What Elite Performers Get Right: Sports Scientist Kristen Holmes on Sleep, Recovery, and the Psychology of Greatness

THE RUNNING EFFECT PODCAST

Dominic Schlueter

Sports, Running

4.9 • 821 Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kristen Holmes has worn every hat in the world of performance, including athlete, coach, scientist, and innovator.

Today, she’s setting the standard at WHOOP.

At the University of Iowa, she was a two-time First-Team All-American, the 1996 Big Ten MVP, and even pulled double duty on the women’s basketball team. From there, she rose to the U.S. National Field Hockey Team, earning a spot as an Olympic alternate in 1996 and competing in the 1998 World Cup.

When her playing days concluded, Kristen turned her competitive fire into coaching. From 2003 to 2015, she led Princeton University’s field hockey program to a staggering 12 Ivy League titles, 11 NCAA tournament appearances, and the crown jewel of them all, first NCAA field hockey championship by an Ivy League team, in 2012.

Then, in 2016, she joined WHOOP, where she’s now the Global Head of Human Performance and Principal Scientist. With a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Queensland, she’s helping athletes, executives, and everyday performers unlock their best through the science of recovery, sleep, and HRV.

In just the past few months, Kristen helped launch Project FASTT, a groundbreaking collaboration to close the research gap on female athletes. She’s sharing her knowledge on the WHOOP Podcast and Science & Soul.

Tap into the Kristen Holmes Special.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	And it's true. I mean, if you are sleep deprived, you are cognitively drunk. So they're,
0:04.7	you know, he's not even exaggerating. If you pull an all-nighter, for example, and then you get on the
0:08.8	road, you can't even perceive how compromised you are cognitively. That was Dr. Kristen Holmes
0:19.0	today on the running effect podcast, back on the podcast.
0:21.7	And guys, I want to start out by saying this.
0:23.8	Out of any episode I've done in the past few months, if you listen to any, it is this one.
0:27.9	Stick to the end.
0:29.4	You will learn things that you can directly apply into your running and into your life
0:33.2	that will deeply impact you and leave you away with tangible tools that you can apply directly
0:38.6	into your life, into your running, that will make you a better runner, a better person as a result.
0:43.4	And that is my deep desire with this platform is to do those two things.
0:47.0	And there's no better guest who articulates the things that need to be done, who breaks down science,
0:52.5	who breaks down philosophy, who breaks down psychology, like Dr. Holm. She's remarkable. If you don't know her, she's the global
0:58.6	head of human performance and principal scientist at Woop with a PhD in psychology from the
1:03.3	University of Queensland. She's helping athletes, executives, and everyday performers
1:07.2	unlock their best through the science of recovery, sleep, HRV, and a whole plethora
1:11.7	of different things.
1:12.8	I'll keep this intro short for the simple purpose being I want you to hear Dr. Holmes
1:16.4	and her wisdom way better than anything I'd say in this intro.
1:19.6	But if you're deeply impacted by this conversation, shoot me a DM, shoot me an email.
1:23.8	I want to see your thoughts from this.
1:25.1	I'd deeply appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with me on this. Give us a five-star review. It takes three seconds. Hit the follow
	...

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