Since I don’t have many races planned and I’m in good condition I’m considering following the recommended daily workouts on my Garmin 1040 and see where it takes me. Does anyone have any experience with this Garmin functionality?
No. I recently bought an 840 and occasionally look at the suggested workouts. Mine seems to be giving ok plans with a mix of endurance and interval workouts.
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I had a good play about with this by entering a 100 mile event in Garmin Connect and it worked out a plan with a base phase and build then taper. etc
I then carried on with my TR plan and watched the garmin plan keep changing to compensate.
With no plan entered it also does this and is quite dynamic which i wish TR would do.
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So I decided I’d switch over to Garmin for rest of year. I entered a 55m road race in September and entered that and the course in Garmin Connect - its set out a base build and taper programme you can see on the edge unit.
I’ve also noticed you can enter additional events too so I put in one of the oval crits I’m doing, and it asks you is this primary event, supporting or not important, and you get training suggestions.
Week 1 looks alot of volume for me especially the threshold but no big deal if I cant complete. Off away on holiday later this week and I like the fact it will just adjust with no input needed. Also, if I fancy doing a group ride with my club it adjusts also.
Wonder what build phase will be like 
today - base to 64% ftp - tr normally has me doing 69%ish
tomorrow - threshold 2 x 18 min (88-103%) - ouch !
wed - base again
thurs - threshold again 2 x 16 min - ouch again !
fri - recovery - 30 mins
sat - base 3 hrs 18
sun - base 3 hrs 18
Will keep an eye on TR future updates, may pay the odd month here or there to get ai ftp or just go do a TT to find out
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Super interesting!
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I recently had “discovered” that when I add events to my Garmin calendar, all of a sudden, Garmin’s suggested workout followed a clearly defined training plan with Base, Build, and Peak/Taper, and Recovery phases beginning about 6 months out from the event. I didn’t follow the plan that it created based on my event, but I’ve been thinking about it for the upcoming year.
I would love to hear from anyone who has tried Garmin suggested workouts (or its event-based training plan) for an extensive period of time. What was the outcome?
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Did you try the suggested workouts out? Curious how it went
I’ve done it a couple times. First off, Garmin keeps giving me FTP estimates around 90% of where I know it’s at. Sorry Garmin, it’s my off-season and not doing an FTP test. And I’m heat acclimating. So I’ve manually set FTP to 250 and Garmin keeps throwing estimates like 223, 225, etc.
Three days ago:
Garmin VO2max 4x3-min(2-min recovery)
Endurance / Warmup
- 15 minutes at 49-67% FTP
“VO2Max” intervals
4x
- 3-min at 94-107% FTP
- 2-min at 40-58%
Endurance / Cooldown
- 25 minutes at 40-58%
Apparently it uses Garmin’s estimate of my FTP, rather than what I’ve set. Garmin is low by something like 12%, so if my Garmin used my FTP estimate, then those would have been at 104-119%.
It was a hot start (97F / 36C), so out on the road I simply treated it as a pacing workout and rode the intervals near the top:
The last two turned out to be 109%, still easy, with some increased breathing in the last minute. From experience, if it wasn’t HOT and I wanted something “closer to vo2max” I would push for 115% ish on the first two and feel out how hard to go on the last two. These types of workouts are my achilles heal, so I treat them more as pacing efforts and rarely do them as max repeatable.
Hope that helps.
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I saw you mentioned this issue elsewhere. Are you able to see this estimated FTP that Garmin is assigning? If so, where? I can’t seem to find one, so wondering if it’s buried somewhere?
About once a week I end a ride and the 840 suggests an FTP update. Haven’t been taking pics, I just politely say no thank you. I recall seeing a lot between 220-225 watts.
Ok, so Garmin is making sure they don’t give an impossible workout and thats good. And I know my productive zones for endurance, tempo, and threshold. And I’ve got “give me 30 seconds and I’ll pull up Intervals and guesstimate my above threshold pacing” targets.
No issues, I’ve seen this before. You could argue it would be better if it respected my manually entered FTP, but what if fitness had declined since my last manually entered update? Then it would have been too hard and I could have blown up.
As it was, WKO5 awarded the workout with 12 minutes of work above 85% relative VO2max. Was a good stimulus, as executed, for where I am right now in my off-season.
What I would like, and need to call support on, is having an option for the default secondary target (miles) when the workout doesn’t specify it.
Usually I’ll pick a workout from my own library (with power/cadence targets), or let Join push one (with power/cadence targets) to TrainingPeaks. All of the JoinBaseCamp workouts from winter group training had cadence targets, and I’ve been grabbing old workouts from my coach and adding cadence targets. Just a preference, as I a) am always working on extending my cadence range, and b) really don’t want to see miles-on-current-lap on the default workout screen.
During my off-season I will continue to pick a Garmin suggested workout because they are good basic workouts.
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Interesting. I’m on a 1030+ and don’t remember it ever telling me an FTP estimate. Does it do that even when you use workouts from other platforms? I might need to do a Garmin Suggested Workout and see what happens. It could be the older Garmin, or that I’m not using their workouts, or that I have some setting turned off, or…
I know you know this, but for others, I also use Join these days, but I’m always curious what other platforms are doing/offering.
On the 530 and 840 it is an option you have to toggle on. It mostly just works, but you definitely need to give it at least a 20 minute effort. On the 530, after doing a 30+ minute long test, I was getting really good estimates. Really good, up and down, and surprisingly even some of my endurance rides would update it. Of course to help it, you should enter accurate LTHR and Activity Class.
1030 Plus? I’ll duck-duck-go it for you:
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I haven’t found anything on the web explaining updates to Garmin Coach training plans for cycling and running. You still get a static plan choosing a focus ex: “gran fondo plan” but the adaptive one is “Garmin coach”.
It’s nothing really new but they now use the same method for daily suggested workouts but you can choose what days you want to train, afaik.
It adapts to your your sleep, HRV and everything else they track.
I’m not using one yet but thought I’d share. It’s pretty interesting, imo. I guess the only expense would be buying a watch that tracks sleep, HRV, stress etc.
Example of the plan 2 weeks from now
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Can you export the workout to TP or something so you can do it in a different workout player? Or do you have to do it on the Garmin? I ask because I’ve tried to do workouts indoors on my Garmin in the past, and it forces me to use erg.
It’s in the Garmin ecosystem, no export.
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I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. It’s annoying but you’d have to create the workout. They have easy to remember intervals except some repeat vo2 like 30/30s.
I also don’t like that it makes you do erg mode and so I either memorize the workout or create one in their creator. Then use the lap key for intervals.
I don’t really use anything these days indoors, and have been lucky to ride outside more often. The only rides I’ve done inside have been endurance in the past few months. I have a good spot for intervals outside 15 minutes away from home.
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