This past September, it appears Polar started the “Polar Journal”, a monthly publication about all things sports/fitness/etc. Given it launched in September, it easily got drowned in the gazillions of other sports tech news stories that occupy that historically slammed month. But more importantly, some of the stories in that initial issue were frankly pretty boring, bland, and without much concrete geekery/detail.
But just a few minutes ago, I stumbled into the most recent issue, from this month (February 2025), and it’s really damn good. Like, surprisingly good. This issue is on female athletic topics, and it’s got some really deep scientific dives on a number of topics (seen below). Each article is packed with details, but also more critically, packed with citations left and right.
More curious, I then went back an issue, and turns out, that one’s got a number of good articles too – also packed with details. It looks like, over the course of the fall, the company slowly pivoted towards heavy geekery and data, versus wishy-washy blah. Which is awesome. The internet is full of wishy-washy blah, we don’t need any more of that. Versus this stuff is packed and concrete.
A few examples of articles that caught my eye with sufficient geeky within are:
– How Endurance Training Transforms Your Blood
– What Are the Benefits of Cycle Syncing Your Training?
– The Bizarre Tales from the Early Olympic Games
As a quick trend here, most of the best ones are tagged ‘Science’, and seem to be all written by Bronwyn Griffiths. The rest of the articles are fine, but Bronwyn’s are definitely top-notch. Also, it seems like as the issues have gone on, the articles have gotten longer and more detailed (which I appreciate).
You can find the base homepage of the journal here:
And, you can also add that to your RSS reader as well (which is how I stumbled upon it, as this issue went into my Polar Flow updates RSS feed for whatever reason). I’m not terribly sure how other people would know about this, perhaps they get e-mails or such. It looks like I got one e-mail back in September in Dutch (since my account was listed as Netherlands), but after that, nothing.
Either way, I rarely find company efforts like this good. But this was an exception. The articles aren’t crammed full of Polar product marketing, but are hyper-focused on giving specific and detailed data/advice, regardless of which product you use. In many ways, it kinda reminds me of the TrainerRoad Podcast.
In any case, I just wanted to briefly call it out, in hopes it continues.
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hi, where did you find the RSS feed address? My reader cannot find it. could you please post it on the article?
thanks in advance!
Is there an RSS feed?
So I have this added to Feedly: link to support.polar.com (which is for all updates), and Feedly consumes it just fine. Though interestingly, I don’t see the Journal in that feed
That said, my feed I found it in was this one: link to polar.com (which seems to cover it)
So, here I am thinking…..hmmmmm…… so, this RSS stuff is a real thing?
😀
My extensive research (aka one Google search and reading the AI Overview) suggests that we’ve missed the boat on this one – it’s decreasing in popularity – but there are still diehards who want to keep it going. For what purpose (that social media can’t provide) is beyond my 30 second attention span, I’m afraid
I’ve see those three letters together for years “rss” and have always thought,.. so that will let even more stuff bombard me with information I’m not sure I even need?……I’ll pass
I don’t think until this story I’ve ever heard a person in the wild say they use it, yet as soon as Ray said it I’m like, wait what? ..lol
Now I wonder if I have missed something
RSS is a great piece of technology. RSS lets you subscribe to all of the sites you enjoy and see all of the updates in one place. You typically get a portion of the full article, enough to see if you are interested or not, then a link directly to the site where the content originated. It is a great way to get news that you are specifically interested in without having to rely on “the algorithm” and all the downsides of that. In the days before the takeover of social media, RSS readers were very common (look up Google Reader, an old favorite).
Indeed. Almost every news/etc site on the planet still supports RSS feeds, it’s how I consume virtually everything in the news realm.
I saw it in my Strava feed, where I’m following Polar.
Hello Ray,
Off topic, when are the Tactix 8 videos coming out? I’m surprised to see you haven’t uploaded another great video yet, hope you’re doing well.
Regards,
Vale
I don’t have a Tactix 8, so…
I interact with a lot of US army and marines as well as European military. I have never seen a Tactix in real life — but various versions of fenix are pretty much ubiquitous.
I’m not sure who buys them, but I think the target market is actually a particular type of hunters in the mountain west and militia enthusiasts.
The Marq Commander — I think that is for mercenaries that are doing rather well.
Will you have a heart rate monitor review for the new Powerbeats Pro 2?
Or…are they so bad that they aren’t worth a review for techy runners and cyclists?
Working on it.
rss is like social media sure, except with an rss feed you can choose and control what you see, when you clear it off your read list, you can go back and find it again if you want… so like social media except 1000% better, aside from the fact that yes, it is for some reason going out of fashion so not every content creator supports it.
like Ray, i use Feedly to read my content. the free version is fine but if you pay a little you can create your own feeds from web pages so get around the limited support for rss
Always ticks me off when these VO2Max (or other athletic metrics) charts by age just end at 65, as if we’re all dead or inactive after that point.
Just glanced at the titles and the one on RED-S caught my eye. That is an out of date concept. It is now recognized that underfeeding is a problem not just for women but for men too which is why it has been renamed Low Energy Availability. Yes, I know lots of people still use the term red-s but it really needs to DIAF. It’s sexist.
But you didn’t read the article?
“In fact, it wasn’t until 2014 that the concept of RED-S was broadened by the IOC to include all genders. The redefinition looked beyond reproductive health and highlighted how energy deficiencies can affect many systems in our bodies. So, it’s important to remember when considering who may be affected by RED-S that it includes men. It includes everyone.”
How is the term relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S) sexist?
Indeed, really weird claiming RED-S is a sexist term. Perhaps a troll?