Top all-time · #4902
Polar Blog
Company blog · polar.com/bloghealthhardware
Polar Blog is the company blog at polar.com, writing about health and hardware. Since 2013, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 17 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-03-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (15) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN comments mostly concern Polar's heart rate monitors and fitness devices rather than the blog. The blog is linked as a source on heart-rate zones and training.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 15 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /blog/running-heart-rate-zones-basics/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-15
What Hacker News says?
As someone who has exclusively worn a pebble since it was crowd funded, I am trilled. I love purpose built devices[0] that don't attempt to do everything. I don't need a watch that does everything, just triage notification and perform time related activities and get out of the way. Pebble has always fit that niche. The fact that I can hack on it and mold it to my needs has been icing. I have some sincere questions o…
Comment linking /en/science/whitepapers
on “Two new PebbleOS watches”Submitted Time to run or time to walk? Your body knows the answer as a story · 212 points
HN discussionAvoiding overtraining is one reason to train with good heart rate monitor. In some days you must run much slower than other days because of stress, lack of sleep and rest. When you hit your upper limits, it's a sing to slow down. Suddenly reduced HRV is another sign of overtrtraining. Good heart rate monitors (some Polar models with a strap) can do Orthostatic Test and give even more accurate information than heart…
Comment linking /blog/heart-rate-variability-and-orthostatic-test-lets-talk-polar/
on “The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner”Submitted POLAR Loop – Subscription-Free Health Band and Fitness Tracker as a story · 4 points
HN discussionRead up on heart-rate zones; this is a decent post[1]. Basically, you should be able to comfortably hold a conversation throughout the run. I learnt that many serious athletes train a lot for it. Improving zone-2 fitness apparently contributes in a non-trivial way to zone 3-5 fitness! But don't get too hung up on these stats (I didn't bother at all for the first 5 months of running), but follow that golden rule of "…
Comment linking /blog/running-heart-rate-zones-basics/
on “The positive effect of walking on creative thinking (2014) [pdf]”I wouldn't trust this website. It's based around selling a fitness product, so there's a very good chance it's biased. https://www.polar.com/en/grit-x
Comment linking /en/grit-x
on “Time to run or time to walk? Your body knows the answer”I wouldn't trust this website. It's based around selling a fitness product, so there's a very good chance it's biased. https://www.polar.com/en/grit-x
Comment linking /en/grit-x
on “Time to run or time to walk? Your body knows the answer”I'm not sure if this really fulfills your "without proprietary software" criteria, but Polar recently announced that they've opened up their API for developers. I believe you do need to have a Polar Flow account though, so the API access works along the same lines as the Google API, i.e. using OAuth 2.0 authentication that connects to your Polar Flow account, which the watch syncs to via phone/wifi. So there's no LT…
Comment linking /en/developers
on “Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?”I want to address your last comment, about heart rate monitors being horribly inaccurate for you. According to a large body of research ( http://www.polar.com/en/about_polar/who_we_are/research_inde... ), the Polar brand heart rate monitors provide basically medical quality data. Have you really tried one of the new Bluetooth LE monitors, and what sort of problems did you have? It's vitally important to me, because…
Comment linking /en/about_polar/who_we_are/research_index?cat=1
on “Apple Pulls 500px’s Mobile Apps From The App Store”Imagine a Tour de France team who spends millions of dollars being unwilling to find a company to build them a custom monitor that supports heart rate monitoring with an encrypted data stream if they can’t find one off the shelf. 30 seconds of searching shows me the polar h10 is already multiprotocol and supports Bluetooth. https://www.polar.com/us-en/sensors/h10-heart-rate-sensor/
Comment linking /us-en/sensors/h10-heart-rate-sensor/
on “The Begining of the End for ANT+ Wireless”I've always used a polar heart rate monitor when I play hockey to help me find my VO2 max and my target heart rate range. They're one of the few really accurate heart rate monitors out there. These also have a myriad of other functions. http://www.polar.com/us-en/products/get_active/fitness_cross... You can find a Polar Loop bracelet with the H7 heart rate monitor strap for around $150.00, which is a lot less than t…
Comment linking /us-en/products/get_active/fitness_crosstraining/loop
on “Extracting My Data from the Microsoft Band”FYI, Polar H7 is iOS supported only. Android/Windows users should not buy one. http://www.polar.com/en/support/FAQs/H7_heart_rate_sensor_co...
Comment linking /en/support/FAQs/H7_heart_rate_sensor_compatibility
on “Show HN: I Built An App to Teach Mind Control”That's not an accurate comparison, since the Polar watches don't do pulse monitoring by themselves, they require a chest band accessory that contains the actual sensor (see http://www.polar.com/en/products/accessories/H1_heart_rate_s... ). That's like at least an order of magnitude less convenient than having pulse monitoring integrated in the watch (or wristband) itself, in my opinion.
Comment linking /en/products/accessories/H1_heart_rate_sensor
on “Jawbone UP3 Activity Tracker”Huh. For a moment, I thought Google is acquiring Polar: http://www.polar.com/en ...Which would make some kind of sense in the light of the wearable hype, but certainly wouldn't do anything for Google+.
Comment linking /en
on “Google’s Deal for Polar Shows It Has Not Given Up on Google+”Those are heart rate zones, high intensity interval training (HIIT) is zone 5. Here's the first description I found: https://www.polar.com/blog/running-heart-rate-zones-basics/ Since it's interval training, just doing 10mins hard is not what's prescribed. It's more like doing repetitions of, say, 2 mins easy and 30s sprints.
Comment linking /blog/running-heart-rate-zones-basics/
on “Aerobic exercise is good for the brain; easy wins for behaviour change”Never be hungry, don't overdo eating. Smaller portions, more regularly. I love a handful of cachewnuts. Spread more carbs in the morning, lean to more protein in the evening. Calorie cycling: https://www.webmd.com/diet/what-to-know-calorie-cycling Based on personal experience here. You're doing HITT? It's possible for a short intensive workout ( under 25 minutes) that you're body isn't taking from fat, but trying to…
Comment linking /blog/sugar-and-workouts-how-it-can-help-your-training
on “Intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction”https://archive.ph/20250903102014/https://www.bloomberg.com/... The device: https://www.polar.com/us-en/loop $199 (I think this is the yearly charge for Whoop?)
Comment linking /us-en/loop
on “Polar Unveils Whoop-Like Fitness Band Without a Subscription Fee”
