EP.6 Kristen Holmes- Go Slower to Go Faster

During my football career, there were days when I felt amazing on the field, and there were days when I felt slow and sluggish. Fast forward a few years, I found similar variances in my performance at work.

Some days I was full of energy, able to make quick, complex decisions, and on other days I would have a tough time even convey what I was thinking in a sufficient manner.

As I began to research the human body, performance, and recovery, I came across a lot of ground-breaking research around the importance of diet, sleep, and external stress, and started to incorporate changes to my lifestyle in order to maximize my performance. Despite the manual tweaks, there was always a missing piece – data! I had always thought it would be amazing to actually measure, analyze, and incorporate findings from data in my diet, recovery, physical activity, neural stress, etc.

If you’re someone who is waiting for this technology and wants to learn more about how to make better scientific decisions to maximize your performance at work – then this episode is for you!

“The competitive advantage is in your downtime.” – Kristen Holmes 

  • Kristen Holmes is the VP of Performance Science at Whoop, a personalized fitness tracking startup making big waves. And she’s also one of the most succesful NCAA coaches in NCAA history, and was a two sport, hockey and basketball athlete and AA national champion.
  • As Vice President of Performance Science at WHOOP, Kristen drives thought leadership by engaging with industry leading researchers and partners to better understand individual and team biometric and performance data across high stakes verticals. Kristen also works with hundreds of the best tactical, professional, surgical teams, and NCAA Athletes/Teams in the world helping them interpret WHOOP data to optimize training, recovery, and sleep behaviour.
  • As an athlete, Kristen was a 3x All American, 2 x Big 10 Athlete of the year at the University of Iowa competing in both Field Hockey and Basketball. 7 year member of the U.S. National Field Hockey Team and one of the most successful coaches in Ivy League history, having won 12 league titles in 13 seasons and a National Championship at Princeton University. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan Executive MBA Candidate (‘20), MIT Sloan Artificial Intelligence Certificate, M.A. Psychology and Sports Performance, B.S., Political Science, University of Iowa.
  • Today she is focused on investigating and interrogating the science behind the physiological, psychological, and organizational factors that interact to either promote or degrade performance.
  • You can follow Kristen and her work on Instagram and LinkedIn, and visit Whoop.com to learn about the groundbreaking tech!

Some of the Things we Chat About:

  • How did Kristen have such a successful NCAA career as a 2 sports player and one of the most successful coaches in history
  • How business leaders can optimize performance by focusing on recovery
  • Why your sleep cycle is way more important than you think
  • Why you need to be process-driven vs seeking results
  • Why anchors are important in life

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