A journey of a thousand kilometres begins with a single step, and what you do today matters a great deal for reaching your fitness and training goals. The daily suggested workouts feature, available on select Garmin GPS watches and bike computers, combines the latest sports science with the training and lifestyle data recorded by your device to answer an important question: what should you do today?
The broader aim of suggested workouts is to help you improve your fitness level (VO2 max), which indicates your aerobic performance capacity. In addition, regularly completing suggested workouts at varying intensities helps you achieve an optimal training load that is ideally balanced with your progress.
Each suggested workout offers the right level of challenge while serving a specific purpose or improving a particular aspect of your performance. Depending on your Garmin device's capabilities, some or all of the following factors are taken into account when creating a suggested workout: current training load, training load focus, recovery time, sleep data and the profile of recently completed workouts.
On some days, suggested workouts focus on building endurance or on recovery. On other days, they focus on developing maximum aerobic capacity, the ability to sustain intense effort, dynamic interval performance and repeatability, or speed. The suggested workouts feature uses Garmin's long-standing on-device workout features, which provide real-time guidance and let you know when to increase or decrease intensity. This is especially useful during lower-intensity workouts, when it's easy to overshoot the target.
As with other training plans, consistency and variety are key to success. Both are built into the workout suggestion system. Completing suggested workouts regularly helps you stay on track and keep improving. On certain devices, over time you will notice lighter, harder and in-between training weeks. These patterns follow established periodisation methods used by top sports scientists and physiologists.
If you are following a dedicated training plan focused on a specific event, downloaded from Garmin Connect (a Garmin plan or one you created yourself) or from another provider, the training plan takes priority over the daily suggested workout. The suggested workout is still available in the menu, but your watch's guidance prioritises your training plan.
