Best Practices for Wearing and Using your Polar Fitness Tracker

Best Practices for Wearing and Using your Polar Fitness Tracker

Your Polar Watch is meant to be a tool that you can rely on for information. However, like all technology, it might not run perfectly all the time. This will provide some tips to best promote accurate tracking and care of your Polar Watch if your feel that you're achieving your activity goals too easily.

Allow Your Watch to Acclimate

  • Your watch may need to get used to your habits. This means it wants to learn the difference between sleeping and watching TV on the couch or the difference between eating dinner at the table and working at your desk.
  • Polar suggests that you wear your watch 24 hours a day for 7 days. Until your watch understands your habits, it will be "hypersensitive" to your movements and heart rates which may result in easily meeting your daily goal before you feel you have.
  • Before attempting to acclimate your watch:

  1. Link your Polar Watch to your computer > check that your settings are accurate > save any changes made > re-sync your watch > start wearing your watch 24/7

Let your Wrist Breathe

  • ·Take off the watch periodically i.e. while showering, at night, etc. to give your skin time to breathe.  Not doing so can cause a rash or irritation of the skin.
  • If you take it off, keep it someplace safe that you will also remember to put it back on i.e. your nightstand.
  • This is also a good time to charge and sync your watch
  • Do not fasten the wrist band too tightly as this could cause discomfort or rash.  The watch You should be able to fit your pinky finger between your wrist and watch band.

Sync your Watch on Sundays

  • If you are syncing on your computer, you will need the charge cord that came with your watch- it will say “Polar” on it.
  • Make sure you securely place the charge port cover back in its position before placing back on your wrist.  If water gets into this port it will ruin the watch.


Keep your Watch Charged

  • Charge your watch at least every 4 days to make sure it is always charged and ready to record your activity!  If your watch dies during activity/training session, it will not record any of the training session. 
  • Make sure you securely place the charge port cover back in its position before placing back on your wrist.  If water gets into this port it will ruin the watch.


Pairing with your Smartphone

  • When pairing your watch, ensure Blue tooth is enabled on your phone and you may also have to take the case off of your phone.  This may take several attempts so keep trying!  It will pair eventually.


Use Training Session Feature

  • Start a Training session feature each time you are exercising, even if just going for a walk.  The activity of this will not only allow your watch to better read your activity level, Heart Rate, Time, etc. but create awareness for you as to how frequently or infrequently you are exercising, for how long and at what intensity.


Beta Blockers

  • If you are on Beta Blockers it is advised that while exercising, you focus on your Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) rather than the Heart Rate listed on your watch as it may not be the best indicator of how hard your heart is working during exercise.


Wearing and Caring for your Watch

  • If wearing your watch in the shower or swimming you will want to dry it off with a towel after getting it wet.

· Wear with the watch face up, not under your wrist as this may cause erroneous readings.

If your watch faces pops out, make sure that when you put it back in you can feel it click into place and see the watchband securely fits around the face without any no gaps.


Turn of continuous HR Monitor

1. Turn your watchface on by pressing the button on the side

2. Scroll to Settings  

3. Tap Continuous HR icon  .  The icon turns grey   to indicate it is turned off with a confirmation message that the feature is off. 


Reaching 100% of your Daily Activity Goal too easily

  • To ensure that your Polar Watch is officially updated, it's recommended that you link your watch to your computer and sync when you have completed any changes to your settings. Directions below are for making the updates within Polar Flow on a computer, but this change can also be made within your Polar Flow app on your phone. Of course, just make sure to sync after making the change on your phone as well. If using your computer, ensure that Polar FlowSync software is downloaded.
    1. Sign in to your Polar Flow account on your computer.
    2. Click on "Settings" under your name.
    3. Click on Daily Activity Goal > Change to a higher level then you previously had > Click Save.

 

Changing VO2 and Heart Rate Values in Polar Flow

  • Again, the directions below are for updating within Polar Flow on your computer. As mentioned above, don't forget to sync your device after making the changes.
  • · Your VO2 and heart rate values were collected during your initial evaluation or training session. You should have received these values within a Direct Message in the UMedTech portal from your trainer.
  • · To update this information in Polar Flow:
    1. Log into your Polar Flow account
    2. Select the arrow next to your name to see the drop down list
    3. Select Settings
    4. Scroll down until you see the field for VO2, maximum heart rate and resting heart rate. These fields can be updated with the information from your Athletic Trainer. First change VO2 (use only a whole number), then maximum heart rate and then resting heart rate. All three values must be updated.
    5. Once all values are updated, scroll to the bottom of the page and press save.

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