Is ZoneSense intelligent across different activity types?
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I’ve been using my Suunto with ZoneSense and I’m wondering how smart it actually is when it comes to interpreting different types of activities. Does it make sense to record all activities with ZoneSense enabled — like yoga, swimming, strength training, etc. — or is it better to limit it to endurance sports like running and cycling?
In other words: does recording a wide range of activities improve how well ZoneSense works for running and biking over time? Or could it confuse the system?
Would love to hear how others are using it and what your experience has been!
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@m.-h. you’re never going to get to LT1 in yoga, strength training etc, so I don’t think it matters. Apparently it works well for swimming.
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I had my chest strap on for a twenty minute kickboxing session today. I didn’t think I had ZoneSense enabled for this activity type but it gave results in the Suunto app after the session.
My heart rate range for this session was 90-133bpm, average 115bpm. ZoneSense measured my Aerobic threshold as 120bpm which is normally 144bpm. For a running workout from yesterday, ZoneSense did not make a recommendation to change that 144bpm setting.
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@raven there is no need to enable ZoneSense if you don’t want to see the data in realtime. If you use a chest HR monitor, the app computes the ZoneSense data after the activity.
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@isazi said in Is ZoneSense intelligent across different activity types?:
@raven there is no need to enable ZoneSense if you don’t want to see the data in realtime. If you use a chest HR monitor, the app computes the ZoneSense data after the activity.
Right, I figured that out once I noticed the data in the app. I suppose a question about all of this is whether there’s any negative consequences for using the chest strap for yoga, etc. where the expectation is that heart rate will not elevate much. As I noted in my other reply, for the kickboxing session ZoneSense made a suggestion that my first threshold was far lower than it should be. Is there a history of session accumulating such that, over time it will start messing with my running and cycling sessions where I am using ZoneSense in real time?
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@raven each sport should have its own thresholds, I guess what’s confusing is the mix of ZoneSense and traditional thresholds that unfortunately Suunto could not avoid because people have been using HR thresholds for decades now.
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@isazi said in Is ZoneSense intelligent across different activity types?:
@raven each sport should have its own thresholds, I guess what’s confusing is the mix of ZoneSense and traditional thresholds that unfortunately Suunto could not avoid because people have been using HR thresholds for decades now.
Ok, good to know there’s no harm to the algorithms if one wears the strap all the time; thanks!
Also, in yesterday’s sessions, I did several things back to back. After that kickboxing session, I did some weight training, leaving the strap on. What’s interesting about this is that ZoneSense took another ten minutes to start up; the session was only about fifteen minutes so not much data there for ZS, but my question is more on back-to-back activities in general.
I don’t have a source at the moment — perhaps it is the larger ZS thread in this forum — but I was under the impression if one wanted to, for example do a 5km running race effort, then one could do a ten minute warmup as a separate session to get ZoneSense started, then end that session and start the main workout. That is, two sessions overall: one at ten minutes staying z2 and under, then do the 5km run. I have not tried this yet.
Either that’s not right at all, and ZS needs ten minutes calibration for every session, regardless of the time of last session, or it only works if the two back-to-back sessions are the same modality, or I’ve discovered a bug and ZS should have been on for the entirety of my strength workout that followed my kickboxing yesterday.
Any thoughts on this situation?
