating that into our device, which would be great."
Dr. Kristen Holmes
That would be amazing. Yeah. Um I I mean I think more of these data points, you know, for some people they don't care about that, you know, but I think back to V2 max, everyone should care about their V2 max and Peter T has done such an amazing job of evangelizing this metric and kind of putting it into the consciousness of every human, right? Like we should every person should know their V2 max. And
I think what I appreciate about Whoop is, you know, I took um I think my V2 max in the lab was 52 and Whoop had me at 50.
Ken Rideout
Yeah. Okay, that's close enough.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Super clo, right? Very much close enough. Right. obviously like I kind of want to know but so but I can manually adjust it to 52. So now Whoop kind of is using that new data to kind of train subsequent you know kind of um using that intel to basically kind of train the model
Um my my my personal model you know um
But but yeah I mean I'd love to see like you know how travel like you know when I can't prioritize zone four and five like my V2 max takes a hit you know so I can kind of see the impact of of my training and and whether or not that's contributing positively to V2 max or not and it's not you know it doesn't move around super quickly. It takes time like to move that metric.
But I think having the data, you know, just let me know if if the training how I'm programming and and how I'm living my life and my travel cadence and if if it's contributing positively or not, right? Obviously, I care about that because I I care about living a long and healthy life. That's quality. But just in the moment to moment, I don't want to get sick and I don't want to get injured
100%. Like to me like being as robust as I can be and managing my my inner peace and creating peace for myself is is so important. Um but if I'm sick and injured like finding internal peace is really hard.
Yes, for sure. So they go hand in hand and I think that's the that's like part of one of my um you know kind of calls to action in the the book chapter 4 I talk about intelligent training and I'm kind of like I take a little bit of a hard ass approach you know in that like well yeah I mean it's your life
Ken Rideout
It is your life with seriousness
Dr. Kristen Holmes
And I do feel like society gives like an out to to folks like I I feel like if you have a body you need to train like you have a responsibility to your community, to your family. And I know everyone's like, "That's healthism." And and I know some people
Ken Rideout
What?
Dr. Kristen Holmes
No, I know. Stop that.
I you know, I I understand that not everyone um has the tools or comes from a a background, you know, they they haven't been socialized in a way that that health is important. So, it it takes but I do think there's a lot of information out there now. Um you've got the, you know, RFK up there talking to the, you know, the the the country about about health. And so I I feel like everyone should know at this point that you got to move your body.
Ken Rideout
If you live in this country, you have the you you have enough resources to get out and move your body. Maybe you maybe you don't have the money for the produce that you want, but you have an idea of what not to do.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Totally. And I you know that's why like sometimes I I do I do a lot of lifting. I mean I love moving like organic loads like you know tree stumps and rocks and but there but there's like that that's available to most people, right? Exactly. It's training is for the most part democratically available and free, you know, and so and and I think too like what your kids like see you doing is everything.
Ken Rideout
And to your point about what's available when we adopted my daughter from Ethiopia, we live my wife lived there for two months with custody of her like in a guest house. It was a crazy story. I write about it in my book, but we was live we were basically staying in a guest house in Addis Ababa. So I went for a week then I came back to work. She stayed there with custody and then I went back for another week, got pneumonia, came home. But while I was there the first week, I would walk out in the morning to get coffee on this big busy road in in Artisaba called Ble Road.
And every morning there would be a kid out there like maybe 20 years old and he had weight set that he made. So on each end was a bucket of concrete that he put a broom like a big tree branch into the bucket fro like let the concrete get hard did the other. So we basically had like bars with concrete blocks on the end and everyone couldn't speak English and I obviously couldn't speak a mark and I'd go by and point point to me point to the weights and be like can I work out with you basically and every morning?
Yeah. Come on. So we would be in there doing curls, shoulder presses with with weights that were made from a tree branch and a five gallon bucket. So that's my point is when people
I never even heard the term healthism. I'm like out of the loop I guess with the like excuse makers. But
I was just staying ahead of it. I was like is that I know I know that's a thing. It's typically people that are telling you that are people that aren't may probably aren't working hard themselves or not taking responsibility. So they want to create a crutch or any excuse to be like oh don't discriminate. Not everyone can everyone can act everyone can take a walk and if you can't walk you can like work your arms. There's a lot of things like the point is not
What you can and can't do about being ablebodied. The point is whatever you can move you have to. It's like that's your resp I tell people all the time my biggest responsibility in the world above my children and my wife
Is to take care of myself. They depend on me to be the leader of that house and I know if something happened to me my wife would step in and do everything. But right now like my job like if I'm the quarterback of a football team I have to train and be physically fit and ready to go. And if I don't it's my fault. I have a family. I have four young kids and a wife and I like my wife is a stay-at-home mom. Like it's my responsibility.
If I don't prioritize my health and wellness, I'm letting them down. And if I don't do it, if something goes wrong, someone else will have to take care of me. And that to me is my worst fear. It's worse than worse than the fear of dying is that something happens to me and I'm incapacitated and they have to take care of me. And it's like that that feeling is like, no, no, I I gotta go and do this. I gotta I gotta get out and work.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
That is I when like when you everyone has their own why right but when you when you go out any change journey you're going to begin right you need to again think about your identity think about your values and come up with a why
You know I think that's exactly my why is I don't want I mean I think about how much space the health of my mother took up in my brain like every day I worried about her every single day of my life I worried about I don't want my kids to have to worry about me, you know, and there might be a point where, you know, I something happens to me. I mean, gosh, your wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. Like, life happens, right? But if I'm not doing everything that I can to just at least try to pay down that risk
Of of of of disease or illness burden, like I I'm not doing my family just like I just like that's I just feel like that
To me I mean that that's my why. Everyone needs to come up with their own why, but for me, like I don't want that to take up any space in my kids' brain. Yeah.
For as long as possible, right?
Ken Rideout
No, I completely agree. Before we wrap, quickly, talk to me about some of the exciting things going on at Whoop. I know you just did a deal with Ferrari today.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
We did. Yeah, it um it's been, you know, months in the work. And I
Ken Rideout
Can't believe they're giving you a Ferrari. That's a great deal.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
They're not giving me a Ferrari. That's hilarious. Um yeah, that would be something. Um, yeah. I mean, we've been talking to them for for months now, and I need to give Brian Curtain, who's been, uh, you know, just the the architect behind that deal. Uh, I need to give him a big shout out because he's just so phenomenal. He's on the marketing team. Um, but he brought me in early, um, you know, as kind of our the lead of performance science at at Whoop. And and, you know, that's the more conversations like the more they really wanted to embed a lot of my expertise into the deal.
So, I kind of got written into the contract. So yeah, I'll be working with F1 um around optimization. So from remote garage to really anyone in the organization who wants to opt in will be able to opt in and get
Um kind of bespoke kind of personalized coaching um to help them interpret and understand their data and just help you know manage travel. We've got a really cool review right now on uh travel optimization. basically a blueprint for anyone who travels um on how to how to mitigate some of the diliterous effects of travel. So, um that's kind of been fresh in my mind. We've been working on on that with in collaboration with some colleagues at UCLA and MASH. Um but that is uh back from reviewers um and will be back out the end of the month.
So hopefully it'll get published you know sometime this spring. But um travel obviously with 24 races all over the world uh you know that is a huge advantage right so we're going to try to you know really think about you know building the robustness of the circadian rhythms really getting their autonomic nervous system robustness as as good as it can be from the caterers to the drivers to you know everyone who interacts uh with the car um which is everyone in the organization right so
Yeah it's cool because I've I've been inside all sorts of organization professional organizations and in the time at Whoop but a lot of the times s it's kind of happening in the shadows. So, this is kind of the first one that is more public um which is kind of fun. I get to talk about it but um you know not in an you know deidentified anonymous way I can I can be a little more upfront about it. So yeah I'm I'm excited for this challenge.
Ken Rideout
Oh it's so much so exciting for someone like you. This is like a dream job to be able to work in this kind of level of like high with these kind of high performers the kind of data you're collecting like on the cutting edge of all this kind of real time data. Who are some of the other athletes that you've been uh I know every time I see an announcement from move I'm like oh my god Cristiano Ronaldo this golfer and that golfer. Is there anyone else there that you met that you were kind of starruck by?
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Uh I don't you know Starruck like that's not not really as much in my nature you know like I'm like um I get more star struck from like the scientists that will reach out and want to do research. I'll be like
Like Daniel Winred oh my goodness you know.
Yeah. Um, so less so. I think I've had so much interaction with professional athletes with music, it's kind of like, you know, it's not really um how I think about it anymore. But, um, yeah, I mean I I you think of them, they and you know, musicians too that you just be like, "Wait, what?" actors. But I but honestly, Ken, like I think what really
Um always stops me in the track is just like the mama three, you know, the single mama three who's taken the train into work and has two jobs and actually has a whoop.
Yep.
And reaches out to me and and and tells me how, you know, a little nugget of insight kind of changed her life. And um you know I write about a lot of these stories in my book you know just people who just randomly you know um a woman who you know her her um husband passed away uh suddenly from uh pancreatic cancer.
Wow. and, you know, relatively young and, you know, how she basically like just dealing with that grief like went into kind of early um onset menopause and and just like seeing like how the grief, you know, understandably so, just took over life and how that just changed every aspect of her physiology, her sleep, you know, and and just like those moments, you know, where, you know, people reach out and just, you know, with just honestly like stories of despair you know, and and but but also hope, you know, of like a lot of the stories are like the aftermath, you know, be like I use the data to like get myself back on track and but oftent times, you know, there that the front end, you know, where my, you know, just seeing my data tank is is a indicator, you know, that of how deeply affected I am by this heartbreak or, you know, um this trauma that's resurfaced or, you know, um you
Know, I had someone who, you know, witnessed a a three car accident, you know, and and two other people died and, you know, just things that, you know, it those are the those are the moments, you know, that kind of stick out and,
You know, obviously I can't help everyone, but you know, like a lot of my downtime is is trying to help people, you know. Um, and and that's really why I wrote the book,
You know, is different points of our life are going to bring different challenges to us, you know, and and having a framework, a way to think about uh some of these aspects of of the human condition, I think, can accelerate wisdom. and and that's what I hope the book does.
Ken Rideout
Yeah. No. Awesome. Well, I know that I could probably get a lot more um technical and talk more about the science and stuff, but there's uh but there's other podcasts for that. I wanted to introduce I wanted to introduce everyone to uh Kristen Holmes, the person, athlete, and mom um that I know you to be. And because I'm impressed with you for all the things, you know, obviously the science, but everything else that you've accomplished. And I hope that um people enjoy getting to learn a little bit more about you and connecting with you.
Obviously, I'll tag you and add you as a collaborator on all these links. So, the the on social media and on YouTube, everything will be in the notes of how people can find you. But, um it's been so great getting to know more about you and I love being your friend and I'm super proud of you and anytime your name comes up, I'm like, she's my friend, you know? I'm so proud of you and I really appreciate you. I was say in justest that you travel to Nashville for you happen to be in Nashville.
Um but I I'm so grateful that you would dedicate a couple hours to come here and talk with me and uh I'm just incredibly appreciative of everything that you've done and your friendship. So thank you very much.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
You're so very welcome. Uh it was really an honor to be here today and I just super grateful for our friendship and and uh yeah just all the the good work that you put out into the world inspiration.
Ken Rideout
Thank you very much. And if uh if you're watching please do me a favor. Please just subscribe to the showc you don't even have you don't even have to like the show. Just subscribe as the kids would say. Smash that subscribe button. But thank you. It means a lot to me and uh I appreciate all you guys and um thank you. Yeah, you're welcome.
Dr. Kristen Holmes
Boom.
Ken Rideout
Boom.
All right, guys. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. Please take a quick minute to subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening. This is a new show, so subscribing makes a huge difference. Please also take a minute to give it a review and leave a comment on Apple Podcast and on Spotify. You can also subscribe and leave a comment on YouTube. Again, this is really important for us, especially now since we're just getting started.
Key takeaways
- Sports gave Holmes structure and a route to achievement, but it could not resolve the trauma she carried.
- She says understanding fear and building trust took more than relentless work.
- Forgiveness helped her loosen anger without denying what had happened.
- Sleep, alcohol and recovery data can reveal effects that people may otherwise overlook.
- A high-performance life can include asking for help and setting limits.
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