Sports Watch Review: Polar RS300X Heart Rate Monitor

(an update was added to this post 12th Oct. 2014 - scroll at the bottom of this article)

 

Despite my full time job as a computer engineer, I am a keen sport's person and I am involved into rowing, cycling, triathlon, windsurfing for years. I realised that to get a basic feedback of your body conditioning DURING training requires a nice sports watch. There are currently hundreds of models on the market and it's a complete headache trying to pick up the one that best fits your needs.


I don't want to tire you with an exhaustive review about this watch (Polar RS300X), but I will try to outline its most important technical features. I assume that you are a serious sports person otherwise you don't need all the features of this watch. These combined features made me pick up this quality watch out of other branded sports watches or Polar models around an affordable price range (90-100 euro inc.VAT). Some of the features that I quote below are NOT mentioned (or better perhaps: are not clearly indicated) on the Polar official manual, despite being there for the user to enjoy! (you can download and read Polar RS300X user manual )  I have been using this watch during training/racing since 2009 and I never had any technical problems or issues with this model.

I've chosen Polar RS300X between other models after extensive market research, for the following reasons:

2012 Greek Indoor Rowing Championship - My road to sub 3 minutes race time

         

Video: Mens 30-39 2012 Greek IRC
(Me with white t-shirt, next to me standing my coach, Makis, with red jersey)

2012 Greek IRC Event's Photos

2012 Greek IRC 1000m Individual Results (in Greek)

If there was just one word I would be allowed to pick up to describe the 2012 Greek indoor rowing national event that would be *exhaustion*. And this description doesn't only apply for the race day, but for the whole training season leading to this event. Below, I expose the training stages that allowed me to break the 3 minutes race time. Hope my story below will motivate all those athletes, new to indoor rowing, expand their ambitions.

Preparation
Indoor rowing requires maximum effort to reach a top level performance. The effort required to achieve even the tiniest improvement is significant. When you watch rowing live on the TV you might have noticed that the whole race lasts only a couple of minutes (less than 7 min for a 2000m race and 3 min for a 1000m race). Believe me, for those athletes who target a medal position, racing those few minutes feels endless until the moment they cross the finish line. Both in physical and mental terms.

Indoor Rowing energy expenditure: How many calories can you burn while on indoor rower?

An excellent calorie calculator, which estimates the amount of calories burned based on your body weight and activity is provided here: http://concept2.co.uk/training/bmr_calculator.
You will be amazed on how many calories can an indoor rower burn!

This is also an excellent way to find out how much training you need to complete to get rid of unnecessary weight!

Notice that indoor rower is a great calorie-burner! Below I quote the results for my body characteristics inputting 3 indoor rowing sessions (note, that I normally execute separately each of those training sessions, but for illustration purposes I've added them together on a single day to outline their calorie expenditure).

Example - Basal Metabolic Rate Calculator(s) for a 105kg active person

The BMR for a 105 kg Male, 30-59 years old, is 2080.5 kcal.

Your energy expenditure for the day (excluding exercise) is your BMR (2080.5) multipled by your activity level (2.0)2080.5 x 2.0 = 4,161.0

Your hourly metabolic rate (HMR) is 2080.5 divided by 24.HMR = 2080.5/24 = 86.7

The training cost in activity of each exercise is calculated as your HMR multiplied by the Physical Activity Ratio of the exercise multiplied by their time in hours. See the Energy Costs page for a table of the different PARs for each pace.

ROWING SESSIONS considered:
Session 1 = 86.7 x 14.2 x (45/60) = 923 kcals (45min at 2:00/500m)
Session 1 = 86.7 x 21 x (8/60) = 243 kcals (8min at 1:45/500m)
Session 1 = 86.7 x 33.6 x (6/60) = 291 kcals (6min at 1:30/500m)

The total energy cost of your day is, therefore 5,618 (that is to say, your overall BMR plus all your exercise sessions).

 

Food Groups

The process outline here is a guide to your energy output and is a good place to start if you are interested in weight management. The other aspect is knowing the calorie balance. Energy is provided by three food groups, carbohydrates, protein and fats. The relative balance between these groups is 60% carbohydrates, 17% protein and 23% fats. Carbohydrates and protein provide 4.3 calories per gram and fat provides 9 calories.

The dietary requirements for a daily output of 5,618 kcals is therefore:
Carbohydrates = 5618.427 multiplied by (60/100) divided by 4.3 = 784.0 grams
Proteins = 5618.427 multiplied by (17/100) divided by 4.3 = 222.1 grams
Fats = 5618.427 multiplied by (23/100) divided by 9 = 143.6 grams