How to Use Garmin Daily Suggested Workouts

If you’re like many runners who’ve joined the smartwatch movement, you already know that watches are no longer just for keeping time. Smartwatches do everything from keeping track of your daily mileage and measuring your heart rate on runs to tracking sleep, recovery, and stress. With Garmin’s Daily Suggested Workout feature, you can take the power of your smartwatch even further and access individualized training plans prepared specifically for you.

Garmin’s Daily Suggested Workout is a feature available on over 30 Garmin watch models that prompts you with a potential workout to follow based on data collected during previous activities and day-to-day monitoring. Daily Suggested Workouts provide customized training suggestions for what your body needs on that specific day. With continued use, Daily Suggested Workouts are intended to help users improve their VO2 max, a measure of how much oxygen your body uses while exercising, which is commonly used to determine fitness level.

Garmin wearables collect data whenever they are worn, regardless if you are actively working out or not. This continuous data collection helps your smartwatch determine the differences in your biometrics when your body is at rest or in motion. Your Garmin watch uses six part factors when generating your workout suggestions: training status, training load and load focus, VO2 max value, recovery time, sleep data, and profile of recently performed workouts. Garmin will also factor in your scheduled races on wearables compatible with the Garmin Race Event feature.

Because Garmin draws on multiple measures to determine the correct workout, you can expect quite a bit of variability in your Daily Suggested Workouts. Depending on the day your watch may prompt you with a simple mileage run, or a workout - all based on what your body is telling Garmin you need. While the Daily Suggested Workouts are intended to improve VO2 max and not necessarily making you run faster, VO2 max training is a time tested method for improving your running fitness. You can guess more about VO2 max workouts here.

Before starting any new training regimen, it’s important to always check with your physician or healthcare provider. To access your Daily Suggested Workout, you first need to ensure that your watch is compatible with the feature.

Once you’ve verified that your watch is compatible with Daily Suggested Workouts, you will need to log at least two activities before your watch will generate a suggested workout (remember that if you’re wanting to use Daily Suggested workout for biking, you will need to log two biking specific activities). These two (or more) initial workouts will help Garmin determine factors such as your training status, training load, and recovery time.

To find your Daily Suggested Workout, begin by navigating to the “run” or “bike” activity profile. After selecting the correct activity profile, press and hold the menu button.

Select “training”. From there, select “workouts” and then “suggested workouts”.

Once you have selected “suggested workouts”, you will be able to view a preview of your workout. By pushing the start button, your watch will automatically begin taking you through the suggested workout.

Most workouts will begin with a suggested time and pace. If you are being taken through an interval style workout, your Garmin will count down the suggested time before buzzing and/or beeping and prompting you with the next phase of your workout.

The short answer is, everyone! Because Daily Suggested Workouts are tailored to you using your specific data, they are a great tool for anyone looking to improve their aerobic fitness, regardless of your experience level.

Yes! In fact, Garmin has an entire library full of workouts, ranging from strength training to yoga. Garmin has also partnered with Adapt to Perform to create over 30 workouts tailored for wheelchair users. All of Garmin’s workouts are accessible on the Braces + Supports.

Garmin produces dozens of smartwatches, making choosing the right watch feel overwhelming. We’ve narrowed down a few of our favorite options for Daily Suggested Workouts to help you decide.

Who We Are

There’s a reason Garmin’s Forerunner series is so popular with runners. Designed with running in mind, the Forerunner series has all the features you need to elevate your daily training. At a slightly lower price point than some other Garmin models, the Forerunner 55 is a great beginner smartwatch.

This run-only smartwatch comes with GPS tracking, built-in heart rate monitor, and more than 10 different sports apps to track all your daily activities. The Daily Suggested Workout feature is only available for running in this model.

How to Pick Running Shoes

If you’re looking for a more traditional smartwatch that can still keep up on your biggest workout days, consider the fenix 7S.

With the same activity tracking capabilities as the Forerunner 55, the fenix 7S has additional lifestyle features such as the ability to call and text directly from your watch. If you're looking to keep up with all your activity tracking needs without giving up style, the fenix 7S might be for you.

Garmin Train smarter than ever before

All of Garmins workouts are accessible on the Train smarter than ever before is a data lover’s dream.

The epix is a durable smartwatch for someone looking to live an athlete’s life. Tracking your miles is only the beginning of what the epix will do for you. At a higher price point than the Forerunner and fenix series, the epix is a good option for someone not willing to compromise on accessing the features you need to level up your health game.

You can find the full list of Daily Suggested Workout compatible watches here.