10 Garmin smartwatch features that work better when you wear your watch to sleep

^07.11.2022

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Whether you realise it or not, a lot happens in your body while you sleep. Connections between your brain cells reorganise, cells regenerate, energy levels are restored and molecules such as hormones and proteins are released – all while you move through different sleep stages.

So it makes sense that if you want a complete picture of how your body is functioning, you should also track your physiological metrics while you sleep. That is why it is important to wear your Garmin smartwatch in bed: you can use features such as sleep score or the built-in alarm clock, and you will also see improved accuracy in other data that requires 24/7 monitoring to give a true picture of how your body is doing.
Let’s look at some Garmin smartwatch features (which vary by device) that are affected by sleep mode.

1. Sleep score

OK, this one is obvious. Garmin smartwatches are good, but they can’t analyse your sleep quality from your nightstand or a drawer. To track your sleep, you need to wear your watch. And we recommend paying attention to your sleep habits over time. Sleep plays an important role that is directly linked to physical and mental health, and chronic sleep deprivation has been associated with high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, poor mental health and type 2 diabetes. By checking your Garmin sleep score every morning, you get a rating of how well you slept based on six different factors, allowing you to make changes such as going to bed earlier or having less caffeine during the day.
Want to see how your sleep stats compare to your peers? We analysed how well Garmin users sleep – and, unsurprisingly, quality sleep also went hand in hand with other positive metrics.

2. Body Battery energy monitoring

Unique to Garmin smartwatches, Body Battery gives you a real-time overview of your personal energy reserves. Using Firstbeat Analytics , Body Battery reflects your physical activity, stress, rest and sleep, and how they affect your energy levels. On a scale of 1–100, your Body Battery number shows how ready you are to take on a challenge at any given moment, or whether you need rest instead. Quality sleep is the most valuable recovery time for your body, so you need to wear your watch while sleeping to track how effective that recovery is.

3. Resting Heart Rate

Garmin smartwatches provide all-day heart rate data using the Garmin Elevate heart rate sensor, an optical sensor built into the back of your Garmin smartwatch. It detects your heart rate by shining green light through your skin, which is reflected by the red blood cells in your blood vessels. There are many important reasons to track your heart rate, and one of them is knowing your resting heart rate (RHR).
RHR is the number of times your heart beats per minute (bpm) when your body is at rest. Garmin wearables usually measure RHR during sleep, typically just before you wake up. In adults, RHR can range from 60–100 bpm, although Garmin data shows that the more active a person is, the lower their RHR tends to be. A lower RHR usually reflects cardiorespiratory fitness, quality sleep and low stress – but for the most accurate reading, you need to wear your watch while you sleep.

4. Heart rate variability (HRV) status

HRV is another important metric that Garmin technology measures using your heart rate. You may not have noticed, but your heart doesn’t beat at a regular rhythm – it’s not a metronome. The time between each heartbeat varies, and while these changes are usually not dramatic, they provide important information about your body. These timing variations are regulated by your nervous system, and changes in your HRV status can show how well your body responds to stress and relaxation. Analysing these shifts helps form the basis for stress tracking, Body Battery monitoring and sleep tracking, but all this analysis takes time. For your watch to give you an HRV status, you need to wear it regularly overnight for at least 3 weeks. This establishes your HRV baseline, against which your sleep can be compared in the future. Garmin smartwatches measure your HRV status only during sleep – so if you don’t use your watch while sleeping, you won’t benefit from this feature.

5. Pulse Ox (pulse oximetry – blood oxygen monitoring)

Compatible Garmin smartwatches can act as pulse oximeters and estimate how much oxygen is in your bloodstream at any given time as it circulates through your body. Although Garmin smartwatches are not intended for medical use, you can turn on the Pulse Ox feature to measure oxygenated blood during sleep, giving you insight into how well your heart, lungs and blood are working together. If you notice anything that seems unusual in your Pulse Ox readings, you can raise your concern with a healthcare professional to determine whether further examination is needed.

6. Training status

Garmin’s training status feature is a tool that lets athletes see how effectively they are training. Compatible Garmin watches take in a wide range of daily data, including your VO2 max, HRV status and training volume, to give you a comprehensive overview of your personal fitness along with specific guidance to help you reach your goals. You’ll see one of 10 status categories, ranging from peaking to overreaching – and the more data, the better. How well your body responds to all situations, including sleep, is an important indicator of your overall fitness.

7. Recovery time

The recovery time feature on compatible Garmin smartwatches gives you a personalised overview of how long it will take for your body to fully recover from the work you’ve done. Naturally, sleep tracking data is important here, as sleep is a key factor in your body’s recovery. A particularly bad night’s sleep will extend the recommended time before your next hard workout, while a few nights of quality sleep can help you get back on track faster.

8. Daily suggested workouts

Available on select Garmin GPS watches and bike computers, the daily suggested workouts feature aims to improve your fitness level and achieve an optimal training load by selecting daily running or cycling workouts designed to provide just the right challenge. How tough the challenge is gets decided by taking into account several factors, including your current training load, load focus, recovery time, the profile of your recent workouts and – you guessed it – sleep data. Because sometimes a good (or bad) night’s sleep is the difference between what is challenging enough and what is nearly impossible.

9. Training readiness

Even if your training status has started to decline, that doesn’t mean it’s time to start giving 110%. Using mainly sleep tracking data from the previous night and the recovery needs of recent activities, as well as your acute training load, HRV status, sleep history and stress history, Garmin’s training readiness feature does exactly what it says – it tells you how ready your body is for hard training. Pushing your limits before your body is ready can do you more harm than good, so getting better insight from your sleep data can help pinpoint exactly which type of workout best suits your needs.

10. Real-time stamina

The stamina feature on compatible Garmin watches helps describe your capacity for good or poor performance. Measured on a scale of 0–100%, your stamina score reflects how long you can reasonably continue at your current effort level. When resistance to fatigue is at play, so of course is sleep. To calculate your real-time stamina, your Garmin smartwatch takes into account your physiological metrics, including both recent and longer-term activity history and training level.

With a Garmin smartwatch, a world of physiological data is at your fingertips – or more precisely, on your wrist – as long as you choose to wear it. Next time you hit the hay, be sure to keep your watch on so it can do its job the best way possible. Don’t have a Garmin smartwatch yet? That’s OK – we don’t judge. You can fix that here and collect more information about your habits and how they affect your body. Because the more you know, the better you can train.