I’ve been steadily increasing my lifting the last few months and I’ve been tracking everything exclusively in Garmin Connect. It works, but it feels like it lacks polish.
I’m looking for some way that I can program my strength workouts, have them sync with Garmin Connect (and by proxy, my watch). I want pattern matching for the sync. So if I am doing deadlift and program it that way, then the workout Garmin gets in the sync should match it to their internally classified exercise of Deadlift. This is so I don’t have to manually go in later at recategorize everything.
I don’t mind paying for a service.
I’ve tried fitbod, and while it’s a good app, it doesn’t sync with Garmin in any capacity.
I’ve looked int TrainingPeaks, and from their support documents it looks like they do everything except matching the exercises with Garmin. Haven’t paid for premium yet to test it myself yet.
I am currently using just the Garmin Connect app and creating my own workouts. This works well enough, but here are a few of my issues with it.
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I do % based builds. So day 1 would be something like 65% of max. This is easy to do with Garmin tools. But day 2 is 65% + #10, and then 65% +20#. Garmin can’t account for this so I have to manually calculate it.
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A cycle is often around 15 workouts. There’s no folder structure in Garmin Connect, so if you create programming for 5 different exercises, that becomes 75 custom workouts making it hard to find what your looking for. Also, I have to place each workout individually per day. I can’t set them up on a recurring schedule so all 15 show up on my calendar with 1 interaction.
I don’t know if I can really think of 1 single killer feature. It’s been using Garmin for so long that the entire software package just feels pretty encompassing. I’m primarily just running and strength training.
I started creating custom workouts for strength training this year and I love being able to follow along step by step with my preprogrammed strength routine right on my watch. No need to constantly check my phone for what’s next or what weight. I find it easiest to create these workouts using their website, though you can do it on mobile. You can also put specific weight numbers in, or % of your max. Great if your doing a cycle that you can reuse repeatedly without having to update each workout with new numbers each cycle.