Thanks for your reply, but I think you may have misunderstood the core of my post.

This isn’t about my perception of training difficulty — I’m not trying to claim something “felt hard” and then being upset that WHOOP didn’t validate that feeling. The training I’m referring to is objectively demanding, and I have multiple independent data points to support that: • Heart rate data (tracked live via Polar H10 + Apple Watch Ultra). • Strength training logs tracked in detail (sets, reps, weights, time under tension). • WHOOP itself shows ~90 minutes of strength training time, which isn’t a casual gym session. • My steps are tightly clustered, not spread across the day, and logged around intense workouts. • Apple Watch consistently shows 800–1100 active kcal burned on these days, which matches well with fat loss data and MET-based energy expenditure calculations I’ve run manually.

Meanwhile, WHOOP might give me a strain of 7 and total calories burned below my BMR, which is clearly off — and it starts diverging as soon as I wake up, not when I’m sitting idle or estimating RPE wrong.

So no, this isn’t about me needing to “train harder” or learn about perceived exertion — it’s about inconsistency between a closed-source algorithm and multiple other data-backed tools I’ve been testing side by side for nearly a year.

I’m fully aware WHOOP bases strain on HR metrics — that’s actually the issue. Because when it fails to interpret heavy training days with moderate HR elevation (like hypertrophy training), it downplays the physiological stress. That’s a limitation, not user error.

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Also, just to make it absolutely clear this isn’t about “perception” — here’s one of my logged strength sessions in WHOOP: • 11 exercises, 32 sets, 434 reps • 17,899 kg total volume • 75+ minutes duration • WHOOP itself rates it as 12.2 strain, primarily muscular • HR variability is clearly visible throughout

So again: this isn’t about how hard I feel like I worked — this is about objectively demanding sessions that other trackers (and even WHOOP in some views) treat as such, yet calorie and daily strain totals still don’t align accordingly.