“Data Is Not Steroids”: What WHOOP’s Response Reveals About the Performance Culture We’ve Built

Will Ahmed, the founder and CEO of WHOOP, had a week.

When the Australian Open instructed Carlos Alcaraz, Aryna Sabalenka, and Jannik Sinner to remove their WHOOP bands during matches, Ahmed did not issue a quiet corporate statement and move on. He posted through it — loudly, daily, and with considerable marketing genius.

“Ridiculous. WHOOP is approved by the International Tennis Federation for in-match wear and poses no safety risk. Let the athletes measure their bodies. Data is not steroids.”

He released a video featuring Cristiano Ronaldo, Rory McIlroy, Sha’Carri Richardson, and Sabalenka herself — all wearing their WHOOP bands on the way to iconic victories — intercut with footage of Alcaraz being asked to remove his. He positioned the ban as a fundamental violation of athlete rights. And then, in a move that was either brilliant or unhinged or both, he overnighted boxes of WHOOP-embedded underwear and bras to the players so they could wear the sensor discreetly beneath their clothing.

“It’s going to take a strip search to keep WHOOP off the court,” he wrote.

The internet loved it. The story ran for a week. WHOOP got more coverage from the ban than it ever could have purchased.

I want to give Ahmed credit where it’s due: he is right that the Australian Open’s governance situation is genuinely confused. WHOOP is approved by the International Tennis Federation. The ATP and WTA both allow it. The Grand Slams operate independently and haven’t caught up. The players were blindsided by a rule they didn’t know applied to them. That is a legitimate grievance, handled with exceptional PR instincts.

But I am a psychologist, not a marketer. And reading Ahmed’s response carefully, I notice something worth examining.

 

The Rights Frame and What It Reveals

“Athletes have a fundamental right to understand their own performance and health.”

This is the core of WHOOP’s argument, and it is seductive because it is partly true. Athletes do have a right to their health data. Data ownership is a genuine and important issue in professional sports, where teams and governing bodies routinely collect biometric information and the question of who owns it — the player or the institution — is unresolved and consequential.

But notice what Ahmed’s framing does. It positions data access as equivalent to self-knowledge. To understand your own performance and health is, in this frame, to have access to your metrics.

This is the central assumption of the quantified self-movement, and it deserves more scrutiny than it typically receives. Data about your body is not the same as knowledge of your body. A recovery score is not the same as genuine self-awareness. And the conflation of the two — the idea that more data means better self-understanding — is something I watch cause real harm in the high performers I work with.

When Ahmed says athletes have a right to understand themselves, I agree. When he implies that right is primarily fulfilled through a wristband, I want to push back.

 

The Marketing Genius Is Also the Confession

There is something revealing about the underwear gambit that I don’t think was intentional.

When Ahmed said it would “take a strip search” to keep WHOOP off the court, he was making a joke. But he was also, unintentionally, describing his product’s relationship with its users. WHOOP is designed to be worn 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without removal. It charges on your wrist. The entire value proposition is continuity — the data is only meaningful if there are no gaps.

Now consider what that means psychologically for someone who has worn this device continuously for months or years. The prospect of removing it — even for a few hours, even for a tennis match — feels like a genuine disruption. Not just to the data stream. To the self.

One fan’s comment captured this perfectly: “To be forced to take off my WHOOP and miss logging my strain for even one day… I would be absolutely devastated.”

Ahmed retweeted this. With apparent approval.

I understand why. It is a powerful testimonial. It demonstrates emotional resonance with the brand. But as a clinician, I read it differently. A person who would be “absolutely devastated” to miss one day of strain logging has a relationship with this device that has moved beyond utility. What clinicians might recognize here is something close to performance identity fusion — the state in which a person’s sense of self becomes so entangled with their performance metrics that disruption to the measurement system registers as a genuine threat to identity rather than a mere inconvenience. The device has become load bearing in a way that is worth examining.

WHOOP’s entire business model depends on exactly this kind of attachment. The CEO’s genius response to the ban, the rallying of famous ambassadors, the underwear shipment — all of it is designed to deepen and legitimize that attachment. To make the band feel not like a product but like a right. Like a part of you that someone tried to take away.

That is extraordinary marketing. It is also, from a psychological standpoint, worth naming honestly.

 

What the Performance Culture Built

Ahmed did not invent the quantified self. He is a smart entrepreneur who recognized a deep cultural anxiety and built an elegant product to address it.

The anxiety is real. High performers — athletes, executives, founders — live under enormous pressure to optimize. To leave no variable unexamined. To find every edge. In this environment, a device that translates the mysterious interior of your own body into clean, actionable numbers feels like a gift. Finally: certainty. Finally: control.

What I see clinically is that the certainty is often illusory and the control is often partial. The person checking their readiness score at 6am is not necessarily more prepared to perform well that day. They are more prepared to feel that they have done something toward performance. The anxiety has been managed. The score has been checked. The ritual has been completed.

This is not nothing. Anxiety management is real and the ritual has value. But it is not the same as the thing it represents. And when the ritual becomes indispensable — when the absence of the score produces genuine distress — something has shifted that is worth paying attention to.

Ahmed’s framing of athlete rights is compelling precisely because it speaks to something true: high performers do feel a deep, sometimes desperate need to understand themselves. What I would gently offer is that the most important form of that self-understanding is the one that cannot be taken away by a chair umpire.

Alcaraz beat Tommy Paul without his band. He already knew how to do that.

The data is useful. You are more useful. That distinction matters.

 

The Quiet Tension Journal Prompt

This is where it becomes yours.

Find a quiet moment, open your notebook, and write what comes.

Performance culture tells us more information means better decisions. But is there a number or metric in your life that has stopped feeling like a tool and started feeling like a verdict? What is it actually measuring — and what question underneath it are you really trying to answer?

 

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Sharon Chirban, PhD is a clinical psychologist and executive coach with thirty years of
experience, including former roles at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's
Hospital. She works with high performers of every kind — founders, executives,
athletes, and individuals navigating eating disorders — helping them understand not
just how to perform, but what their performance is costing them, protecting them from,
and trying to say. She sees clients at Amplify Wellness + Performance.