Get a detailed overview of your training in Suunto app’s new Training Zone! A progressive training load with adequate recovery and ways to follow progress will lead to a successful adventure or race. Suunto is your daily companion to enhance your performance. The new training toolset in Suunto app’s Training zone is vast. Read on and learn what’s available. We are sure you will find your new favorite dataset to analyze your training and follow your progress. To ensure you have the latest Suunto app version update your iOS app in App Store and Android app in Google Play.   Four new ways to look at your training Am I training smartly? Is my training load progressive? Do I have the right intensity mix? What type of impact do my workouts have?   Training load The training load theme in Suunto app’s Training zone gives you a good overview of this week’s training load compared to a six-week average. You will also see the daily training load split and the split by activity type. All of this will help you understand your overall physiological load and how much more you can – and should – still do this week. The value of following your physical load weekly with comparisons to your long-term baseline is that you can look at this as a goal for the week. To gain some fitness, you might want to slightly increase the load for the week. To ensure recovery, keep the load level lower than your average. Training intensity Are you really doing both easy base training and higher intensity? Or is your training piling up in a single intensity zone, like tempo work in zone 3? The new Training intensity theme in Suunto app will help you understand your training better as you will see both the weekly intensity distribution and the six-week averages. The workout intensity totals can be viewed as heart rate, pace, running power, and cycling power zones. You can set your sport-specific training zones in your Suunto watch based on heart rate, pace and power. Suunto is following a five-zone model where your anaerobic threshold is at zone 4 /5 limit. You can find your correct training zones with a lab or a field test. SuuntoPlus Sports apps like the Anaerobic threshold test and the Functional threshold power test will guide you through a field test session.     Learn more about intensity zones. Training volume The sports you have done during the week are shown with duration, distance, load, and ascent. Sports are also grouped to give an overview of each type of sport i.e. running includes running, treadmill, and trail running. Volume is compared with your six-week average. As you follow your training volume, you can now easily ensure that you meet the numbers for your key sports any given week: It might be that as a trail runner, you want to get 3000 meters of ascent each week, or as a cyclist, ride 200 kilometers weekly. Your six-week average will help you match your personal benchmark. Training impact Suunto app’s Training impact is a new tool that helps you understand your training model and the physiological systems you are targeting. This will help you understand if you are doing what you were planning to do – and if you are missing something in your training. Training impacts are defined as cardio and muscular impacts. Each workout gets assigned an impact such as “Aerobic” or “Speed & Agility”. Cardio impacts are based on workouts intensity, load, and duration. Muscle impacts are based on activity type. The training model is identified based on your workout intensity distribution such as Polarized (most activities on low and high intensities, less in the middle), Sweet spot (training mainly between aerobic and anaerobic thresholds), and Base training (most workouts are in zones 1&2).   In addition to the current week, you will see the six-week average for your training impact. As with other training insights, the impacts are illustrated with long-term reference. If your normal training week has two aerobic sessions, one VO2 max session and two strength sessions, and on Friday you are still missing those aerobic sessions, you know what to focus on during the weekend. This will help you check all the boxes. Training impact is currently available on Suunto app for Android. Coming soon to iOS as well!        Lead image by Roger Salanova   READ MORE Get feedback from the Suunto coach Test your fitness with Suunto Plan your interval workouts with Suunto app Unlock your interval training and watch your running improve

How are you feeling? The mood value tracked with a Suunto watch after exercise reveals some interesting facts about Suunto community. Feeling is an excellent metric for recovery. If your feelings after exercise start to trend downwards, something is not right. You may be pushing too hard, not recovering well enough or might be getting sick. Consider taking a break or doing something different for a change. But in addition to helping you track your recovery, feeling data reveals more. Here are six interesting findings about Suunto community, based on the data from Suunto app database. 1. Activity type does matter: The best feelings on average are recorded after dancing, downhill skiing, horseback riding, badminton and snowboarding. 2. Two activity types stand out as exceptionally poor: The feelings after running and trail running are clearly below other activity types. 3. Weather does not have a big impact on the feeling – unless it is a torrential downpour: The activity type, for example choosing cycling over running, has a much bigger impact. 4. Gender makes a difference: Women have more (or at least as much) fun as men in all other activity types except soccer. 5. Age does not matter: The age of the athlete did not have a correlation with the mood after exercise. 6. Country heavily impacts the mood: People exercising in Austria, China, Croatia, Poland and Serbia are generally feeling exceptionally well after a training session, while France, Italy, Japan, Spain and Sweden are in the opposite end of the list with much poorer feelings after working out. In addition to fun facts, the data also reveals interesting trends: As an example, the feeling in cycling, swimming and walking rose to a new, higher level in March 2020 and has stayed on that higher level. Changes in other activity types since Covid pandemic started have not been as clear. Happy adventures – and keep on tracking your activity feelings for your own wellbeing and our shared interest!   Lead image: Harald Wisthaler Bikewash image: Anthony Bonello

Understanding how your energy is produced can aid training and improve your quality of life. Suunto partner PerfectPace explains your main power sources. The human body has two main energy systems it gets its power from; the aerobic and the anaerobic system. Most of us have heard these terms, but how many of us really understand how they work? All human cells use ATP to generate power. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), is an energy-carrying molecule found in the cells of all living things. ATP captures chemical energy obtained from the breakdown of food molecules and releases it to fuel other cellular processes. Phosphate, carbohydrate and fat are transformed into ATP which happens at different speeds.   Photo by Jonathan Chng on Unsplash   The anaerobic alactic system No oxygen and no lactate. Sounds like this energy source is not very sustainable? Correct! The body has ATP reserves for about 7 seconds. During that short time it is possible to perform at your max power. Your body does not need to transform carbs or fats into ATP which takes time, but can directly access your ATP and phosphate storage. Afterwards the power output drops significantly. Purposed for fast and powerful movements, the anaerobic alactic energy system is the essential power source for sprinters and weightlifters.     Photo by Victoire Joncheray on Unsplash   The anaerobic lactic system Above lactate threshold No oxygen, but lactate instead. During the final dash when you are out of breath, your legs burn, and you need to give all you got, your body is operating above lactate threshold. Purposed for intense activity, the energy source of this system – also called the anaerobic glycolytic system – is glycogen and lactate. Because of the lack of oxygen, metabolising fat isn’t really possible. But the body burns carbohydrates even without oxygen. This creates large quantities of lactate which make it impossible to perform for more than one to two minutes at this level. Lactate threshold means reaching the level of intensity where the body starts to create more lactate than it is able to metabolize. Below lactate threshold In this case, there is some oxygen in the body and the lactate can be broken down faster than it is created. A typical example of this might be a 10 km run. During those 30 to 60 minutes carbohydrate is the main energy source. The way ATP is created is the same as above lactate threshold. The difference is the lactate is being produced at a rate where it can still be broken down.     Photo by Jozsef Hocza on Unsplash   The aerobic energy system This is the main power source for endurance athletes. Why? The aerobic system utilizes carbohydrates, fats and sometimes proteins to generate energy. Aerobic exercise can be sustained for longer periods of time. At this level, our carbohydrate store lasts for about 90 minutes. After that point the only energy source is fat. Even the leanest athlete has almost unlimited fat resources, but transforming fat into ATP is relatively slow. For endurance athletes it is very important to improve performance in the aerobic zone.   One system While we can conceptually separate the three systems, it’s important to understand that our body’s cells use all energy sources at all times. What changes is the share each fuel source has on the total energy production. Even at rest the anaerobic lactic system, for example, is working at a low level.   PerfectPace is the endurance training platform for triathletes that takes you a step ahead. For a steady performance gain you had to know a lot about training methodology to plan your training sessions. Especially in a sport like triathlon where three sports need to be planned correctly. This is where PerfectPace steps in. It offers not only unique statistics that up to now were only available in expensive desktop applications but it also helps to create a plan that boosts your performance with the help of artificial intelligence, big data and the latest advances in training science. PerfectPace considers not only your training activities but also rest days, tapering, even injury and your personal strengths and weaknesses.      Lead images: Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash   Read more articles Don't get sucked in the black hole Know your resting and max heart rates  

Keeping track of your heart rate is vital for endurance athletes. In this article Suunto partner PerfectPace explains the ins and outs.  Knowing your max heart rate is an important guide for athletes. It gives you a roof for your training and indicates the level of intensity. On the other hand, one of the first signs of overtraining syndrome is an elevated resting heart rate. For endurance athletes doing high volume training this is essential to watch out for. Identifying your maximum and resting heart rate is vital for the calculation of training zones. Particularly for endurance training these numbers are very important and they are not hard to come to. But there are a few things to consider.   Source: Age-predicted maximal heart rate in healthy subjects: The HUNT Fitness Study   How to find your maximum heart rate You have probably heard of the formula 220 minus age to get your maximum heart rate. Some say that this formula is not too exact but all in all the results are ok. Unfortunately that is not the case. In most cases the result is way off. A Norwegian study on more than 3300 healthy women and men has tested their maximum heart rate. The graphic below shows the result. What we can see is that the average values for the whole population is on a straight line. But for most individuals their maximum heart rate is far from that line. The conclusion is that the formula works for the average global population but not for an individual. When looking at the graph it is also evident that no formula can calculate the individual maximum heart rate. The results are just too scattered. The only way to get to your max HR is via a test.   How to test your maximum heart rate The maximum heart rate should be tested in your sport. Runners should run and swimmers swim. Triathletes should do a run test. The heart rate is the highest in running of all three sports.A max HR test is VERY demanding. You need to go to your limit and that will hurt.   A typical test for runners looks like this: Warm up for at least 10 minutes. Now increase your tempo for 5 minutes until you get out of breath. This is the time to start a one minute spurt. It will hurt but you need to max out. Depending on your ability to push yourself you’ll get close to your maximum heart rate.     How to find your resting heart rate Like for the maximum heart rate there is no formula to calculate your resting heart rate. The resting heart rate is even more individual than the maximum heart rate. Some sport watches can measure your pulse while sleeping. In the morning you will have your resting heart rate. If you don’t have such a device you can simply measure your heart rate right after you woke up. Untrained have a resting heart rate between 60-80 bpm. Endurance athletes might have only 35 bpm. The reason for such differences are adaptations to the cardiovascular system. The heart gets stronger and more efficient when under high load but also when resting.   Changes of the maximum and resting heart rate The heart rate changes during your lifetime. Simply by getting older. A new born baby has a resting heart rate of 130-140 and it drops with every year. This is the reason why the formula 220 minus age came up. But there are a lot more factors than just age that influence your heart rate all the time. Therefore you should test again from time to time to make sure your training zones match your physiology. But there are also short term changes in your heart rate. You won’t be able to reach your max heart rate every day. Also the resting HR is changing from day to day up to 15 beats per minute. reasons can be a cold or over training. By checking your resting heart rate regularly you can spot abnormal stress levels early and adapt your training.   PerfectPace is the endurance training platform for triathletes that takes you a step ahead. For a steady performance gain you had to know a lot about training methodology to plan your training sessions. Especially in a sport like triathlon where three sports need to be planned correctly. This is where PerfectPace steps in. It offers not only unique statistics that up to now were only available in expensive desktop applications but it also helps to create a plan that boosts your performance with the help of artificial intelligence, big data and the latest advances in training science. PerfectPace considers not only your training activities but also rest days, tapering, even injury and your personal strengths and weaknesses.       Lead images: Photo by Brian Erickson on Unsplash © Kevin Scott Batchelor     Read more articles 10 reasons to enjoy open water swimming with Suunto Blaze fresh routes The benefits of training to music and making your best playlist  

Looking for workout motivation? Adidas Running just made it easy. As a salute to all the frontline community heroes who have kept services running throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Adidas Running has launched a donation relay to support relief efforts. From May 29 - June 7, for every hour you exercise, regardless of sport, Adidas Running is giving $1USD to the WHO COVID-19 Solidarity Response fund. The goal of the #HomeTeamHero challenge is to inspire one million workout hours, raising one million US dollars! All you need to do is connect your Suunto app and Adidas Running accounts, join the challenge, record your next workout with your Suunto watch and, boom, your activity is automatically synced with your Adidas Running account and your time and sweat will support the WHO’s COVID-19 relief efforts. Who needs more motivation than that?   Join the #HomeTeamHero donation relay!     All the latest Suunto watches – the 3, 5, 7 and 9 – are now compatible with the Adidas Running app (formerly called Runtastic). Adidas Running is a passionate community, and offers regular challenges, tips on how to train and tools to follow your training and progress. There is both a free version of the app, and a premium membership with extra benefits.   To sync with Adidas Running, go to your Profile in Suunto App and select Connect to other services. Select Adidas Running and connect your account. All your new workouts will then automatically flow to Adidas Running.    To show the endurance power of Suunto users and to represent, you can also join the Suunto group in the Adidas Running app. Let’s show them how we do it!     All images: © Thomas Marzusch, Kreativ-Instinkt   Read more articles Blaze fresh routes with Suunto Heatmaps The benefits of training to music and making your best playlist How to adapt your training when the unexpected strikes How to improve your walking technique

Stay safe and find the routes less travelled with Suunto Heatmaps. Rather than follow the herd, with Suunto Heatmaps you can find places where the crowd doesn't train. Then paint the town red and yellow with your own training glow. Whether you're looking for running, cycling, swimming or hiking routes, Heatmaps shows where the hotspots are, and where there's space for you to stay safe and keep your distance.       View Heatmaps on Suunto app and offline with Suunto 7 Based on millions of workouts, Heatmaps show where the Suunto community loves to train across the planet.  Discover new training routes in your own neighborhood, find the popular local spots when you are somewhere new or – to stay safe and keep your distance – avoid the much-travelled trails.      To view activity specific Heatmaps and to plan routes go to the map view of your Suunto app and select the desired Heatmap layer. If you don’t have Suunto app yet, get it from the App Store or Google Play and start exploring.       On a Suunto 7 you have easy, offline access to both Heatmaps and detailed terrain maps when you're exercising outdoors. You can see your track on the map, use Heatmaps to explore new routes, or follow your track back to where you started from.