Suunto ZoneSense
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Interesting read from Marco Altini’s blog:
https://marcoaltini.substack.com/p/q-and-a-what-are-your-current-thoughts
S9PP
S5 (donated to my wife) -
@Francesco-Pagano Oh, thanks so much for this article. I use Marco’s app but I haven’t noticed this opinion.
Well that could explain why in my personal case the ZoneSense is probably useless (or there could be possibly other reasons of course). I have a hard time trying to interpret results.
For me all the thresholds computed by the ZoneSense are way too low (sometimes even comically, like 30 beats under the lab measurement - measured with the H10 belt).
For example I spent 40 minutes around 165bpm and I get a LT 152 or something like that. That’s not possible I suppose:)
Even knowing that zones are shifting from day to day I am not sure how to work with it or what to take from it. There were a few times when it showed something that could make sense to me but… it’s not reliable for me to use it in a real time to guide my effort.
And I also wonder about the names of the zones… Why is the second zone called ANaerobic (without oxygen) and another zone called VO2max (like maximum oxygen uptake)? Wouldn’t it be better to call the zone moderate, or tempo, or threshold… I don’t know. It would make more sense to me
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@Francesco-Pagano Curious to hear @Brad_Olwin’s thoughts on that article. For me, ZoneSense has been a game changer. I’m 50 years old, and it’s helped me a lot with RPE, controlling my training, and avoiding overtraining. I can say that I’m training more intelligently and have seen a real boost in my fitness.
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@iterumtenta The article doesn’t say it doesn’t work. It just explains that it can’t work for everyone—like most things in sports physiology. Those static thresholds are likely based on some standard distribution, so it could work for the majority of users. However, for some individuals, it would need to be adjusted to better reflect their unique physiological characteristics.
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@Zdeněk-Hruška Thanks for the precision! I’m pretty new to this world, and ZS been invaluable for me.
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@iterumtenta Glad to read that you’re having great results with ZoneSense. So far I found it quite useful, too.
When it was launched I was just starting a base-building period within my running training. I chose to follow it blindly and see what it does. I had to adjust a little, making my easy runs even easier, and so far I have never reached a stressed, over-trained state despite of the high volume. Could I push a little bit more to increase my aerobic capacities? This I will never know.What the article points out is that for most individuals, DDFA is not a reliable enough indicator of metabolic thresholds, and that was written by someone who had previously sponsored those metrics to the point of building his own app for DFA analysis. This means that people like me will probably never get an estimate of LT1 and LT2 thresholds from ZoneSense (so far I got aerobic threshold - when it’s reported! - ranging from 129 to 149, really??)
As I said, I enjoyed using it for aerobic capacity training so far, though I would probably know myself how not to push too hard. When I start adding intensity training in two weeks, I will find out more. -
@Francesco-Pagano Just regarding the calculated thresholds - you should treat them like you would the trimp, epoc, vo2max etc for a run in that they are for that run. As the app says, if that run felt “normal” then the threshold suggestions can be used as an indication of your “normal” thresholds for setting HR zones but ZS is expected to fluctuate with stressors such as fatigue, illness, work/life stresses etc. on a daily basis.
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Yesterday I had a strange issue with my zonesense: the timer of the 3 zones was regolarly running, but the earth rate indicator has been green for 2 hours without moving.
This was really annoying because it was difficult to find if I was in aerobic/anerobic/vo2max zone.
Anyone has experienced that before? -
@gliuk have you had target zone (HR/pace/power) set? I had similar issues when tried to use the two features together.
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Ray (DC Rainmaker) is currently testing Zone Sense - I’m really looking forward to the results
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Apologies is these questions have been answered already, but with nearly 500 posts in this thread it’s hard to find.
In the following screenshot you can see that zonesense has determined the aerobic threshold for the session to be 138 bpm versus the 122 that corresponds to 70% of my Max HR (173).
[Max HR was determined not by a lab test or any formula, but rather by a 20 minute warm-up run, picking up the intensity for about 5 minutes followed by three 200m sprints with 400m recovery between each sprint, 173 bpm being the highest I was able to achieve on the last 2 sprints.]
I now have 14 sessions similar to this (same sport, similar duration and perceived intensity), and 138 bpm is the median measurement for this group of sessions with variability being just under 2 standard deviations.
With that in mind, would it be advisable to reset my zones so that zone 3 starts at 138 which is only 1 bpm below 80% of my Max HR? How does that affect setting the limits for the other zones? In only 1 of those 14 sessions did zonesense provide a different anaerobic threshold from what I have set at 90% of max (156 bpm) and it was 162, so not as much difference when compared with the set vs. measured aerobic threshold.
One more question. Since zonesense doesn’t start providing data until 10 minutes into the exercise, and threshold calculations are only performed during the first 60 minutes, what is the actual starting point of that 60 minute window? Is it 60 minutes from the start of the exercise, or is it 60 minutes from when zonesense started registering data (70 minutes from the start of the exercise)?
BTW, I’m using an S9PP with Polar H10 (in case that info is relevant).
Any feedback / suggestions / advice will be greatly appreciated.
