Moving (after a look at the time mode displays and the navigation) to what is the true raison d’etre of the Suunto Ambit line: outdoors training, adventure, exploration.
The fitter you are, the easier it is to explore and enjoy it, and you might want to use a training plan to guide yourself in a regular fitness regimen.
How can you best use training programs when you have an Ambit?
By planning your training ‘moves’, getting the Ambit to remind you of them and guide you, either in your pace or in your chosen heart rate zone…
16: Planned Moves and Training Programs
The Ambit is enough of an outdoors device to not offer the most complicated of training guidance, but one should know how to set up training programs or plan ‘moves’. Those give quite a bit more guidance than a sports mode by itself would…
17: Planning Moves for Pace/HR Guidance
Just a quick video here showing the set-up for planned moves (or moves in a training program, those work in the same way), with or without distance. This, as we’ll see in videos #20 and #21, showing the planned moves in practice, gives two different kinds of guidance.
18: Setting Up HR Zones for Planned Moves
If you’ve wanted to set up planned moves or training programs before, maybe you’ve wondered what the “intensity” is actually supposed to mean.
It’s all there in the HR zones under “Profile” -> “Body Metrics”: The zones there are the HR limits that will be used in planned moves (as long as you don’t set up a distance).
The next videos will show how it all works in practice…
(Sorry about the focusing / exposure problems. The black background of the Movescount website is hell for a camera…)
19: Putting Planned ‘Move’ into Practice
It’s a training day as per the planned moves (or training program), and this here is what the Ambit then shows as a reminder, and how to get started using that plan the right way.
You can also see how to calibrate the compass, which should be done before going out on a ‘move’ that will be recorded by GPS or (even more so) before using navigation.
The reminder for planned moves that is very necessary, to also put it in writing: Start a planned move by going into exercise mode (hitting “start/stop”) while in the training plan display (in time mode), NOT any other display (such as that of time and date, where you’d probably, usually, start a ‘move’)!
20: Planned ‘Move’ in Practice – Pace Guidance
The first of the two moves set up in video #17, for 4 km in 30 minutes, in practice.
Having planned for a distance makes the planned move give guidance on pace, and it means that the “50% complete” and “100% complete” displays will come at 2 and 4 km, respectively.
Pace guidance is by visual markers on the pace display, in real time, and by acoustic alarm, after 2 minutes outside of the proper range.
21: Planned ‘Move’ in Practice – HR Zone Guidance
Here’s the second of the two moves set up in video #17, the one for 30 minutes of running at a “moderate” intensity, used in practice.
Not having planned this ‘move’ to be for a certain distance, but rather for time and intensity, i.e. heart rate zone, guidance here is (only) for the heart rate to be in the selected zone.
(Unsure how/where to set up these heart rate zones? See video #18.)
The “50% complete” and “100% complete,” therefore, come at 15 minutes and 30 minutes, respectively.
Again, visual guidance (now on the HR display, of course) is instantaneous; acoustic alarms for having fallen outside of the selected zone, here too, only come after 2 minutes outside the proper range.
The Problem with Planned ‘Moves’
What the planned ‘moves’ of/or training programs do not give you are warm-up times.
You can simply add a cool-down, the ‘move’ continues recording after it is “100% complete,” after all, but the guidance starts just as soon as you start the planned ‘move’.
So, if you have to have a more-detailed plan, also and especially with intervals, then you need another approach: You will need to use Ambit apps. And if you also want heart rate zones, you will also want an app for that.
But, all of that is a different theme from the training plans and planned moves… Something for next time.
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