Suunto Blog

How to mix it up when you love too many outdoor sports Allround mountain sport athlete Anton Krupicka shares how he strikes a balance with the four sports he loves. ”Embracing a variety of mountain sports has made me a more well-rounded athlete. It’s also extended my running career - there’s no way that I could only run now and stay healthy enough to race and have it be sustainable. That’s the main benefit,” Anton says. Read more   Who’s having the most fun? Feeling is an excellent metric for recovery. If your feelings after exercise start to trend downwards, something is not right. You may be pushing too hard, not recovering well enough or might be getting sick. Consider taking a break or doing something different for a change. But in addition to helping you track your recovery, feeling data reveals more. Here are six interesting findings about Suunto community, based on the data from Suunto app database. Read more   5 reasons why endurance athletes should do high-intensity strength training To improve vertical speed and endurance, high-intensity resistance training should be an essential component of your training plan, says sports scientist, coach and athlete Susi Kraft. She is concerned many endurance athletes, whether trail runners, mountaineers or cyclists, believe they can skip the gym altogether or just do a little bodyweight training and that will suffice. “One of the most common myths in the endurance world is that athletes should avoid lifting heavy weights, as they don’t need that for endurance, or that it will cause them weight gain and may slow them down,” Susi says. “This is just a myth. Actually, HIRT will make you faster, stronger and less prone to injury.” Read more   Allyship in the outdoors: what is it and how to be a good ally for others? Strong allies make for safer, more welcoming outdoor spaces. In this article by Suunto athlete, ultra-runner and diversity champion Ryan Montgomery, he explains allyship and how we can all be good allies in the outdoors. “Not everyone feels welcome, nor safe, in the outdoors. Diverse communities – our queer, LGBT, people of color, and peers with disabilities – often experience limitations that prevent them from getting outdoors. Each of us plays a role in eliminating barriers to outdoor spaces for others; being an ally is what will make outdoor recreation safe and accessible for all people,” writes Ryan. Read more   15 tips for beginners to fall in love with snorkeling Dipping beneath the surface of the ocean opens up an incredible new world. It can expand our minds and bring us closer to our blue planet. With snorkeling, there’s no need for dive training or to carry heavy dive equipment. All you need is a good mask and snorkel, fins, a rash guard, reef-safe sunscreen, basic knowledge, and the new Suunto 9 Peak Pro so you can use the “snorkeling mode”. Read more   And there’s always something to learn! In addition to inspiring and insightful stories, several how to articles were frequently read. Check these out, for example. Living peak adventure – How to navigate with Suunto With a GPS watch from Suunto, a world of adventure is at your fingertips. Learn how to find, create and navigate routes that’ll keep you stoked. Read the five-part article series How to use Karoo 2 bike computer with Suunto Hammerhead Karoo 2 is a Suunto compatible cycling computer that brings advanced navigation features, Suunto heatmaps and intuitive software to your handlebars. But there’s more to it than that! Read more Suunto app goes big On a big screen device like an iPad or an Android tablet you can experience richer texture and detail while planning routes and analyzing your training data. Learn more Track your human powered commutes with Suunto Living a more sustainable life starts with small, everyday choices. And, when done often enough and by enough people, these small changes will add up and start to have an impact. To support you in this, we have added the ability to track your human-powered commutes with Suunto app. Learn more Plan your interval workouts with Suunto app Build a workout in Suunto app and let your watch guide you through your session! This is especially useful with complex sessions, like intervals. Use Suunto app to build the workout step by step from warm-up to cool-down. Learn more

Together, we can inspire and motivate each other to climb higher and reach new heights. So let's lace up our boots, grab our Suunto watch, and get ready to conquer the vertical world! Run, ride, ski, walk, climb – all human-powered activities between February 27 and March 5 count. #verticalweek is also an opportunity for nations to go head to head to see who climbs the most. Since 2016 nations have battled for the top spot, as well as sports, to see who can accumulate the most vertical meters. To participate in Suunto World Vertical Week, open Suunto app and click the Vertical Week card in your inbox (the bell symbol on the top of your screen takes you there). Share your #verticalweek experience and win! Run, hike, walk, ski or ride a quad-busting route and then share the workout from Suunto app as an image with the data overlay in Instagram, tagging @suunto and #verticalweek, and we’ll select three of the most inspiring shares and those users will win a Suunto 9 Peak Pro GPS watch. Click here to learn how to share your activities with Suunto app. Terms and conditions apply. Check them here.    Data from the previous years  Check out which sports and nations have captured the podium places during the past years. Will this year bring changes to the top places? Now is your chance to affect on this year's results by collecting as many vertical meters as possible.   2022 - Summer 2021 - Winter 2021 - 2020 - 2019 - 2018 - 2017 - 2016

Suunto’s annual World Vertical Week has been growing in popularity year after year. Last week, on February 27 – March 5, over 153.000 Suunto users accepted the challenge and set out to gain as many vertical meters as they could. That’s 22% up from last year! Thank you everyone for joining. During the Vertical Week, every human-powered outdoor activity counted towards the results. In the activity type rankings, there weren’t any major changes: ski touring activities had once again the biggest average ascent, followed by mountaineering and trail running. Also, the country rankings follow quite a usual pattern: the two top spots for highest average ascents are owned by Austria and Italy – just like last year. In the third position, we have a new nation, Slovakia. Congrats! Portugal and Colombia are new names in the top 10. Total ascent per country 2023 When looking at the total ascent per country, we can see a new leader: France dethroned Spain and took the top spot. Austria, Italy and Germany round out the top five. France Spain Austria Italy Germany Switzerland US Poland Finland Japan Big – and huge – days are more popular than ever When digging deeper into the data we start to see something interesting: big days out in the mountains and hills are getting more popular. The number of “1000-meter days” has grown by a whopping 75% from last year. During last week’s activation, Suunto community tracked over 12.000 activities that had over 1.000 meters of total ascent. The same trend continues with activities that had over 2.000 meters of ascent: that number increased by 76% to over 2.000 activities. The number of really, really big days – days that had more than 3.500 meters of ascent – doubled from last year! This same trend is visible also when looking at the data from another perspective: 176 participants collected more than 10.000 meters of total ascent during the week. That is twice as much as last year. Impressive! As the days get bigger, the activity types change slightly: The biggest portion, 40%, of 1000-meter days was ski touring while trail running covered 25% of the activities. In the 2000-meter days ski touring and trail running was almost equal at 32% and 30% respectively. A surprise comes with the 3500-meter – or “10000-foot” – days: there suddenly running has the biggest share with 28% of the activities followed by ski touring (22%) and trail running (21%). Some runners have really pushed it last week! Country rankings for different activities Ski touring (avg for all countries 929m) Switzerland 1.033m Austria 1.005m Italy 994m Spain 940m Germany 936m The 1000-meter mark is a clear goal for skiers. Switzerland is in the top spot – just like last year. Mountaineering (avg for all countries 676m) Czech Republic 788m Switzerland 760m Germany 755m Japan 717m Poland 699m Mountaineering has a new winner: The Czech Republic climbed to the top spot for the first time! Trail running (avg for all countries 421m) Japan 852m Portugal 707m Italy 620m South Korea 536m Spain 528m Switzerland 508m Austria 443m Slovakia 413m Slovenia 391m Thailand 382m Japanese trail runners crushed it again! Also, other Asian nations, like South Korea and Thailand proved that uphill is the way to run in that corner of the world. Mountain biking (avg for all countries 387m) Italy 516m Spain 515m Portugal 453m Switzerland 446m United Kingdom 386 m In mountain biking, Italy rose from the second spot last year to number one this time. Forza! Hiking (avg for all countries 221m) Italy 441m Slovakia 426m South Korea 373m Thailand 349m Japan 337m Another crown for Italy – and another activity ranking where Asian countries are strong. Cycling (avg for all countries 182m) Spain 417m Portugal 394m Italy 369m Slovenia 306m South Africa 248m Spain, the top destination for winter cycling in Europe, was not a surprise leader in the cycling ranking. A welcome addition to the list was South Africa, nicely adding yet another continent to the top lists. Along with several European countries we had nations from Asia, Africa, South and North America amongst the top performers. Awesome! Nordic skiing (avg for all countries 180m) Japan 418m Slovakia 411m Spain 377m Czech Republic 357m Poland 335m This list looks quite different from last year! Japan takes its second top spot in a slightly surprising category to complement its win in the trail running category. The usual suspects for Nordic skiing, Norway (277m), Sweden (209m) and Finland (125m), did not reach the top of the rankings this time. Running (avg for all countries 100m) Switzerland 157m Slovenia 137m Portugal 131m Czech Republic 127m Norway 125m Running, the most popular activity overall, is not the king of Vertical Week: its average ascent is the smallest, exactly 100 meters. However, in the leading nation, Switzerland, the average ascent for running was over 50% more than that.

A progressive training load with adequate recovery and ways to follow progress will lead to a successful adventure or race. Suunto is your daily companion to enhance your performance. The new training toolset in Suunto app’s Training zone is vast. Read on and learn what’s available. We are sure you will find your new favorite dataset to analyze your training and follow your progress. To ensure you have the latest Suunto app version update your iOS app in App Store and Android app in Google Play. Four new ways to look at your training Am I training smartly? Is my training load progressive? Do I have the right intensity mix? What type of impact do my workouts have? Training load The training load theme in Suunto app’s Training zone gives you a good overview of this week’s training load compared to a six-week average. You will also see the daily training load split and the split by activity type. All of this will help you understand your overall physiological load and how much more you can – and should – still do this week. The value of following your physical load weekly with comparisons to your long-term baseline is that you can look at this as a goal for the week. To gain some fitness, you might want to slightly increase the load for the week. To ensure recovery, keep the load level lower than your average. Training intensity Are you really doing both easy base training and higher intensity? Or is your training piling up in a single intensity zone, like tempo work in zone 3? The new Training intensity theme in Suunto app will help you understand your training better as you will see both the weekly intensity distribution and the six-week averages. The workout intensity totals can be viewed as heart rate, pace, running power, and cycling power zones. You can set your sport-specific training zones in your Suunto watch based on heart rate, pace and power. Suunto is following a five-zone model where your anaerobic threshold is at zone 4 /5 limit. You can find your correct training zones with a lab or a field test. SuuntoPlus Sports apps like the Anaerobic threshold test and the Functional threshold power test will guide you through a field test session. Learn more about intensity zones. Training volume The sports you have done during the week are shown with duration, distance, load, and ascent. Sports are also grouped to give an overview of each type of sport i.e. running includes running, treadmill, and trail running. Volume is compared with your six-week average. As you follow your training volume, you can now easily ensure that you meet the numbers for your key sports any given week: It might be that as a trail runner, you want to get 3000 meters of ascent each week, or as a cyclist, ride 200 kilometers weekly. Your six-week average will help you match your personal benchmark. Training impact Suunto app’s Training impact is a new tool that helps you understand your training model and the physiological systems you are targeting. This will help you understand if you are doing what you were planning to do – and if you are missing something in your training. Training impacts are defined as cardio and muscular impacts. Each workout gets assigned an impact such as “Aerobic” or “Speed & Agility”. Cardio impacts are based on workouts intensity, load, and duration. Muscle impacts are based on activity type. The training model is identified based on your workout intensity distribution such as Polarized (most activities on low and high intensities, less in the middle), Sweet spot (training mainly between aerobic and anaerobic thresholds), and Base training (most workouts are in zones 1&2). In addition to the current week, you will see the six-week average for your training impact. As with other training insights, the impacts are illustrated with long-term reference. If your normal training week has two aerobic sessions, one VO2 max session and two strength sessions, and on Friday you are still missing those aerobic sessions, you know what to focus on during the weekend. This will help you check all the boxes. Training impact is currently available on Suunto app for Android. Coming soon to iOS as well! Lead image by Roger Salanova READ MORE Get feedback from the Suunto coach Test your fitness with Suunto Plan your interval workouts with Suunto app Unlock your interval training and watch your running improve

Suunto coach is an integral part of Suunto app’s Training zone: It helps you pay attention to the right data for your progress and well-being. The role of a coach is to provide guidance, support, and expertise to help athletes achieve their goals. A coach can be crucial for monitoring progress and providing feedback and adjustments as needed to ensure the athlete is training safely and effectively. A great coach is also a friend and a companion in your journey. A coach motivates you and requires accountability. Overall, a coach helps athletes improve their performance, avoid injury, and reach their full potential. This is also our goal when providing you with Suunto Coach. Suunto app’s Training zone has an AI-based coach that is an integral part of the service. It looks at hundreds of different parameters after each workout, learns how you train, and builds a normal training pattern that evolves from every workout you do. Based on this, it can give you the key highlights of your training, recovery, and progress. It provides insights and suggestions for the current week, so you can adjust your effort level as you go forward. The Suunto coach recognizes areas you are missing in your training this week that you normally are focusing on: Are you lacking volume in your swim workout? Do you push yourself too much with high-intensity runs? The Suunto coach is not trying to push your training in a direction that you are not used to. For example, if you usually do just high-intensity training, the Suunto coach is not going to ask you to focus more on lower-intensity sessions. Suunto coach doesn’t really know what is your goal or if you want to follow some specific training methodology. But what it does, is alert, highlight, and comment when you are exceeding healthy limits or just lacking some training aspects you are used to. Suunto coach is there to keep you on your selected path. Its recommendations and highlights are easy to digest without you needing to dig deep into the data. Now, go to the Suunto app and meet your new coach – the coach already knows you based on your training history!    Lead image by @rsalanova READ MORE Manage your training with Suunto app's Training zone  

Suunto Vertical comes with detailed outdoor offline maps that are globally free of charge. The new maps build on Suunto’s already advanced route navigation in the Suunto app. Discovering and creating routes is easy with the Suunto app's heatmaps, 3D maps and road surface-type layers and syncing them into a watch is effortless. Now, users have offline maps to consult no matter where they are, offering them greater safety and confidence! In this article, you will learn how to get started with the maps. Getting the maps on your watch You can download the maps on your Suunto Vertical watch using the Suunto app. You don’t need to pay any extra for the maps: simply select the right area for your adventure and download it. The watch has plenty of storage capacity, too: You can download 32GB of maps. As a reference the entire France is 7,47 GB and the entire Canada 15,17GB. Naturally large maps take longer to download so being a bit more specific helps you get the maps on the watch faster. Add wireless network to watch To install offline maps on the watch, connect your watch to a wireless network using the Suunto app: Pair your Suunto Vertical with Suunto app In the Suunto app go to the watch settings (select the watch icon on the top left and then the settings symbol on the top right) Select ‘Wireless networks’ and add a network You can add multiple wireless networks (like home and work) Select the offline map area Go to the map view in the Suunto app and tap ‘+’, the same “plus” you use to create a new route. That will allow you to download new offline maps. Search for the correct map or select it in the country menu. You can still review the selected area on the map before downloading. Connect the watch to the charger Once you have established the connection with a wireless network and selected your preferred map area, you can download the maps on the watch. To start the download, connect the watch to a charger. Using the offline maps on Suunto Vertical Top buttonShort press: Zoom inLong press: Zoom out Middle buttonShort press: Next screenLong press: Zoom/pan options Lower buttonShort press: Navigation options You can use the terrain maps during an activity with a preplanned route or simply see the breadcrumb trail, the path you have already traveled, on the map. Happy adventures! READ MORE Six ways to plan a route for your next adventure How to use avalanche terrain maps Lead image by Maximillian Gierl