Suunto ZoneSense
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@Theo-Lakerveld There are peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts published on this with much more sophisticated lab testing than you have but you are welcome to test.
Kanniainen et al. - 2023 - Estimation of physiological exercise thresholds based on dynamical correlation properties of heart r.pdf -
@halajos I am getting expected behavior on hills. I only have hills for running:)
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@Brad_Olwin good to know, thanks. I’ll continue experimenting once my MCL injury allows. Do you need to maintain a very stable HR (which often doesn’t happen due to small changes in terrain)?
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@halajos No, my HR changes dramatically depending on the workout. Today will be Tempo uphill so higher HR and fluctuating. I will run the intervals based on RPE, just below my LT, which I can easily determine based on my breathing. On an Endurance run I use ZS to stay in the Aerobic zone and slow down if I enter the Anaerobic (Yellow) Zone no matter my HR, which I am not observing.
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Can someone explain how this can be the case ?
It’s the second time I get those kind of values as if zone 3 and 4 would be essentially one
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@thanasis your Z4 minimum is set manually in the HR zones settings, while the aerobic threshold is measured by ZoneSense. Probably you need to adjust your zones.
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@halajos said in Suunto ZoneSense:
@thanasis your Z4 minimum is set manually in the HR zones settings, while the aerobic threshold is measured by ZoneSense. Probably you need to adjust your zones.
thank you . however i am not sure what should i do considering that the minimum Z3 according to Zonsense is supposed to be higher than the minimum Z4 .
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@thanasis You obviously need to increase zone 4 and zone 5 limits. How confident are you about what you have set as max Hr?
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@thanasis I had much the same last Sunday, and my zone 2/3 boundary is similar to yours.
Usually my aerobic threshold ranges from as low as 120bpm to upper 130s - at no point has it ever gone up to 156bpm, and I wonder if it struggled with the specific workout type I did, which was a gentle warmup, some strides, and then 12x 3:30 with 1:30 breaks.
You can see that it enters the VO2 threshold at around 163bpm repeatedly, and obviously it enters Anaerobic when I’ve already been at a high HR for the previous couple of minutes, hence pegging the aerobic limit as being so high I guess. Food for thought anyway, most likely ZS can’t cope with intervals being so short as per the documentation.
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@thanasis said in Suunto ZoneSense:
@halajos said in Suunto ZoneSense:
@thanasis your Z4 minimum is set manually in the HR zones settings, while the aerobic threshold is measured by ZoneSense. Probably you need to adjust your zones.
thank you . however i am not sure what should i do considering that the minimum Z3 according to Zonsense is supposed to be higher than the minimum Z4 .
I have similar ZS results and our HR zones are very similar too. I am leaving my zones where I feel comfortable with and essentially not worrying about them! They are arbitrary anyway! Even a lab measured LT test is going to vary depending on your fitness, recovery, fatigue and stress the day you are tested. I believe that ZS is giving me an accurate representation of my effort based on 16 years of running ultras. I will likely never adjust my zones again and essentially ignore them.
My interval efforts are based on RPE anyway and now long runs and recovery runs will use ZS. So it doesn’t matter if my LT is 120 bpm one day and 148 on another day. This is the reason to use ZS!
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B Brad_Olwin referenced this topic on 27 Jan 2025, 14:30
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Hi! I bought a race s a week ago, and started working with the zonesense feature. I understand how it works, and that the threasholds are not static. I have a few questionnfor you guys:
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During my easy runs this week, i got a measured aeT of around 130 bpm, which it seems in line with where i thought it might be. On suneay i run my local 10k and despite i can check the zonesense graph, it does not provide any measured aeT. Any explanation for this? I did a 10-12 min warming up before the race in order to get the zonesense calculate threasholds.
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When looking at the graph from the 10k, i can see that the change from green to yellow seems to be somewhere near the 160 bpm, far away from the usual 130. It seems to me that this value has been afected for not being an easy run (despite the previous 12 min warmup? Is it posible?
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In order to have a measurement of the anT, do i need to get to that intensity?
Thank you!
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In my case ZS is absolutely not in time. Always after mainrace in cooldown mode the Display shows value changes between the 3 zones.
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I trust the laboratory test more, which for an amateur is desirable to do once every two years. Lactate is a key parameter in the measurement, our top runners measure it right in training.
In any case, Suunto has a lot of beta testers and time to test this feature
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Hi there! Can you confirm for zonesense to properly work, you first need to put in some (how many?) workouts or minutes (which of both?) at each of the 5 zones? And basically ignore zonesense during this calbration workout(s)? I’m asking as today I was running a 10k (probably my 3 workout with a HR belt and zonesense enabled) and wanted to do it in zone 2, but (almost) regardless of what HR I ran at, the DDFA-index stayed green:
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. On the other hand, it seems that zonesense was able to calculated my aet correctly, still. This is a bit confusing to me. Any help is much appreciated, thanks!
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@Brad_Olwin can you help me with why this happens ?
While the app seems to be running it also shows waiting for data
Also the there is a big difference in the data in the watch ( eg I had some 5-6min the red zone ) while in the app the duration is 0
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@thanasis Yes, this ZoneSense is not really usable yet. Live data does not work. Only after the activity in the app.
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@Sportsfreund I think what is being mentioned here is that some people like @Brad_Olwin are using the real time zonesense instead of HR zones . If the watch and the app are so much different there needs to be an explanation
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@thanasis Who knows. In my case live data does not work. For example, last week I did Cooper test, all the time while running the vertical showed green aerobe, after running in the last minutes off cool down the graph changed into the other zones.
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@Sportsfreund Yes, I have the same behaviour. After washing the belt the quality of the data looks much better, but still the live data just stays green. I ordered a new belt - maybe this helps.
I would also love to hear some long term real life experience with using Zonesense during the run
