A little known fact about me is that when I first started in college I was majoring in Sports Medicine. At the time I had the opportunity to take an entire semester long course in Fitness and Exercise Testing. At the college we had an entire laboratory of fitness and exercise testing equipment. I learned the significance of measuring the volume of oxygen consumption and Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. To measure these, we had to hook up athletes to all types of contraptions, with wires dangling, hoses attached and all matter of monitoring devices and breathing apparatus in tow.

I was a competitive boxer when I was a teenager, and in 2008 I decided to have another go at it, more for fun than anything. I was training very intensely and started to look into ways I could maximize my training routing without over-training. That is when I discovered the Suunto T6c … and I was blown away. I was not aware that it was possible to effectively perform the tests that the T6c does outside of a laboratory environment. Prior to the T6c, it just wasn’t possible.

Using the T6c is no different than any other heart rate monitor. You simply wear a heart rate belt around your chest. The T6c implements a discovery by college researchers that found that millisecond level variations between heartbeats provided an pretty accurate measurement of data.

The T6c comes with a cable to connect the watch to your computer and fitness manager software that allows you to easily upload your workout data. the software allows you to graph your workout data over any period of time you choose to determine your actual improvement in key performance metrics such as vo2, EPOC and Suunto’s own Training Effect metric, which is a useful metric that combines all of the data in a very effective manner that helps to make it more meaningful and actionable by for athletes without specific training in exercise physiology.

The T6c is useful for any serious novice or competitive athlete that is looking to maximize their performance. The T6c has a full gamut of accessories available including pedometer, GPS, cycling computer and others, though I have not used any of these accessories.