Tour de France or amateur?: Whoop data from Pogačar, Van der Poel & Philipsen

Whoop analysed the preparation data for the 2026 Tour de France from Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel and Jasper Philipsen, and compared them with those of more than 15,000 active Whoop members. Data was collected from 1 January to 21 June 2026. A comparison group of more than 2,200 male cyclists aged between 25 and 35 served as a reference. The wear rate for the three professionals was between 96 and 99 per cent.

Cardiovascular fitness of the Tour de France professionals

The resting heart rate of the three cyclists ranged between 38 and 44 beats per minute throughout the entire analysis period. The control group’s resting heart rate was 10 to 17 beats higher. Heart rate variability (HRV) indicates the body’s ability to recover and adapt. Mathieu van der Poel averaged 143 milliseconds, whilst the comparison group of the same age averaged 71 milliseconds. The professionals’ daily strain exceeded that of the ambitious amateur athletes by 25 per cent over the entire season.

Training volume and intensity

Each of the three riders completed more than 200 training sessions on the bike ahead of the Tour de France. They trained nine to ten times a week. Tadej Pogačar clocked up 578 hours on the bike, Mathieu van der Poel 506 hours and Jasper Philipsen 495 hours. In the 30 days leading up to the Tour, the daily training load increased further. For Pogačar and Van der Poel, heart rate variability and resting heart rate both improved during this period. Average sleep duration was shorter during this phase. The athletes maintained a high training intensity right up until the season’s climax.

The three professional athletes slept on average 10 to 30 minutes longer than the control group. What was more important, however, was consistency. All three achieved a Sleep Consistency Score of over 81 per cent. The control group, made up of people of the same age, scored 70 per cent. The data shows that a consistent sleep routine is more important in elite sport than the sheer duration of sleep. So anyone who goes to bed at the same time every night will also benefit when it comes to sport.

Personalised training programmes for the Tour de France

During the analysis period, Tadej Pogačar undertook 30 hot tub sessions, sauna sessions, strength training and ice baths. Mathieu van der Poel trained on a road bike and a mountain bike and also played a lot of golf. Despite their different approaches, all three athletes demonstrate similar cardiovascular fitness as well as a high degree of consistency in their training and sleep patterns. The analysis shows that the path to WorldTour level does not follow a single, uniform training approach. The greatest physiological differences between world-class athletes and amateurs lie in cardiovascular efficiency, recovery capacity and the ability to combine consistently high training loads with a regular sleep routine over a period of months.