Garmin Connect App

The Garmin Connect App does so much more than show you your stats for runs.

I look at my stats after every run (if you have a Garmin, you know how “fun” the unproductive screen can be, lol).

I’ve learned how to use the App for creating running workouts as well, and this tutorial will help you do it too!

Steps to Creating a Workout

From your home screen, go to the “More” dots on the lower right hand side.

Go into “Training”, and then pick “Workouts”

Hit the plus sign next to “Create a Workout”.

Hit the “Run” option (I’ll assume that’s why your here, lol)

You will reach this page, which is the outline of a workout.

You can add notes at the top, which I sometimes do if I’m building a workout for a client and they use a Garmin.

As a note to coaches, I really like using the Garmin Clipboard App for athletes who have a Garmin account. It’s free to use and is a cool little tool to communicate and get feedback.

Let’s create an Interval workout so I can show you adding a step and a repeat.

Warm Up

In the “Steps” section, you’ll see that the Warm Up has a “Lap Button Press” as the transfer to the next step, which would be the “Work” or “Run” section of our interval.

If you know me, you’ll know I’m not a fan of the lap button push because I forget to do it. So let’s change it.

Click the “Warm Up” and you will see this page.

You’ll see a “Remove” in the upper right hand corner, which you can use to eliminate a Warm Up for the workout. For ours though, we want the warm up.

Let’s go into “Step Type”, which is listed as “Warm Up” as the default.

You can see a list of options for this step. Just click on what you want to name it. I’m sticking with “Warm Up”

Again, there is another place to enter notes. I’ll skip it, but if you aren’t clear on what you are supposed to do for the warm up you could put in something like “walk slowly/briskly” or whatever would be meaningful to you.

The next section in “Duration”.

Again, you’ll see that the default is a Lap Button Press. If you want to change that, go hit “Duration Type” and go to the next screen.

I want to set this up for time, and once you hit your choice it will automatically go back to the Warm Up screen.

If you choose “Time”, that default is 3 minutes. I’d like to do a 5 minute warm up, so hit “Duration”

You can spin the wheel at the bottom of the screen to whatever time you want to warm up.

Since this is a warm up, I don’t want any targets. This will be a walk, so “No Target” will stay checked.

We are done with the Warm Up step, so go back to the workout builder.

One note- see the “Remove” at the top of the screen? This will delete the warm up step, which will come in handy if you are warming up with something other than walking or jogging.

Run

Let’s set up the run part of this workout.

You’ll hit “Run” just like for Warm Up, and you will see the same listing as before.

In “Duration”, I put in 5 miles.

This time for Target Type, I want to run at a certain pace.

You’ll see you now have a Target range, which has a default. A wheel will come up for you to set the minimum and maximum range.

Adding a Repeat

Ok, so since this is an Interval Workout, we are going to “Add Repeat”. If this was just a 5 mile run, we would just go to the “Cool Down”.

The screen above is showing you that you can move the Run we set up into the repeat. Hard press the section you want to move with your finger and drag it into the repeat, if that’s what you would want to do (not really realistic that someone would run 5 miles, do an interval workout and run another 5 miles before doing more repeats, I just wanted to show you that you can move things around).

Ok, this picture is our “new” workout. I changed the 5 mile run to only 2, with no pace (so no target). This run is just leading up to intervals, so I just want to jog it.

The default interval is 1 mile with 3 minutes rest. Let’s change that up.

If I go into the Run section, I’ll keep the Step Type a Run. This time, I want to run the intervals by time so I’ll choose that instead of distance. You will then input how long the interval will be, again using a wheel.

One of my favorite workouts is 10x 30 seconds run/30 seconds recovery. You can either set a pace for this workout, or just run really hard for the 30 seconds, which is what we will do. So no “Target Type” needs to be entered.

You will set up the rest the same way as the run.

Now that that’s done, change the default “2 Times” to 10.

You can also “Add Step”.

Cool Down

Since I use additional mileage as my cool down, I’ll delete that extra step and go into cool down.

I’ll set that up by distance for 2 miles, no target.

IMPORTANT

Don’t delete all that hard work! Make sure to hit the “Save” button in the upper right hand corner!

Name Your Workout

Once you “save” a workout, a prompt will pop up to ask you to name it.

I like to be pretty specific in naming my workouts so they are easy to find when I want to do it again.

Hit the “Save” button.

Now you can see the workout has been saved to the list of “My Workouts” for you to add to your calendar.

Getting it to Your Garmin

Now that you spent all this time creating a workout on your phone, here is how to get that on your watch.

See the phone icon circled in the corner? When you pick that, a screen will pop up showing the compatible devices that you can send the workout to.

So within the Garmin family of watches, there are certain types of workouts that may not be supported depending on your particular watch.

My Forerunner 245 for example will not support HIIT workouts. I can build them on my phone and use them if I want from there, but they won’t go to the watch. Just keep that in mind. If you build a workout type that you haven’t done before, do a simple one that doesn’t take up too much of your time and try to send it to the watch you have to check and see if it is compatible or not.

Since this workout is supported, you will tap the watch you want to send it to and a pop up will tell you it will be available on the watch when it syncs with the phone. Force sync if you are wanting to use it right away and check before you leave to start the workout that it did so.

When you tap the 3 dots in the upper right hand corner, you’ll see this screen:

You can edit the workout (helpful if you are advancing in your speedwork to faster paces). Duplicate it (really not sure why you would need to, but I guess I can see someone wanting one with just a little difference and they could edit the duplicate and still keep the original). Rename the workout (in case you change it and have a detailed name like I do), Add it the Calendar or Delete it.

To add to calendar, click on that option and our handy dandy wheel will come up where you can select the date and the workout will be added to the calendar and then pop up on your watch the day you want to do it.

In your calendar, you can choose a day and add a workout right from there, by choosing the 3 dots in the corner.

When you choose to add a workout by this method, all the workouts you loaded or created to “My Workouts” will be listed and you can choose one to add. Keep in mind the workout needs to already be built.

Ok, we are finally ready to workout using our watch!

Using the Watch for a Created Workout

If your workout is already chosen for the day, when you hit the “Start” button on your watch as if you are doing a regular run, a screen will pop up with options.

You can scroll down (use your “Down” button on the watch) to either View the workout or skip it.

To view the workout, scroll to “View” and then hit the “Start” button. To see all the steps, continue to use the “Down” button.

To get out of “View” mode, hit the “Back” button. Scroll back up to “Do Workout” and hit “Start”

A pop up will come up telling you to start the timer to do the workout.

You can see the count down for the 5 minute warm up.

If for any reason you decide you don’t want to warm up for whatever you inputted, you can hit the “Back” button, which is also your “Lap” button.

IMPORTANT- Even though none of the steps we built depend on a lap button to move to the next step, if you hit the “Back” button during a workout, you will be moved to whatever the next step is anyway. During a workout that is created, the “Back” button is a “Lap” button. DO NOT HIT THAT BACK BUTTON DURING A WORKOUT UNLESS YOU WANT TO MOVE TO THE NEXT STEP WITHOUT COMPLETING THE STEP YOU ARE ON.

I emphasis this because I’ve made that mistake several times and it is very frustrating.

Questions?

I tried to be pretty thorough for this tutorial, but if you have any questions you can email me at sherry@wrinkledrunner.com or use the Contact page to get in touch with me and I will get back to you!