The powerhouse behind your sports watch is Garmin Connect. In the fitness world, Garmin is one of the most well-known and respected names. In its portfolio, Garmin has a wide variety of fitness devices and trackers. Garmin Connect is where the magic happens because it measures and analyses your exercises, monitors your heart rate and movement, and holds you data your watch collects for easy viewing.
You can get Garmin Connect in two forms: a mobile app for your phone and an online service accessible on the web. Both forms allow you to use a plethora of extra resources to boost your fitness and become a stronger athlete, cyclist, or simply more healthy in general.
All of your data is still available in Garmin Connect, whether you have a basic Vivosmart 4 tracker or a supercharged and feature-rich Fenix 7 outdoor watch, or both…
What does Garmin Connect do?
The Garmin Connect apps bring your Garmin devices to life, allowing you more control over your fitness, from preparing for a marathon and setting monthly milestones, joining team activity competitions, to smashing other runners’ best times along your local routes.
My Day
My Day stores all your activities data and provides an overview of your activities during the last 24 hours. You can use the collapse or expand buttons to give a less or more visual display of your everyday activities.
This feature will show all of the data from your day based on the sensors used in your Garmin watch. It can include the following parameters:
- Heart rate at rest
- Training Status
- Number of Steps
- Intensity minutes
- Breathing Rate
- Level of stress
- Caloric intake
You can extend all of these parameters if you want to look deeper into the results. If you press on Heart Rate, you can see a graph of your heart rate on the screen.
- Read more about how heart rate sensors work here.
To get a clear understanding of your weekly averages, you can scroll down and check My Day results from the same day and the previous seven days.
Also available in My Day, you can enable NFC payment with your device and track your hydration levels manually.
How to Edit My Day
You can personalize the display of My Day. You can delete or reorder the parameters by tapping Edit My Day. If needed, you can also delete whole information panes.
Sleep Stats
Automated sleep detection support is present in every new Garmin, which collects data while you sleep.
You can configure your daily bedtime hours in the app. A graph will tell you how much sleep you got inside or outside of those bedtime hours.
Tap the three blue lines button in the upper-left corner to schedule your bedtime hours.
- Tap on Settings
- Then select user Settings and click on Sleep Settings
- Enter time and click OK
To compete with Fitbit and other smartwatches in the realm of fitness tracking, Garmin has added new sleep features that include more data to review after you go to sleep.
You will also see Sleep Cycles, reflecting how much time you spend in each sleeping period indicating your progress through light and deep sleep.
How to Adjust the Connect Step Goal in Garmin
Garmin encourages you to walk more and sleep more by adjusting your goals to your lifestyle.
Sometimes the lengthy phase of locating your stage (and the random goal numbers) can be annoying, but you can always return to manual mode.
- Go to the Steps tile on the My Day screen
- Tap on the Steps Number for more details, and then select Edit Goal
- Turn off the Auto Goal option and enter your desired number
Calendar
Often it can be challenging to locate the particular session you’re searching for because Garmin Connect gathers so much information.
To access the collected details of your day, navigate to the Calendar tab.
Connect separates data such as steps, heart rate, and sleep (if you own a compatible device), along with runs, golf, and cycles. You can evaluate your stats by selecting a day and then the type of data.
It can be challenging for runners who wish to check their results to find what they need in the app. The calendar is the easiest way to find any individual run.
However, if you want a more comprehensive view of your results, search for a drop-down menu in the upper left corner of your device.
- Tap the Action Stats
- Then choose Running
You can check your most recent running activities there, with those three circles showing distance, time, and calories.
You can view additional information through additional tabs for pace, timing, and speed.
You will also be able to view details such as Training Effect, Temperature, and even Running Dynamics with more advanced models of Garmins.
Furthermore, the option to connect accessories such as power meters, along with Stryd and Garmin’s own Running Dynamics Pod, enables its users to access advanced statistics here as well. If numbers aren’t your thing, there are plenty of fun graphs that break down your results.
How to Check Personal Records
It’s natural to want to look back at the enormous personal bests you set, and the good news is that you can check all your records. However, as things stand today, it is not particularly easy.
You can choose your profile picture and statistics on the Garmin Connect app. You can see here your step targets and your running history over the last twelve months.
You’ll need to go to the mobile app to access personal information if you want to see your running PBs. You can view the half marathon, marathon, 5k, 10k, and longest distance runs from here.
We know how much people like online badges, and it’s a great way to reflect on your accomplishments and set new goals. These badges can be obtained through a list of activities such as steps, sleeping, and even running.
Tap your profile picture in the Connect phone app, then go to Activity to find your badges. You can access badges from there that are still available for users and those that have already been won.
Edit your Data
Sometimes Garmin names your runs like Woodside Ward Run, which no one understands and seems quite dull. You can, however, edit any activity.
- Go to the item in the Calendar
- Click the three dots at the upper right corner of the screen and select Edit Activity
If your data was mislabeled, you can add notes, name the activity, and even modify the exercise form from here.
How to Transfer Garmin Data to Strava
Garmin Connect is a fantastic service, particularly for those who enjoy a variety of sports, but when it comes to watching and sharing, Strava is unmatched. Fortunately, you can effectively and conveniently transfer sessions from Garmin to Strava. If you want to connect Garmin to Strava, then follow these easy steps mentioned below:
- Go to strava.com/upload/device from your computer
- Make sure that you have installed the Garmin app
- Click on the Settings and select Link Other Services
- From the list, select Garmin
- Enter your information
As soon as you connect your Garmin watch with Link, Garmin will automatically send your workout to Strava.
How to Connect Apple Health and Garmin Data
If you have an iPhone and want to gather data from all of your wearable devices and health and wellness applications in one spot, Apple Health will allow you to do so. The great news is that it fits well with Garmin Connect, helping you gather various data (depending on the sensors on your Garmin) such as heart rate, steps, intensity minutes, heart rate at rest, and more.
Follow these easy steps if you want to link Garmin Connect to Apple Health:
- On your iPhone, launch the Health app
- At the bottom of the screen, tap on Sources to search for platforms that are supported
- Select the option of Connect
- From here, you can choose the details you want to share with Apple Health
- Using Performance Stats, you can get a better understanding of your body
Performance Stats of Garmin Connect
If you’re becoming interested in running and have a high-end Garmin tracker with a broader set of data to monitor, you can analyze this data through performance stats.
Inside the main drop-down menu, Performance Stats is present. It displays hardcore running statistics such as Status insights, Garmin’s recent Training Effect, and lactate threshold.
Improve your performance
Garmin has taken a cue from Strava’s performance, which helps you to turn every section of the road into a race.
Connect on the web allows you to build segments. You can create courses of any length, sprint them, and set the highest time. Other Garmin users can then try to beat your time by running the same stretch of road or park as you. You can also select to race the segments that others have created.
The Garmin Connect Mobile app uses your GPS position to search a map and then take on the segments closest to you. This feature takes things a step further as it is a perfect way to bring some additional competitiveness to your training runs and transform them into a game.
Adjust your heart rate levels
Your training should be as efficient and precise as your heart rate data. The distinction between aerobic ability training and endurance-building runs can be in just two beats per minute. Setting heart rate levels is a good idea if you want to get the most out of your workout. It is easy to customize heart rate levels. Go to Garmin Devices from the drop-down menu on your Garmin Connect.
- Select your paired computer and search for User Settings
- Instead of depending on the preset settings, you can customise your heart rate levels from here.
- At the top of each column, you can choose either %max or BPM
- Enter the lowest value for each field
After that, the Garmin devices would provide you with readouts that are uniquely suited for you.
Sadly, based on the most recent workout, most Garmin watches do not update these stats automatically. It is crucial to do it manually as much as possible to ensure that your training sessions are producing the desired results.
Connect with Friends in Your News feed
Garmin Connect allows you to find and find friends through your social connections (e.g. Facebook) and also your phone contacts. When connected, you can share activities and accomplishments, based on your privacy settings. Information can be shared in your news feed or when taking on challenges. Invite your friends using your favorite messaging apps (e.g. Whatsapp) to build a community of fitness enthusiasts. Connecting through sports is why it’s called Garmin Connect! (It also connects your device…)
Using Connect IQ
Connect IQ is another App from Garmin which opens a beautiful gate to a world of Apps and Watch faces called the IQ Store (of which a lot are free). Easy to navigate, this app really helps you play around with watch faces and find the most popular and worthy Apps for your needs. We found this App completemts Connect by enhancing your use of your Watch with beautiful watch faces and best-in-class Apps for listening to music, running, navigating, cycling, walking, fat-burning, or any other popular sports activity or workout dashboard that fits your needs.
Using Connect IQ you could also customize and quickly create your own unique watch faces. Enjoy finding the Apps and displays that are right for you.
Conclusion
We hope you enjoyed our rundown of Garmin Connect! Hopefully, you’ve discovered some useful functionality that you didn’t know about before. We wrote a guide that will help you decide which Garmin watch is the right one for you, so check it out here.
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Last Updated on March 9, 2022
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