Polar training targets by Bálint Szinte

Bálint Szinte

How can I create an automated training session as a Polar user?

There was a time when we drew our start and finish lines in the dirt with the heel of our shoe or a stick…

If the terrain happened to allow it, the distance between two street corners or lampposts could serve as the interval we needed to complete. Anyone who’s a distance runner — and logs their miles outside the track — probably knows exactly what this article is about.

Even though every middle-distance race ultimately takes place on an athletics track, preparing for the sport is surprisingly complex. To line up on race day in top shape, an athlete can’t rely solely on the comfort of 400-meter intervals on the track. As our coaches used to say: “A good distance runner is forged on varied terrain.”
Middle-distance runners therefore complete part of their training on uneven surfaces, grass, roads, or gravel paths — places where, unlike the track, you don’t have neatly measured distances. In fact, sometimes you can’t even estimate where to hit the lap button during a 1000-meter rep. You simply can’t rely on intuition alone.

Long story short: if you’re training off the track, you need at least an approximate way to measure distance. And that’s without even mentioning the issue of selecting the right intensity: doing multiple 800-meter reps on a straight, open dirt path — where you’re basically sprinting into the void — makes it easy to “overrun” the intended pace because you can’t see the track’s 100-meter markers.

And sometimes you simply don’t have time to scout or measure the loop

This becomes an even bigger problem when you arrive somewhere unfamiliar. In a new city, on unknown trails, distances feel huge — and time is usually short. So you postpone the measuring task until the next day’s workout. But in doing so, you lose focus: instead of executing the session, you’re busy trying to press the lap button at the right moment while scanning the landscape for future makeshift markers.

I’ve found myself in this situation more than once. For example, when I visited my cousins in Munich for Christmas, it was already dark when I arrived, so I couldn’t explore the forest paths I planned to train on. I was tired, I needed dinner, I needed to get ready.
And the next day I had to complete a light interval session — 3×600 and 3×300 meters — on terrain I hadn’t seen. I remember thinking how much easier everything would be if my sports watch could communicate the entire workout to me automatically: give me a 3–5 beep countdown before each rep, alert me if I drift outside the target heart rate or pace, and simply guide me without needing constant guesswork.

Then came the surprise gift: the Polar Vantage M3 — a reliable training partner guiding me across the empty “prairie”

One day I decided that I didn’t want to run a large set of 400-meter intervals in the usual monotonous way on the track. I had just come back from a long injury layoff, and I had to be very careful choosing the right surface. I was training alone, trying to finish before dark, so there wasn’t enough time after my warm-up to measure out a loop in the Farkas Forest.

About fifteen minutes before the session, I opened the Polar app and created a structured workout: if I remember correctly, it was 18×400 meters with 200 meters of easy jogging as recovery. I also attached a heart rate zone corresponding to functional threshold intensity. Then I quickly got ready for my warm-up, and once I reached the training spot, all I had to do was start the preloaded session on my watch.

And it genuinely felt like running with a training partner. The watch cues kept me on track, and the best part was this: I only had to focus on running and watching my footing. It felt almost like training on a track — but without being on one.

This feature is available to everyone as “Training Target” in the Diary

One of my favorite forms of it — the phased/interval training target — is something I use regularly on terrain. The advantages are obvious: you can create the session on a computer or on your phone, so you can even build your workout on the way to training.

The interface is simple. Like building with blocks, you just place the different workout phases one after another, customizing each one exactly as you want. And that last part is the third big advantage: you can give custom names and descriptions to each phase, which then appear dynamically on the watch during the workout.

You can also group these into repeating interval blocks. For example, you can place a pair of stronger and easier phases into a larger, repeating structure — perfect for workouts that alternate intensities.

However, putting together a full training program is a bit more complex than that — so let’s go through every function that allows us to elevate training planning to a professional level.

• A complete workout can be built — from warm-up all the way to cool-down. Between each phase, you can set whether the next section should start automatically or only with manual confirmation. This is especially helpful when, after the warm-up, you don’t know exactly how long stretching or running drills will take.

 

• Each phase can be defined either by time or distance, and you can even mix these within the same workout.

 

• Every phase can also be named, which is useful when you don’t immediately remember what’s coming next (for example, when interval lengths and recovery durations change frequently). The details of the upcoming segment always appear 5 seconds before it starts, during the audible countdown — so at that point, you can already see its name and its distance or duration.

 

• Phases can be used individually or placed into repeating blocks. This is extremely helpful for workouts done outside the track when you need to repeat short distances tens of times.

 

• It’s not just the distance or duration that appears on the counter — you can also monitor performance targets. In other words, each segment can have speed, power, or heart-rate zones assigned to it. With a slider interface, you can even include multiple zones within one target range (for example, 3–4 heart-rate zones during a harder endurance interval session, where you start in Zone 3 but are expected to finish in Zone 4).

 

• The completed workout can be named and scheduled in the Calendar. After syncing, the program is sent to the watch, and on the assigned day, the watch will automatically offer that workout when you start an activity. If you accept it, the watch takes you into a short preview screen of the workout, and from there, a single press of “START” will begin your personalized, structured session.

 

• During the workout, each phase is displayed as a countdown, showing the remaining time or distance. If your heart rate, power, or speed drops outside the assigned zone, the watch alerts you with beeps. The start and end of every phase is preceded by a 4-second countdown with vibration and sound. It genuinely functions like a virtual coach — and in my experience, it does so flawlessly.

And then another surprise: this feature is useful in more places than I expected

The real shock came when I was checking my weekly summaries on my watch. At the very bottom of the page, tapping the “Next Week” button revealed an empty weekly plan. In that plan, any pre-scheduled workouts automatically appear, including the estimated weekly mileage. If multiple workouts are planned for a day, any of them can be selected directly from the watch.

A few closing thoughts

Although other sports watches also offer similar features, based on my experience Polar is the only one that goes far beyond the basic functions and provides a wide, flexible toolkit for detailed workout planning. Before the 2025 outdoor season, I used this feature almost constantly, especially when training on varied terrain, and I can confidently say that it meets the needs of everyone — from complete beginners to professional competitive athletes.