I followed my Garmin's workout suggestions for a month – here's what happened

TechSmartwatchesI followed my Garmin’s workout suggestions for a month – here’s what happenedI let my Enduro tell me how much and fast I should run every day; it did wonders for my fitness and my mental healthWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

I let my Enduro tell me how much and fast I should run every day; it did wonders for my fitness and my mental health

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: Andrew Williams)

Garmin Enduro 2 worn on the wrist showing daily suggested workouts

(Image credit: Andrew Williams)

You can read more about the feature here:How do Garmin’s Daily Workout Suggestions work? The feature was introduced in theGarmin Forerunner 745, and it’s available in all thebest Garmin watches, including theGarmin Fenix 7X,Garmin Enduro 2,Garmin Forerunner 955 Solarand more. You can get some of the same effects, but without Garmin’s algorithmic smarts, with an app like Nike Run Club. A quick extract of my achievements, with the full story below:

Down in the ruts

Running has stacks of benefits. It’s a competitive sport if you want. It brings structure to your day, burns calories and has numerous mental health benefits. And maybe lets you see a bunch of dogs down at the local park. I’ve leaned heavily on all these running facets, bar the competitive stuff, over the last couple of years. However, parts of this seemed to stop working in late 2022.

Do you know that aimless feeling of being in a rut? A couple of personal issues and the 4:30 pm sunsets had laid that feeling on pretty thick — that and more or lessactuallybeing in a rut — a few months ago. However, running is still cheaper than a therapist, so I tried a way to level up my running, alongside a few other lifestyle changes, to improve matters.

If it’s run day, then it’s run day, no matter what(Image credit: Andrew Williams)

Garmin Enduro 2 worn on the wrist showing daily suggested workouts

If it’s run day, then it’s run day, no matter what

(Image credit: Andrew Williams)

Free will is out the window

The plan was to throw my free will out of the window to reduce the chance of not going for a run. I would use my Garmin watch to tell me what to do each day, run-wise. No excuses or backing out unless there was a legit reason to do so. All of Garmin’s higher-end watches have a feature called Suggested Workouts, which offers a lightly structured session based on how ready it thinks you are for exertion. Despite having reviewed what feels like a dozen Garmin watches this year, up until this point, I completely ignored this feature.

Here’s how it works. When you go to start a tracked run on your watch, your Garmin throws up a screen suggesting a time and pace. It could be a simple, everyday run, a set of intervals where you run fast for a few minutes a bunch of times, interspersed with slow sections. Or you could be thrown a VO2 Max test designed to leave you more-or-less begging for the session to end.

In watches with Morning Report, you’ll get a preview of what’s to come when you wake up. Morning Report is a series of screens that shows how you slept, what the weather’s like and so on. My initial plan was to carry this on for a month. At the least, I’d learn a bit more about how Garmin’s watches work. But I’m now six weeks into this experiment, and it has completely changed how I think about running.

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Running slow

The most obvious change the Garmin training programme made was to bring my pacewaydown for the average workout. Over the past few years, I have mostly run roughly every other day, generally at a “threshold” pace. You can think of this as the speed that leads to a high heart rate, but one you can maintain for a reasonably long time. For everyday casual runs, Garmin lowered my pace from around 5:05 per km to 5:55. I’d told myself the faster pace was my comfort zone. And, sure, I wouldn’t be left “feeling it” in my legs after a run the next day.

However, I was fooling myself, as slowing down suddenly made 10k runs feel like a doddle. In my old run style, I’d rarely run the entire 5-7km of my average run without walking a bit — constantly reviewing phone cameras is a good excuse for slowing down to capture photos — but at Garmin’s pace, the issue was more one of not speeding up too much. Going slower makes running easier: it seems ridiculous to say this, but in practice going with Garmin’s recommendations was revelatory. Suggested workouts seem to work roughly on an 80:20 principle, where only 20% of your exercise is particularly intense.

Gotta go… slow(Image credit: ASICS)

Athletes tying the laces on the ASICS Metaspeed Sky shoes

Gotta go… slow

(Image credit: ASICS)

Getting overconfident

Within a week, I was carrying on significantly longer after the workout had officially ended and envisioned beating my personal best Park Run (which is a 5k distance) time on the coming Saturday.

That didn’t happen; I was already technically breaking my rules. As it turns out, running slower for longer takes a bit of getting used to. Halfway through the first 5km Park Run after starting this program, my quads were screaming, and I ended up with a slower time than before I started this exercise. It’s a reminder that a properly structured workout plan actually has some thought behind it.

And if you do what I did, you’re not going to see the best from Garmin’s Suggested Workouts anyway. The system is smart enough that if you overdo a workout and run too fast or too long, it will re-calibrate future workouts to compensate.

Slow and steady

The following day Garmin’s energy-rating Body Battery feature had me at 5 points out of a hundred. Its message was “go back to bed”, but Suggested Workouts still had me go out for a 30-minute recovery run. Garmin Connect also suggests my exercise routine is highly imbalanced, with an anaerobic shortage and a massive overrepresentation of “high” and “low” aerobic activity.

However, it’s perhaps a reminder that some strength training — or other types of workouts — complements regular running. You’re just not going to get that with the exercise tunnel vision involved in this experiment. There is a sense of progress, however. Suggested Workouts is gradually increasing the “acute load” of the routine, the combined required effort if you like, which plays out in the sessions becoming slightly longer.

“Running helps but isn’t a solution in itself."(Image credit: Garmin)

Two athletes running on a country road

“Running helps but isn’t a solution in itself.”

(Image credit: Garmin)

What progress?

And to cap off six weeks with Garmin’s Suggested Workouts, I got a bit bold with my final sessions before writing this piece up. My Garmin Enduro 2 suggested a long run, the first time it has given me a workout session longer than an hour.

I eventually called it a day at 23km, and even then, the only discomfort was thigh rubbing — admittedly, pretty uncomfortable stuff. Before this experiment, I had never run anything longer than 10km at a time and had only tried that a handful of times over the last couple of years. As it turns out, a little structure and thought can make a big difference to an exercise routine.

Has it got me out of the rut I mentioned at the start of this article? Not really. Running helps but isn’t a solution in itself. However, there’s a real sense of empowerment in finding a little shift in perspective that can make you realise you can do things you never thought you could.

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Down in the ruts#

Free will is out the window#

Sign up to the T3 newsletter for smarter living straight to your inbox#

Running slow#

Getting overconfident#

Slow and steady#

What progress?#

Down in the ruts

Free will is out the window

Sign up to the T3 newsletter for smarter living straight to your inbox

Running slow

Getting overconfident

Slow and steady

What progress?