Suunto App Explained: Training, Navigation, Suunto Coach And More

Buying a Suunto running watch is only part of the Suunto experience. Much of what makes the watches useful happens inside the Suunto app, where your activities are analysed, routes are created, workouts are planned and longer-term training trends can be monitored.

For runners, the app effectively acts as the control centre for the wider Suunto ecosystem. It receives the data recorded by your watch, turns it into useful training information and provides access to features including Training Zone, Suunto Coach, structured workouts, mapping, heatmaps and SuuntoPlus. It is also where Suunto connects with external platforms such as Strava and TrainingPeaks.

That makes the Suunto app worth understanding in its own right. You can certainly use a Suunto watch simply to record your runs, but doing so means missing many of the features that make the platform particularly useful for runners training regularly or exploring new routes. Read this article on the Suunto App Explained for all the detail.

What Is The Suunto App?

The Suunto app is Suunto's mobile platform for managing compatible watches and reviewing your training. It is available for iOS and Android and provides the connection between your watch, your training history and many of Suunto's online services.

After pairing a compatible watch, activities recorded on the device can be synchronised with the app. Your runs then become part of a longer training history rather than remaining isolated workouts on your watch.

The app is also used to manage a number of watch features. Depending on the model, you can customise sport modes, transfer routes, manage structured workouts and access compatible SuuntoPlus features. This two-way relationship is important because the app does not simply receive information from the watch. It also sends training and navigation information back to it.

Reviewing Your Runs

The most obvious reason to open the Suunto app is to examine a run after you have finished it. Synchronise your watch and you can see considerably more information than is practical to display on a watch screen.

Depending on your watch and the data recorded, this can include distance, duration, pace, heart rate, cadence, elevation and your GPS track. Splits and other workout information allow you to examine how the session developed rather than simply looking at your final average pace.

For an easy run, that might mean checking whether your heart rate remained under control. Following a tempo session, you might be more interested in your pace and intensity. After a hilly trail run, the elevation profile and GPS route may be just as important as your finishing time.

This is useful, but individual workout analysis is only the beginning. The more interesting part of the Suunto app for regular runners is what happens when those individual activities are combined.

Training Zone

Training Zone is where Suunto moves from recording workouts towards helping you understand your overall training. Rather than concentrating exclusively on what happened during your most recent run, it allows you to look at patterns developing across weeks of training.

Training load is one of the important areas. The app can place your current workload alongside your longer-term training, helping you see whether the amount of work you are doing is increasing, decreasing or remaining relatively stable.

This is particularly relevant during structured race training. Marathon preparation, for example, is not about making every individual run harder than the previous one. Training needs to build progressively while still allowing sufficient recovery, and looking at the wider pattern can be considerably more useful than judging your fitness from one particularly good or bad session.

Training Zone also provides information around training intensity. This can help show how your training is distributed rather than simply how much of it you are completing. For runners, that matters because repeatedly accumulating sessions at a similar moderate intensity is very different from deliberately combining easier running with harder workouts.

Depending on the available data, intensity can be examined through measures including heart rate, pace and running power. Used properly, this gives the app a much greater role than simply maintaining a digital training diary.

Suunto Coach

Suunto Coach is one of the most interesting parts of the platform because it attempts to turn the data collected by your watch into useful training guidance rather than simply presenting another collection of graphs.

Suunto Coach can monitor areas including training load, workout intensity, recovery and changes in sleep, helping runners understand how their training is developing. Suunto has subsequently expanded the feature with AI-powered training plans that can take account of factors including your fitness level, goals, available training time and schedule.

Within the Suunto app, compatible users can access training planning through the calendar and select a goal or programme before answering questions used to personalise the plan. Workouts can then be arranged around the runner's calendar and synchronised with the watch, taking Suunto Coach beyond simply explaining previous training and towards helping determine what to do next.

There is an important compatibility point, however. The precise Suunto Coach features available can depend on the watch, the Suunto app and the software version being used. Suunto continues to develop its coaching and training features, so runners interested in a particular function should check the current compatibility for their watch rather than assuming that every Suunto model provides exactly the same coaching tools.

It is also sensible to treat any automated coaching system as a training tool rather than an unquestionable coach. The software can interpret the information available to it, but it cannot necessarily understand every external factor affecting your running. Used alongside common sense and an awareness of how you actually feel, Suunto Coach can nevertheless provide a useful additional layer to the Suunto training ecosystem.

Creating Structured Workouts

You do not have to rely on Suunto Coach to decide your training. The Suunto app also allows compatible watch users to create their own structured workouts and transfer them to the watch.

This is particularly useful for interval sessions. Instead of trying to remember a complicated workout while running, you can build the different stages beforehand and allow the watch to guide you through them.

A workout can contain different phases such as a warm-up, intervals, recovery periods and a cool-down. Individual steps can have their own duration and training target, allowing considerably more sophisticated sessions than simply pressing the lap button every time you start another repetition.

Workouts can also be scheduled for a particular date. Once synchronised with a compatible watch, the planned workout can be suggested when it is time to train and the watch can provide guidance as you move through the different stages.

This is particularly useful during race preparation. A runner following a programme containing tempo runs, threshold sessions and intervals can build those workouts in advance and then concentrate on running rather than continually checking what comes next.

Structured workouts rely on SuuntoPlus Guides compatibility, so the precise functionality available depends on the watch being used.

What Is SuuntoPlus?

SuuntoPlus can initially be slightly confusing because it is not simply another screen containing your training statistics. Think of it as a way of extending what compatible Suunto watches can do.

The SuuntoPlus Store sits within the Suunto app and contains sports apps, guides and compatible connected features that can be added to supported watches. These can provide additional information or functionality during an activity.

For runners, that can include specialist training information, pacing-related tools, testing features and other real-time data that may not form part of the watch's standard running mode. SuuntoPlus Guides provide another layer, allowing training plans, structured sessions and other forms of guidance to appear on the watch.

Third-party services can also make use of SuuntoPlus Guides. This is how platforms such as TrainingPeaks can deliver planned sessions into the Suunto ecosystem.

There is one limitation worth understanding. A structured workout, SuuntoPlus Guide and SuuntoPlus sport app cannot all be used simultaneously during the same recorded exercise, so runners need to decide which feature they want for that particular session.

Route Planning In The Suunto App

Navigation is one of the strongest reasons for using the Suunto app, particularly if your running regularly takes you away from familiar roads.

Routes can be created within the mapping section of the app and then transferred to a compatible watch. This means you can plan where you are going on a much larger phone screen before following the route from your wrist.

For road runners this can be useful when exploring an unfamiliar town or planning a particular distance. For trail runners it becomes considerably more important because the route itself may form a central part of the activity.

Once a route has been transferred, the navigation features available on the watch depend on the particular model. Higher-end Suunto watches provide substantially more mapping capability than models designed primarily for everyday road running.

Heatmaps

One of the most useful route discovery features within the Suunto ecosystem is its heatmaps. Rather than simply showing roads and paths, heatmaps use activity information to indicate where people commonly participate in particular sports.

For runners, this can provide an excellent starting point when visiting somewhere unfamiliar. Instead of looking at a normal map and guessing which roads or trails might be suitable, you can see areas that are already popular with other runners.

Heatmaps are sport-specific, which makes them more useful than a generic popularity map. A route frequently used by cyclists is not necessarily a good running route, while trails popular with runners may not be obvious from a standard road map.

They should still be treated as a planning aid rather than a guarantee that a route is safe, accessible or appropriate. Conditions, access restrictions and paths can change, but heatmaps can make discovering potential running routes considerably easier.

Importing Routes From Strava

Suunto also integrates route planning with Strava. If your Suunto and Strava accounts are connected, compatible Strava routes can be brought into the Suunto app and subsequently transferred to the watch.

Starred routes within Strava can automatically appear in the Suunto app route library. From there, you can decide whether you want a particular route available on your watch.

This is particularly useful for runners who already have an extensive collection of routes within Strava or prefer its route creation tools. You do not have to rebuild everything simply because you have changed watch platform.

Offline Maps

It is important to distinguish between planning routes in the Suunto app and having actual maps available on the watch. The level of mapping you receive depends on which Suunto you own.

Compatible Suunto watches with onboard mapping can also store offline maps, allowing runners to navigate without mobile reception or having to carry their phone. The precise mapping and navigation features vary between models, so this is an important area to compare when choosing a Suunto watch.

The app plays an important role in managing this ecosystem, but the actual navigation takes place on the watch. Once everything required has been transferred beforehand, you do not need to keep checking your phone simply because you are following a route.

For runners considering which Suunto to buy, this is one of the major differences between models. Someone who predominantly runs familiar roads may have little need for detailed offline mapping, whereas a trail or ultra runner may regard it as one of the most important features on the watch.

Connecting Suunto With Strava

Route synchronisation is only part of Suunto's relationship with Strava. Runners can also connect their accounts so that recorded Suunto activities are sent to Strava.

For many runners this will be one of the first integrations they activate. You can continue using the Suunto app for detailed training information and watch management while using Strava for its social features, clubs, segments and wider running community.

There is therefore no need to choose between Suunto and Strava. They perform different jobs and can comfortably be used together.

SuuntoPlus also supports Strava-related functionality on compatible devices, including Strava Live Segments for eligible Strava subscribers. That extends the integration beyond simply sending completed runs from one platform to another.

Customising Your Suunto Watch

The app is also where you can manage various aspects of a compatible Suunto watch.

Sport modes can be customised so that the information shown while running better reflects what you actually want to see. A runner may want current pace, average pace, distance and heart rate readily available, while someone competing in an ultra may prioritise elapsed time, elevation and battery information.

This is worth setting up before an important race rather than accepting the default screens and discovering halfway through that the information you want requires several button presses.

The app also acts as the bridge for synchronising routes, workouts, SuuntoPlus content and other supported information with the watch. It is therefore worth becoming familiar with the app even if you prefer to analyse your completed training elsewhere.

Can You Use The Suunto App Without A Suunto Watch?

The Suunto app is fundamentally designed around Suunto's wider sports ecosystem, but it is not simply a screen that only works when a current Suunto watch is connected.

Suunto supports connections with a range of its watches, including some considerably older generations, although the features available vary significantly between devices. Modern features such as SuuntoPlus, advanced mapping and structured workout guidance should therefore not be assumed to work on every Suunto ever produced.

The more important question for most runners is whether the app is worth choosing independently of the hardware. In practical terms, its greatest value comes when paired with a compatible Suunto watch because that is what unlocks the full relationship between recording, planning, navigation and training guidance.

If you do not use a Suunto watch, there are generally more logical apps to choose purely as standalone running trackers or training platforms.

Is The Suunto App Free?

The core Suunto app and its main ecosystem features do not require runners to pay an ongoing subscription simply to analyse their Suunto activities, plan routes or access the standard platform.

That is worth considering when comparing running ecosystems because some external services place more advanced analysis, planning or route features behind paid membership tiers.

What The Suunto App Does Well

The strongest part of the Suunto app is how its different functions connect. Training analysis, structured workouts, routes, maps, SuuntoPlus and partner services do not feel like completely separate products. They are different parts of an ecosystem built around the watch.

Its navigation tools are particularly valuable. Heatmaps can help you find somewhere to run, the route planner can turn that idea into an actual course and the route can then be transferred to a compatible watch for navigation.

Training Zone has also made the platform more useful for runners interested in performance. Rather than simply presenting a long list of workouts, it encourages you to consider workload and intensity over time.

Suunto's willingness to work with third-party platforms is another strength. Runners who prefer TrainingPeaks for coaching or Strava for social features can use them without giving up the advantages of the Suunto ecosystem.

Where The Suunto App Is Less Strong

The Suunto app's mobile-first approach will not suit everyone. Runners who particularly enjoy analysing training on a large desktop screen may prefer platforms that provide a more extensive browser-based environment.

There is also a learning curve to some of the terminology. Training Zone, Suunto Coach, SuuntoPlus sport apps and SuuntoPlus Guides all make sense once you understand their roles, but the number of similarly named features can initially make the ecosystem seem more complicated than it really is.

Compatibility is another consideration. The Suunto app supports a wide range of devices, but that does not mean every feature works with every watch. Advanced maps, particular navigation features, SuuntoPlus functionality and structured workout support depend on the hardware you own.

None of these issues prevents the app from being useful, but they reinforce why runners should look at the watch and software together before choosing a platform.

Do You Need The Suunto App?

If you own a modern Suunto running watch, the practical answer is yes if you want to get the most from it. You could use the watch primarily to record activities, but the app is where much of the wider value appears. It provides the detailed training history, helps manage workouts and routes, gives access to Training Zone and Suunto Coach and connects Suunto with external services.

For a runner using a Suunto several times each week, the watch and app should really be regarded as two parts of the same product.

The Suunto App Explained: Final Thoughts

The Suunto app has developed into a strong training and navigation platform, particularly for runners who want more than basic activity recording without needing their running app to become a general-purpose smartwatch dashboard.

Its biggest strengths are the combination of Training Zone, route planning, heatmaps, structured workouts and Suunto's outdoor navigation ecosystem. Suunto Coach is becoming increasingly significant as the company expands it from interpreting training data towards actively helping runners plan what they should do next.

The app also benefits from not trying to lock runners into one system. Strava, TrainingPeaks and other partner services can remain part of your training setup, while Suunto provides the connection between those services and your watch.

If you are deciding whether to buy a Suunto, it is therefore worth looking beyond the specifications of the watch itself. You are also choosing the Suunto app, and for runners who value training analysis, structured workouts and navigation, it is an important part of what makes the wider Suunto ecosystem work.