Curious as to how you handle multiple reporting of activities? My Garmin Edge 530 cycling computer automatically reports to Garmin Connect (which in turn reports to Apple Fitness) and to Strava (which avoids bouncing back to Garmin Connect but in turn also reports to Apple Fitness). I tried running it on the Apple Watch Ultra as well the other day but while it was clear proof of concept of how good the Apple wrist heart monitoring is, it also means I now have three activities where there should be one.
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Can an Apple Watch and a Garmin live side by side?
- Thread starter dj1891
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When Apple does this I will return to them. Garmin metrics are great and I had 5 Apple apps that were not as accurate and NONE of them tied into each other. Training Peaks ties it all together but I got tired of paying them over $100 a year, so I just switched back to Garmin.
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I was disappointed too. I wanted insights into the data collected..
I've been thinking about recovery metrics and apple leading up to wwdc. I personally don't think apple will release anything like that until they have scientific studies to back up the numbers. Not sure what other people think?
I was recently sick and I did notice both Athlytic and Training Today picked up on that and suggest I do less intense workouts or none at all. But I too would like to see apple implement something natively in watchOS.
I was recently sick and I did notice both Athlytic and Training Today picked up on that and suggest I do less intense workouts or none at all. But I too would like to see apple implement something natively in watchOS.
I wouldn’t put too much weight on Garmins recovery metrics. I’ve been using a Fenix 7 for the past few months, the body battery is great, HRV seems accurate but beyond that nope, sleep for me is trash, this in turn effects everything else such as readiness, so you could get up in the morning feeling good but because Garmin has poor sleep tracking you could get “Readiness Low consider a rest day” crap like that in the morning does effect your mood. I’ve decided for me personally I don’t need a watch judging me so I’m going back to Apple, it gives me the numbers and lets me decided what I do with that.
I posted on another thread about this. Apple currently thinks this type of thing is a gimmick. It would need to update the AW to constant HRV monitoring before it released something. This might come with watchos10 and AW9 with a more power efficient setup. I would certainly expect to see it by the AW10 release.
Yeah I really hoped for that part as well - slim chance we see additional features when the new watch is launched in September, but it doesn't seem like it
I think all was disappointed by this, it’s the only fitness focused watch really that doesn’t have these metrics
Agree that the other brands might be a gimmick and Garmins maybe not super accurate. And to Apples defense, there is a LOT of different takes on the subject and not really like any of them hit's a home run.
My wish though, would just be to accept that rest-days is needed and a pretty important part of an active lifestyle. At the moment Apple is really All-in-all-days with the ring system. If you train for a marathon you can have a tough week with tons of miles. Even after a 30K training run, my morning message the day after is "You did great yesterday and hit 400% of your movement goal. Let's see if we can do that again today!"
That is just a bit too simple. It should maybe incorporate, that you after 300% exercise ring or maybe 300% move ring would get a day off - or maybe over the course of a week with a lot of training save up a rest day to use when you see fit? That would be amazing and let me have a good training week, but still keep my rings and let the body completely rest on a Sunday.
2 things. if Apple thinks it’s a gimmick than Althytic, training today and Gentler Streak are all gimmicks too. Also Garmin does over 30 HRV samples overnight while Apple does 3 or 4. Which is more accurate. BTW I have an Ultra and an Epix Pro so I am not biased and actually trust Apple more BUT I don't train with just closing rings, I need some kind of metrics.
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I pay no attention to the recovery metrics on my watch and have learned to go by my body. If I feel good that’s all that matters. I don’t need a piece of tech, which In my experience rarely reflects how I feel.
We’re becoming overly obsessed by tech that we’re losing the human element. Sure, it has its place but it shouldn’t be something we rely on to get out the door!! Just my opinion though.
I did 2 hard runs in the last 2 days and woke up zapped of energy this morning. I didn’t need my watch to tell me today is a rest day.
We’re becoming overly obsessed by tech that we’re losing the human element. Sure, it has its place but it shouldn’t be something we rely on to get out the door!! Just my opinion though.
I did 2 hard runs in the last 2 days and woke up zapped of energy this morning. I didn’t need my watch to tell me today is a rest day.
Garmin’s training and recovery metrics are so much more than just telling you whether you need a rest day. And the current generation of watches (F955, F965, Epix, F7, F8) provide a lot of data I find helpful.
For example, I refer to Load Focus quite a bit as I have a tendency to be low on anaerobic activity. When that’s out of whack I’ll sometimes throw in a 20-30 min Tabata ride on top of regular marathon training and it seems to be working for me.
Likewise, when I’m not training with a coach for a race cycle and following my own plan I’ll often use Garmin’s suggested workouts. They’ve gotten pretty good for me at making sure I’m getting a good variety of workouts, especially when you use the Race Day Widget and it adjusts the suggestions based on your upcoming race schedule.
I’ve never been able to find an AW or iPhone app that’s this comprehensive.
That being said, the Garmin music app stinks, headphones often cut out and there’s no LTE or Siri, so I still end up swapping back and forth between my Garmin and my AW. And I assume I‘ll keep doing so until one of them fills in the gaps it’s missing, be it hardware or software.
For example, I refer to Load Focus quite a bit as I have a tendency to be low on anaerobic activity. When that’s out of whack I’ll sometimes throw in a 20-30 min Tabata ride on top of regular marathon training and it seems to be working for me.
Likewise, when I’m not training with a coach for a race cycle and following my own plan I’ll often use Garmin’s suggested workouts. They’ve gotten pretty good for me at making sure I’m getting a good variety of workouts, especially when you use the Race Day Widget and it adjusts the suggestions based on your upcoming race schedule.
I’ve never been able to find an AW or iPhone app that’s this comprehensive.
That being said, the Garmin music app stinks, headphones often cut out and there’s no LTE or Siri, so I still end up swapping back and forth between my Garmin and my AW. And I assume I‘ll keep doing so until one of them fills in the gaps it’s missing, be it hardware or software.
Exactly.This is why I switched back to Garmin. Way way ahead of the 3rd party apps on Apple. BTW I just got the new Epix Pro and no problems with the headphones and the new HR sensor is very close to the Ultra
My headphones are working "ok" now on the F965, but I've given up on the Garmin music app. I throw my AW in a pocket in my shorts (since I need the LTE anyway) and it works ok.
In general, I've had better success with HR from the F965/F955 than I did with the Ultra. I often lost HR with the Ultra for minutes at a time even when wearing nylon straps, but never seem to lose anything with the F-series Garmins. But I only rely on the built-in HR sensors for long runs. For everything else I wear a strap for better detection of intervals, etc.
Generally, Apple’s UI approach annoys me. They tend to outsmart themselves in the efforts to make everything clean and it’s hard to find.
However, the Health App is just a clusterduck. They’ve thrown everything at the wall in there, lumped it all together, and you have to work at finding what you want. It’s a mess.
LOL! Just realized I already replied and probably said this more or less before.
Amazon Music. It's fine, but I much prefer Apple Music on the AW.
I find Garmin's approach to getting music on the watch clunky. Sound quality using my AirPods Pro seems better on the AW compared to Garmin. I keep a couple of playlists on my Garmin as a backup in case something happens with the AW while I'm out on a run.
I don’t have music on my watches. Podcasts however are almost better on Garmin. Syncing has never been reliable on the AW, even on something like Overcast. So on Garmin, I fire up MusicBee and sync whatever episodes I want while charging. It’s manual but it works 100% of the time.
My favourite combination as well at the moment. I also have a Whoop 4, but I like the Oura 3 better (metrics feels more balanced and accurate for me). I switched my Garmin for the Ultra last year, I like Garmin for training data but I’m not going to wear two watches. Oura and Whoop fit well with a watch. I use a Garmin Watch for swimming and an Edge for cycling, it will sync with my other apps (if not I’ll use RunGap).
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How are you keep your data in sync from both watches ? Do you just use both Apple Health and Connect or do you some how have Connect write to health ? At the moment I’m using both but would love a easy way to just use Health with my Garmin data
I don’t use 2 watches. I used Garmin from 2013 to 2019 then I switched to Apple until recently. Now I went back to Garmin. I was waiting to see if Apple would improve their software this year, but apparently they’re not. My ultra is in the drawer waiting for when they do.
I switched to Garmin and used a Fenix and found it great, but after a couple months I realized I no longer needed it. Garmin software is so easy to figure out there is no need to even wear one anymore. Here’s what the Garmin taught me and now I do all this back on an Apple Watch.
1. Set your heart rate zones correctly. Either base it off max heart rate or lactate threshold %. You can perform the latter yourself then set it accordingly in the health app. Garmin will do this for you automatically with a hard 20-30 min outdoor run.
2. Understand the three training load types - low aerobic (zone 2, easy runs or strength training ), high aerobic (zone 4, hard runs) and anaerobic (zone 5, intervals, hills, HIIT). And put in the work weekly across the types. Then slowly but steadily increase your overall training load. This is what Garmin uses as your training status score. If you’re unproductive it means you’re not doing this step properly.
3. With anaerobic workouts done weekly you’ll see your VO2Max slowly increase every week or so, but be sure to workout hard outdoors or you won’t ever see this metric improve - Garmin or Apple.
4. Don’t eat at least 3-4 hours before bedtime.
5. Skip the booze entirely.
6. Incorporate 1-3 rest days a week. Listen to your body. If you wake up tired and/really sore, make it a rest day.
7. Walk daily. A lot. It eases stress and increases cardio health. Hit 10k steps daily even on rest days.
8. I added yoga into my routine because it helps me with flexibility.
9. Hydrate. Hydrate. Hydrate.
I incorporated all this while using my Garmin, it taught me how to be a better runner, I used the running stats from my chest strap to improve my form (cadence, running power, oscillation, ground contact time) along with all the steps above, over time I realized I no longer needed my Garmin. I now do all this on my AW and never looked back. Having said all that, Garmin software is easy to figure out, I was able to just know and guess what it was going to tell me before it did. I also find their UI/UX to be absolutely dreadful lol. I don’t care what my rings on my AW say anymore either, for super active people we don’t need that kind of motivation, we already have it. Apple isn’t tailoring the watchOS feature set towards people like us. And that’s okay. I also no longer need a Garmin telling me my body battery score.
Cheers.
1. Set your heart rate zones correctly. Either base it off max heart rate or lactate threshold %. You can perform the latter yourself then set it accordingly in the health app. Garmin will do this for you automatically with a hard 20-30 min outdoor run.
2. Understand the three training load types - low aerobic (zone 2, easy runs or strength training ), high aerobic (zone 4, hard runs) and anaerobic (zone 5, intervals, hills, HIIT). And put in the work weekly across the types. Then slowly but steadily increase your overall training load. This is what Garmin uses as your training status score. If you’re unproductive it means you’re not doing this step properly.
3. With anaerobic workouts done weekly you’ll see your VO2Max slowly increase every week or so, but be sure to workout hard outdoors or you won’t ever see this metric improve - Garmin or Apple.
4. Don’t eat at least 3-4 hours before bedtime.
5. Skip the booze entirely.
6. Incorporate 1-3 rest days a week. Listen to your body. If you wake up tired and/really sore, make it a rest day.
7. Walk daily. A lot. It eases stress and increases cardio health. Hit 10k steps daily even on rest days.
8. I added yoga into my routine because it helps me with flexibility.
9. Hydrate. Hydrate. Hydrate.
I incorporated all this while using my Garmin, it taught me how to be a better runner, I used the running stats from my chest strap to improve my form (cadence, running power, oscillation, ground contact time) along with all the steps above, over time I realized I no longer needed my Garmin. I now do all this on my AW and never looked back. Having said all that, Garmin software is easy to figure out, I was able to just know and guess what it was going to tell me before it did. I also find their UI/UX to be absolutely dreadful lol. I don’t care what my rings on my AW say anymore either, for super active people we don’t need that kind of motivation, we already have it. Apple isn’t tailoring the watchOS feature set towards people like us. And that’s okay. I also no longer need a Garmin telling me my body battery score.
Cheers.