Suunto Vertical - SA App vs TrainingPeaks - hrTSS Does Not Match
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This has been driving me crazy - I’ve read through a number of other posts here and thought they were leading to a fix. But each one I try has not worked out. Hopefully I’m just missing something, but I cannot get my hrTSS to calculate consistently.
For reference, my TrainingPeaks ‘Threshold Heart Rate’ is: 165 bpm. (Max Heart Rate is 185 bpm and Resting Heart Rate is 45 bpm, but my understanding is these aren’t used in the calculation.)
On my Suunto Vertical, the ‘Intensity Zones’ are setup as follows:
Z5: 165-185
Z4: 155-165
Z3: 145-155
Z2: 135-145
Z1: up to 135No ‘Advanced Zones’ are enabled. (Though I did change the ‘Advanced Zones’ for ‘Run’ to match the defaults - just to check - before re-disabling.)
So… what am I missing here? The Suunto app is significantly overstating the hrTSS. (69 versus 54, etc.)
Any assistance is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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@TheMountainRabbit Set your power and pace zones as well as HR so that they match TrainingPeaks
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@TheMountainRabbit For me is the other way around, the hrTSS matched but the rTSS never matched.
I’ve double checked the settings between the watch and TPs multiple times, both pace and HR. There is no reason for such difference.
Never got any proper explanation here and, and by the lack of other comments, I thought it is a “me” problem.
So, I stoped caring about it.TBH, I’m considering TP my “Source of Truth” so I don’t care want the Suunto App says anymore.
At the end of the day, it’s just a number. The important stuff is the training and the effort you put in it. -
@Brad_Olwin I don’t use ‘Power’, but I do have my ‘Pace’ zones set up to match as well.
When I look at the Suunto app, it doesn’t look like my zones (from the watch) are reflected. I’ve seen others say that’s just an app issue though and doesn’t affect the hrTSS calculation in their case(s).
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@TheMountainRabbit said in Suunto Vertical - SA App vs TrainingPeaks - hrTSS Does Not Match:
@Brad_Olwin I don’t use ‘Power’, but I do have my ‘Pace’ zones set up to match as well.
When I look at the Suunto app, it doesn’t look like my zones (from the watch) are reflected. I’ve seen others say that’s just an app issue though and doesn’t affect the hrTSS calculation in their case(s).
Mine nearly perfectly match. The app maybe using power as well so you should ensure that the zones for pace, HR and power match TP. Second in the Suunto app your Z4/5 interface should be LT for HR/Pace/Power.
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@Brad_Olwin - Interesting. I appreciate your insight. Still can’t figure out what is causing the discrepancy.
Updating the ‘Pace’/‘Power’ zones/thresholds to match exactly did not change anything. Same incorrect values. Seems strange that anything besides the ‘Threshold’ values would matter or that ‘Pace’/‘Power’ would affect hrTSS anyway, but it was worth trying.
Your mention that your zones in the Suunto app match your manual entries in the watch make me suspect that might be the root problem - for some reason my app is not updating with the zones (and therefore Z4/Z5 threshold) from my watch. (There isn’t a way to adjust these directly in the app that I’m aware of either.)
Thanks again.
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In the interest of helping anyone else w/ this issue, I think I found the problem.
Good news: it’s pretty minor and easy enough to work around.
Bad news: I don’t think it’s fixable for the time being.The workouts I was looking at previously were for the days just prior to getting my Suunto Vertical and were recorded on a different watch (Suunto Ambit3 Peak). I never really used the Suunto app w/ the Ambit3 Peak, because the integration was very limited - so it still had the default HR zones (whatever they were). It looks like this was transferred to the Suunto app and carried through until I manually changed the zones on my Vertical. It appears these are dated - which makes some sense so as not to change all your workouts retroactively - so only workouts occurring after the manual zone change use the new zones even if the prior workouts are uploaded at a later date. So it looks like future workouts - including mine for today - are calculating just fine and reflecting the correct zones in the Suunto app.
Not a big deal - just annoying. Given how easy it is to make retroactive changes in apps like TrainingPeaks, it’s a bit disappointing that this doesn’t appear to be doable for Suunto data - but the issue seems to be short-lived and fairly minor.
I guess if the watch companies had robust, functional apps, then tools like TrainingPeaks wouldn’t exist in the first place.
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@TheMountainRabbit training zones cannot be set on the Suunto app, only on the watch and they get synced back to app. I get same values for TSShr from TP and SA. The only thing that it’s different from your setup is that I don’t let my HR zones overlap like you do, however if TP is also like that, then it might not be the reason.
e.i. Using your zones:
Etc
Z3: 146-155
Z2: 136-145
Z1: up to 135 -
@TheMountainRabbit that explains it
you have two options, leave all these ambit 3 TSShr as they are, or take a weekend to manually update each workout with values from Trainingpeaks 
I also have an ambit3 that I still use for pool swimming, and still update TSShr after every workout
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@TheMountainRabbit said in Suunto Vertical - SA App vs TrainingPeaks - hrTSS Does Not Match:
In the interest of helping anyone else w/ this issue, I think I found the problem.
Good news: it’s pretty minor and easy enough to work around.
Bad news: I don’t think it’s fixable for the time being.[…]
only workouts occurring after the manual zone change use the new zones even if the prior workouts are uploaded at a later date. So it looks like future workouts - including mine for today - are calculating just fine and reflecting the correct zones in the Suunto app.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert in training theory. But:
I think the current Suunto behaviour makes sense: as your fitness increases, your rest heart rate goes down and your lactate threshold goes up. Then you adjust the zones in the watch because you are fitter now, and from that time onwards the new zones are the correct/valid zones, but during your previous trainings (when you were less fit), the previous zone settings do apply. Summary: zone settings are a moving target and don’t apply retroactively to trainings in the past.
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@Mauerwegler - Totally agree - in most cases. In this case, my zones were not correct originally because of the way my older watch worked w/ the app, but I didn’t use Suunto’s data except to load into TrainingPeaks (where they were correct) so it didn’t matter.
Since I am now using Suunto’s data more I was just hoping there was a way to update like in TrainingPeaks which solves both problems - you can re-calculate old workouts with the ‘new’ zones, but by default ‘new’ zones only apply to future workouts.
But yeah, I’m not concerned going forward - just had to manually edit the hrTSS on my first few workouts, but all good now.