Using Polar Flow with TrainingPeaks
If you are using TrainingPeaks with a premium or a basic account, you can now sync your training plans made in TrainingPeaks to Polar Flow diary, and as before, can sync your training sessions from Flow to TrainingPeaks automatically.
You need to reconnect the services if you had previously only synced Flow training sessions to TrainingPeaks.
You can make the connection, and disconnect it, if needed, only in the Flow web service:
To connect your Polar Flow account to TrainingPeaks:
First make sure you have a Polar Flow account and a TrainingPeaks account.
Sign into Polar Flow.
Click your name in the top right corner and choose Settings.
From the Partners tab, click the Connect button right beside TrainingPeaks.
Click Connect again.
Confirm making the connection by clicking OK.
Log into TrainingPeaks.
The authorization page opens. Click Allow.
Finally, short instructions for editing your training zones in Flow and in TrainingPeaks open.
Click Close, and the services are connected.
If you want to disconnect Polar Flow and TrainingPeaks, just click the Disconnect button in the Polar Flow settings. After disconnecting, your training sessions aren’t synced to TrainingPeaks. Disconnecting also deactivates the data sync from TrainingPeaks to Polar Flow.
Syncing training sessions from Polar Flow to TrainingPeaks
You can automatically sync your training sessions from the Polar Flow to TrainingPeaks. All you need to do is connect your Polar Flow account to the TrainingPeaks service and you’ll see your training sessions in TrainingPeaks.
After you’ve joined your Polar Flow and TrainingPeaks accounts your training sessions will also be synced to TrainingPeaks when you sync them to Polar Flow. The sync can be done either with Polar FlowSync, via Polar Flow app or from Polar Beat if you’ve trained with the Polar Beat app.
The training sessions you already have in Polar Flow can be transferred with Polar Flow’s Export function.
All your training sessions will be synced to TrainingPeaks as Private. If you want to share your training sessions in TrainingPeaks, change the privacy of each session in TrainingPeaks to Public.
You can sync training sessions that have been done with a Polar training device or with the Polar Beat app. To be able to sync a training session to TrainingPeaks, it has to contain sample data (needed to draw curves) from one of the following: GPS, heart rate, altitude, cadence or power.
Training sessions you can’t sync to TrainingPeaks:
- manually added training sessions
- training sessions that don’t include any sample data
- training sessions that have been synced with Polar group solutions or from third party applications or services, for example, Polar Club or MyFitnessPal
- training sessions that have been transferred to Polar Flow from polarpersonaltrainer.com or from Polar ProTrainer 5
- training sessions that have been synced to Polar Flow before connecting Polar Flow to TrainingPeaks. These training sessions can be transferred to TrainingPeaks with Polar Flow’s export function.
Automatic upload to TrainingPeaks supports the following sports: Swim, Bike, Run, X-train, Mtb, Strength, Xc-ski, Rowing, Walk and Other. Polar Flow sports are automatically changed to sports available in TrainingPeaks. You can also change the sport manually in TrainingPeaks.
There may be some differences in the data shown in TrainingPeaks because of the differences in the calculation methods between Polar Flow and TrainingPeaks.
Syncing TrainingPeaks targets to Polar Flow (Beta)
After linking the accounts in the Flow Partners page, every compatible TrainingPeaks training plan and all target workouts you make will sync to Polar Flow automatically once a day. There is a Refresh button in the Flow calendar view to start the sync right away. In the Flow app, you can do a pull down update in the Calendar view, and when you manually sync your Polar watch by long-pressing the Back-button, the TrainingPeaks sync also initiates.
You can sync TrainingPeaks training targets to your Polar Flow diary and onto your Polar watch. All Polar watches that support training targets are compatible.
Here are the supported sports and how they are shown in Flow. Once they are in your Flow diary, you cannot edit them in Flow, only in TrainingPeaks.
| TrainingPeaks Workout | Polar Flow Sport Profile |
|---|---|
| Run | Running |
| Bike | Cycling |
| Swim | Swimming |
| Mountain bike | Mountain biking |
| Strength | Strength training |
| Cross country skiing | Skiing |
| Walk | Walking |
| Unknown, Other, Custom, Brick, Crosstrain | No sport / Free target |
| Event, Note, Recovery day, Day off | Not shown in Polar ecosystem |
TrainingPeaks has fewer workout types than Flow and does not, for example, separate indoor cycling from outdoor cycling. If you only do indoor cycling in Flow, we recommend to have also the regular cycling sport profile in your favorites, with custom zones turned on. This way the indoor cycling training target can also have structured training guidance in your Polar watch and Flow.
The same goes for sports like trail running, road cycling and freestyle XC skiing. Have the main sports as favorites for running, cycling and skiing as well, with Custom zone settings turned on.
Custom zones
To use zones for the TrainingPeaks workouts in Polar ecosystem, you must turn on Custom zones for each compatible sport profile in Flow. Heart rate, Speed/Pace and Power settings must all have it turned on, if they are used in TrainingPeaks workout planning.
Flow web service:
- Go to a sport profile that includes zones in Flow and click Edit.
- Under Heart rate and Heart rate zone type, click Custom.
- Repeat for Speed/Pace settings > Speed zone type and Power settings > Power zone type, if needed.
Flow app:
- Go to Sport profiles on the main menu.
- Tap a compatible sport and Edit.
- In Custom zones, turn the switch on. If available for your sport, swipe left for Speed and Power custom zones too.
Matching training zones
Polar Flow and TrainingPeaks use a different number of zones in their structured workouts; Polar Flow uses always five, while in TrainingPeaks the number of training zones is not restricted, and the user can modify the number of zones themselves. When you sync the TrainingPeaks workouts to Flow, the zones are remapped to be compatible with Flow. Currently, because we use only zones as thresholds in training sessions, instead of exact values of HR, speed/pace and power, this can lead to non-optimal guidance. Here's an example of such situation (1), and after adjusting the overlap (2):
Therefore, for the best experience, we recommend to match the number of zones in TrainingPeaks with Flow and remove any overlaps in zone values between the services. You need to do this in TrainingPeaks with a browser:
- Open a training target in TrainingPeaks and a corresponding Sport profile in Flow in another window. Compare individual zones and their limit values. Notice any overlapping between the values and zones in TrainingPeaks and Flow.
- Go to your TrainingPeaks Account settings and remove extra zones in so that they both have five zones for Heart Rate, Speed/pace or Power.
- In the Account settings adjust the overlapping TrainingPeaks target limit value so that there is no overlap anymore. Match the zone range (1) with Flow zone, not the actual zone on TrainingPeaks (2):
We support only the Old Strength Builder, not the New Strength Builder type.
They are shown just like other Polar targets in the Flow Diary view: colored red when they are completed, and grey when they are not done yet.
When you open a TrainingPeaks target from the diary, you'll see it's labeled as a TrainingPeaks target:
You cannot edit TrainingPeaks targets in Flow, only in TrainingPeaks.
- Flow has a 500 character limit for the training notes and 45 character limit for the title.
- Training targets in Flow must have scheduled time for them, if they are not defined in TrainingPeaks, the default time in Flow diary is 18:00 hrs or 6 PM.