San Diego, CA – December 7, 2014 – Qualcomm Stadium: Darrell Stuckey (25) of the San Diego Chargers during a regular season game
(Photo by Eddie Perlas / ESPN Images)
Los Angeles Chargers safety and special teams standout Darrell Stuckey isn’t just an early user of WHOOP who started wearing it in October. He has said he wore it during games a few times last season by taping over the device.
The data that WHOOP provided Stuckey was on display last week at the Fortune Brainstorm HEALTH conference last week in San Diego, as the presentation included dashboard information on his strain, recovery and sleep performance from Nov. 27. That was a game day on the road when the Chargers faced the Houston Texans.
“My heart rate peaked right before the game, and it gradually went down,” Stuckey told the crowd of what part of the data stood out to him.
“It’s powerful to see that our pregame is harder than any part of the game. Just to see your heart rate and your anxiety level, your adrenaline is up, and as the game goes on, you become calm because you know what’s going on. You get into the flow of it.”
Once a Fitbit user, Stuckey has turned to WHOOP and many players are expected to follow suit this season. The Boston-based wearables company, by announcing a partnership with the NFL Players Association last month, has become the officially licensed wearable of the NFL with players receiving devices and having the option to commercialize the health data.
WHOOP founder and CEO Will Ahmed said at the conference that fantasy football could be influenced if participants knew how much an athlete had recovered leading up to the game.
“Well I own it, so they can’t use it without my permission,” Stuckey said with a laugh of the data.
New Los Angeles Chargers offensive lineman Russell Okung would know. He serves on the Athlete Advisory Board of OneTeam Collective, the athlete-driven accelerator that secured the NFLPA deal with WHOOP. Okung identified himself as a WHOOP investor, and the NFLPA made an investment as well, according to Bloomberg.
Okung has worn WHOOP as part of his training and even had it charging on his wrist while in the middle of signing his new contract with the Chargers. Users don’t have to take it off, and for NFL players, there’s plenty of reasons not to.
“As an athlete, you’re competitive when you’re awake,” Stuckey said. “You always want to compete to the best of your ability, but you’re more of what you see when it comes to your performance. And the problem is, we can’t see our progress or our recovery when we’re asleep unless we have that data, and WHOOP gave me that.”
