Suunto ZoneSense
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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.
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@Dareo The entire idea behind ZS is that your zones will differ depending on fatigue, heat, altitude, etc. Basically, zones are not and should not be fixed. As your fitness improves your zones will change and vice versa. With ZS you don’t need HR zones anymore. I pretty much don’t pay attention to mine but I was already running by RPE anyway.
You can reset your zones, your HR max is likely off and your settings of your zones clearly are off too. You can simply ignore them and use ZS or worry about where your zones would be.
I am ignoring my zones…
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@Dareo Basically what @Brad_Olwin said
But if you still like/use the more mature integration of HR zones into the watch for things like zone alerts, the zone display etc. then yes, you are doing it right by taking a few ZS suggested aerobic HR values to find a sensible median. Use this for your Z2/Z3 and then adjust in future if needed but remember ZS is going to give you better on-the-day threshold info. Maybe use the ZS app for threshold runs or progression runs and for races but HR zones for easy runs - whatever works for you Regarding your max HR I’d suggest maybe doing a ramp test. This will likely give you a higher max HR plus ZS will likely give you an accurate Z4/Z5 (LT2) threshold recommendation. I’m not sure 200m sprints will give your heart rate time to actually hit a max.
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@Brad_Olwin @far-blue Thanks for the input guys. FYI - I don’t race. I hit the road / trail / hills 3 - 4 times a week because it makes me feel good and, as a 63 year old retired veteran, I still have the mindset that my body needs to be prepared for whatever life throws at it. Thus my interest in getting a better understanding of my HR and threshold limits to know how much I can reasonably push myself and reduce the risk of over-training.
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@Dareo said in Suunto ZoneSense:
@Brad_Olwin @far-blue Thanks for the input guys. FYI - I don’t race. I hit the road / trail / hills 3 - 4 times a week because it makes me feel good and, as a 63 year old retired veteran, I still have the mindset that my body needs to be prepared for whatever life throws at it. Thus my interest in getting a better understanding of my HR and threshold limits to know how much I can reasonably push myself and reduce the risk of over-training.
Excellent! I am older than you so keenly aware of overtraining. Using ZS you could plan for 70-80% of your efforts to be aerobic to very low anaerobic using ZS and 15% anaerobic, occasionally doing something hard in VO2M range.
As @far-blue stated, a ramp test or Cooper test will give you a good LT estimate and your ZS data a good estimate of AT.
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@gone-troppo have you managed to get Zonesense results on the app …I’m having the same trouble
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@FCDsh Any news about Rays results? I found nothing on his or the correraunmarathon webpage. Your info is from social media?
Race S
Ambit3 Vertical -
Is there any chance, we can get ZS on Karoo bike computer?
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@VoiGAS Not yet. Ray posted the photos on Instragram at the beginning of his ZoneSense test phase. Normally it takes a few weeks between extensive testing and publication of the results on dcrainmaker.com - so it’s quite possible that we won’t see anything here until December / January. Patience is required here - although I have to admit that the curiosity about the results is quite high!
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App was updated yesterday. Can anyone spot any changes?
9PP since 09-2025.
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@jussim it can now be used at same time with S+ climb, both were updated. Sounds like it’s mostly optimizations I’d guess.
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@jussim said in Suunto ZoneSense:
App was updated yesterday. Can anyone spot any changes?
You mean Android App, doesn´t it?
Suunto 9 Peak Pro (all black version)
