The Garmin workouts feature is one that I think is massively underrated, and I don’t seem to hear anyone really speaking of it. Throughout my marathon training this feature really helped me to get my workouts done without having to track what I needed to do and when during the actual running. It was mostly helpful throughout my interval training sessions, but also on those longer runs where I had to include a change of pace mid-way through.
You can easily create these workouts on the mobile app or through the website and send them to your Garmin watch. Here’s how you can use it too.
How To Find Your Garmin Workouts
On the app
Open the Garmin Connect app. Click the three horizontal lines on the top left. Click the Training section. Click Workouts.
From here, you will be able to view your workouts, find workouts and create a workout. I have A LOT of workouts saved as you’ll see from the photos, just from all my bits of training over the years.
On the website
Go to the Garmin Connect website and sign in to your account. Once logged in, you will see the full menu bar on the left. Simply select training, then workouts. Once on this page you will see all your workouts, and the options to find or create a workout.
Creating a Workout
Once onto the create a workout section, both the app and the website are very similar in the options you see.
You’ll get three basic sections to begin with: warm up, run and cool down. You will also have the options to add a step or add a repeat.
Adding a step will add another single step that you can edit. Adding a repeat with add a box that includes two different steps in there and a drop down where you can edit how many times you want to do these steps. It goes from 2-40 – perfect for intervals!
When you click onto a step, you will see a few different options. This first one is the step type: warm up, run, recover, rest, cool down or other.
Duration type gives you the options: time, distance, lap button press, calories or heart rate. I mostly use the first two, but have also used the lap button press. This is what the watch will use to manage each step of your workout. If you set the duration type as time, this step will end once that time is up, no matter what the distance is. Likewise, if you choose distance, this step will end as soon as you hit that distance.
Once that is decided, set your duration. Whether that’s 2km, 1km, 10km, 2 minutes, 10 minutes etc. You can leave it there, which is what I do on my warm up/cool down.
Or you could then switch the intensity target on. This option means that throughout this step, the watch will alert you if you aren’t hitting the intensity that you chose.
Intensity types include pace, speed, cadence and heart rate zones. I’ve only ever used pace for this setting. You can set your targets to whatever you are aiming to do, and the watch will bleep if you’re not within that target zone. It’s a good way to keep track of pace during intervals.
Once you have chosen all your settings, just press save! This will also give you the option to name your workout – I would recommend being descriptive in these for easy reference on your watch!
One of my workouts that you can see here as an example is this 3x1km one that I did in a few different versions when running often and in training. I have it set-up as below.
Warm up: duration type set to distance, duration set to 2km.
Next up I have a repeat. This is is to do the below actions 3 times.
Run: Duration type is set to distance, duration set to 1km. The intensity target type is set to pace, and my target is set to 6:00/km-6:10/km.
Rest: Duration type is set to time, duration set to 1 min 30 seconds.
Cool down: duration type set to distance, duration set to 2km.
Read more on running:
– A Beginner’s Guide to Running
– Different Types of Running Workout to Include In Your Training
– Keeping Up Marathon Training With A Full Time Job
Adding the workout to your watch
Once you have saved your workout, it needs to be sent to your watch. All you need to do here is click the little phone icon when you select your workout on the app, or if using the website just tap on the send to device button in the top right
There will be an attempt to connect to your watch so it can receive it, but this will happen whenever the watch next connects.
Selecting the workout on your Garmin Watch
When you want to use your workouts all you need to do is click the run button, go down to the training section, click on my workouts and they should be listed there! If you can’t see them, you might just need to re-check that the workout has been sent to your watch, and the watch has connected.
Then you’re ready to go! You can actually skip steps whilst doing the workout by pressing the lap button whilst it’s still running. This will move you onto the next step. The stop/start button works as normal to pause your run and from here you can exit/save if necessary.
Have you ever used Garmin workouts? Let me know how you get on.
