The strain of performing both mentally and physically at the highest athletic level can really place massive stress on a person. Even someone like Patrick Mahomes, who always seems cool, calm, and collected, is not immune to those intense pressures. But, when Mahomes gets stressed during a football game is just another piece of evidence proving that he is a stone-cold killer.
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Will Ahmed, the founder of WHOOP, a wearable tech company that supplies human performance tracking technology to all NFL teams, says that NFL players experience strain on their bodies and minds like perhaps no other athletes. Mahomes, for example, exhibits more strain than a marathon runner during playoff games.
Ahmed noted that Mahomes’ strain score during a playoff game is 20.5, while marathon runners typically reach scores up to 20.2. To put it in perspective, the strain score scale maxes out at 21. Ahmed emphasized that moving up on this scale becomes increasingly difficult, even by just 0.1 points.
“[Patrick Mahomes’] playoff games are at a 20.5. I was asked about the strain score recently, but for people who aren’t familiar, 20.5 is extremely high, the scale is out of 21. It gets increasingly hard to go up. When people on WHOOP run marathons, just as a data point, it tends to be a 20.0, 20.2. So the fact that he’s putting the equivalent of more than a marathon on his body is pretty fascinating, I think,” Ahmed said on the Whoop podcast.
WHOOP’s technology allows teams to track the health of their players through various metrics, such as “strain, recovery, and sleep”. They are able to do this through data points such as “resting heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, and sleep staging”. They are able to accomplish this via the WHOOP Strap 4.0, which players wear on their chests under their pads throughout games and practices.
Interestingly, Mahomes’ stress levels spike at times you might least expect—before the play when there’s no action, and when he doesn’t have the ball. Clearly, not having control or the ability to influence the game is what stresses out a confident star like Mahomes the most.
“His body’s definitely activated during stressful moments that he’s actually not on the field. Because I think he’s calculating a lot. And there’s a little bit of not being in control, which in turn can also contribute to stress.”
The NFL and NFLPA have been partnering with WHOOP since at least 2020. Ahmed noted a particularly stressful playoff game for Mahomes against the Buffalo Bills from a few years ago. I’m sure we can all guess which one that is. 13 seconds, ring any bells?
“I remember when they beat the Bills in a prior AFC Championship Game [it was actually the 2021 Divisional round], you know that crazy game where it was back-and-forth, back-and-forth right at the end. We saw that his heart rate actually got lower a few times when he went back on the field, versus when he was watching Josh Allen and the Bills come down.”
No doubt Patrick Mahomes will once again experience marathon-level strain on his mind and body when kickoff comes for Super Bowl 59 on Sunday. He’ll just need to manage that strain the same way he has for the past few years. If he does, the results should be the same: another Super Bowl championship.
