Zone Ready Goes Digital With Polar

Zone Ready Press Release 2.16.09

Zone Ready goes digital with Polar

Los Angeles, CA – Team Polar made a trip to Los Angeles to give the Zone Ready staff a crash course in the latest and greatest in heart rate monitor training.  On the cutting edge since 1977, Polar has been creating and providing performance solutions for athletes and teams in all sports – all around the world.  And as of recent, they are finding ways to apply their elite technology to military and government defense organizations to augment our country’s most valuable resource – the warrior-athlete.  With Polar’s support and equipment, Zone Ready is confident it can provide an even higher level of elite fitness solutions to all the athletes and teams it services. 

Zone Ready has always encouraged high performers to “Train to Compete, to Perform and to Win.”  Unfortunately, some athletes and teams are still caught up in the habit of only training to train.  Coach Chris Gizzi elaborates the Zone Ready philosophy, “If you’re one of those who think that you only got a good workout if you ‘feel a burn” or ‘got pumped up’ or worse – you felt like you were about to collapse: you fall into a group of people who are only training to train.  Sure there is a time and a place for everything – but if you only train this way I can honestly say that you are not 100% committed to victory.”  This is where Polar can help to encourage optimal training.  With their technology, there is no room for interpretation – the athlete either performs to standards or he doesn’t.  The equipment and readings don’t lie. Just like human physiology doesn’t lie.  “Sometimes the optimal workout isn’t always the one that feels like it,” states Josh Simonsen, the Polar Training Resource Specialist on site that day.  “At Polar, we are committed to providing coaches with equipment and information to make better decisions for preparing their athletes.”

Josh Simonsen directly showed the Zone Ready staff how they could effectively use the equipment with individuals and with teams to optimize training results.  Josh emphasized how readings from the Polar wristwatch computers could be used to determine optimal rest intervals, training volume, relative intensity, etc. – all specific for the individual wearing the device.  Furthermore, he showed how this data could be downloaded into a computer program known as the Polar Pro Trainer in order to easily assess performance output, document training progress, and plan future training sessions.  “We were overwhelmed with the amount of data that can be collected,” comments Zone Ready Coach Doug Gizzi, “But as much content that there is available, it’s relatively easy to pull the pieces of info that you really need.  The program does a lot of thinking for you and most features are just a click of the mouse away.”

With such a user friendly tool, Zone Ready embarked on gathering information essential to advancing optimal performance.  Whether it be increasing steady state aerobic capacity, maximizing metabolic conditioning intervals, ensuring anaerobic power development, or justifying active recovery sessions – Zone Ready used the Polar tools to do a better job.  “There were a few ways in particular that jumped out,” admits Coach Chris Gizzi, “One: we can give more accurate rest intervals to our explosive athletes.  Two: We can use the Polar equipment with our existing performance timing systems, to ensure that we are training maximum acceleration and speed development.  Third: We can finally show something to team coaches to justify why they don’t need to ‘over-condition’ their athletes.  I can say, ‘Don’t take my word for it – look at the results.’  Hopefully, this will promote active regeneration for all our athletes especially to those with more passionate coaches.”

Polar Special Projects Manager, Tricia Sterland echoes those sentiments, “It’s amazing as you analyze performance results when active recovery measures are present in a training program.  Using the single and cumulative training session data will take the guess work out of it for even the most experienced athletes and coaches.  For anyone committed to consistent high and or peak performance, this is an essential part of training.”  It would appear that Polar is on the cutting edge of convincing performers to train smarter, not just harder.  This paradigm is common amongst successful individuals in all of life’s endeavors.  Polar’s technology provides the data; companies like Zone Ready provide the direction.  It poses one question to each and every one of us…

Are you training just to train – or, are you training to win?       

Train to Win!