Polar Ignite: the watch that monitors everyday stress

The Ignite is the latest watch from Polar and it’s their thinnest and lightest yet. The new watch differentiates itself through its sleep and recovery insights, painting a better picture of the runner’s overall stress and recovery levels.

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Sleep is one of the most important factors in a runner’s health. Consistent sleep can mean the difference between a personal best, avoiding an injury, or simply maintaining a good mood. Polar understands this, and is making sleep and recovery one of their main priorities in their newest watch. On top of their training insights, sleep quality insights come from a sleep score.

This sleep score can help a runner take into account how rested they are and also helps them see how their daily choices are affecting their recovery and sleep. Mari Junttila, a segment manager at Polar, says, “Nightly Recharge combines information from your sleep with the status of your autonomic nervous system (ANS). ANS measurement relies on your heartrate, heartrate variability, and breathing rate, showing how your body calmed down after the challenges you faced that day.” The challenges referred to go way beyond stress from exercise and also take into account work or personal stress that a runner may have faced, through continuous heartrate monitoring.

The watch also features a Serene function that offers breathing exercises to help runners wind down from their day. This function looks at a runner’s overall well-being and not just the impact of exercise. This watch really prioritizes a runner’s mental well-being, as that hugely impacts their physical well-being.

As with all Polar watches, the exercise companion comes with a free, personalized and adaptive training plan that offers training programmes from the 5K all the way to the marathon.

The watch comes with a touchscreen display and up to five days of battery life. It retails for $229.95 USD and is available today at www.polar.com/ignite.