Garmin watches are like onions: it’s worthwhile to peel down a number of layers of settings to get to the good things (after which cry from the exhausting exercises).
Each time I swap from Garmin to a different watch model, I find yourself lacking simply how complete and thorough Garmin Join is, actually giving me an entire information to my health coaching.
I will even be the primary to confess that Garmin Join is a dense, convoluted app the place the data and settings you want are buried and poorly defined with out a ton of Googling. To not point out the truth that you want a second app (Garmin Join IQ) so as to add new apps and customized watch faces, and that altering settings on a Garmin watch itself is simply as convoluted.
Sunday Runday
In his new weekly column, Android Central Health Editor Michael Hicks talks in regards to the world of wearables, apps, and general health tech associated to working and well being.
Whenever you first arrange your Garmin watch, the app fortunately walks you thru a couple of key steps: including music, Wi-Fi, Garmin Pay, emergency contacts, syncing to Strava, and LiveTrack. However after that, you are principally left to fend for your self.
For brand spanking new Garmin watch house owners — or potential consumers questioning what the fuss is about — here’s a set of Garmin ideas and tips with regards to taking full benefit of your new watch! Word: some options are restricted to newer Garmin watches.
End establishing
When you’re something like me, you will in all probability skip quite a lot of the difficult Garmin watch setup and plan to get again to it later. Then you definitely’ll get bombarded with pop-ups asking, “Now do you wish to arrange Garmin Pay?” Spare your self the each day annoyance and end establishing each core characteristic.
Within the Garmin Join app, faucet the watch icon on the highest banner, then choose your present watch (or sync it if it is disconnected). Your first possibility will probably be End setup, which guides you thru the aforementioned options like including Wi-Fi and security options.
Or, in case you’ve already accomplished setup however wish to change issues after the actual fact, you will discover these options in the identical watch Settings menu; Garmin Pay and Music are apparent, whereas Wi-Fi is underneath Connectivity and Security & Monitoring allows you to change your Emergency Contacts or allow LiveTrack.
Change your objectives
Whenever you first obtain Join or arrange a watch, it will immediate you to set objectives to your each day steps, weekly depth minutes, or each day flooring climbed. It’s also possible to discover these objectives by tapping the watch settings icon > Well being & Wellness.
For steps, you’ll be able to set it to make use of an “auto common” or set a particular objective like 10,000 steps. Auto common modifications primarily based on what number of steps you usually tackle a given day, subtly adjusting increased in case you match or surpass the objective or decrease in case you fail to hit it. An auto-updating objective will push you to enhance however could climb too excessive so that you can hit; at that time, you might wish to swap to a handbook objective as soon as what you are actually able to.
For weekly depth minutes, the World Well being Group recommends adults aged 18–64 hit 150–300 minutes of reasonable exercise or 75–150 vigorous exercise to remain wholesome. So as an instance you select 250 minutes as your goal: Garmin will routinely use coronary heart charge zones to find out if an exercise is reasonable (zone 3) or vigorous (zone 4+) and double the logged minutes in case your coronary heart charge is excessive sufficient. You may change these, akin to making zone 2 reasonable or making solely zone 5 “vigorous,” if you would like.
I additionally suggest checking your precise coronary heart charge zones. Go to your watch settings > Consumer Profile > Coronary heart Price & Energy Zones. Right here, you’ll be able to alter your max coronary heart charge, lactate threshold, and 5 HR zones.
Garmin can solely estimate your max coronary heart charge primarily based in your age and health, and your lactate threshold — the extent at which lactate builds up in your blood resulting from bodily exertion — will get increased the fitter you’re, in keeping with this UVA Faculty of Medication research.
So you must carry out a stress take a look at to find out your private well being values. I adopted this information by Coaching Peaks and located my common coronary heart charge at max effort during the last 20 minutes of a 30-minute exercise to calculate my LTHR, then adjusted my zones accordingly. Finally, Garmin will collect sufficient knowledge out of your exercises to present you extra correct post-run information.
Arrange a coaching plan
Most up-to-date Garmin watches have each day instructed exercises that suggest how lengthy and exhausting to coach, primarily based in your latest coaching knowledge, VO2 Max, restoration time, and sleep knowledge. Whereas helpful, these exercises lack context if, as an illustration, you are coaching to hit a sure distance or time; and so they do not account to your each day life and schedule.
Runners and cyclists could wish to arrange an precise, official coaching plan as an alternative of counting on the algorithm. In Garmin Join, go to Extra > Coaching & Planning > Coaching Plans.
Runners will select a 5K, 10K, or half marathon plan primarily based on what number of miles they run per week, their objective (whether or not to merely end a race or hit a sure time), and which type of Garmin Coach they need. Cyclists will goal for a particular mileage objective like Century or Gran Fondo, a time trial objective, or to enhance their mountain biking talents.
It’s also possible to obtain customized, self-guided Garmin Join coaching plans not out there by way of Garmin Coach, akin to a marathon coaching plan or triathlon coaching. On the net, go to this Garmin Join hyperlink, select a plan, and add it to your schedule.
As soon as you have arrange a Garmin Coach coaching plan, each day exercises will seem within the Calendar in your app and watch, so you’ll be able to see how rigorous immediately’s exercise will probably be forward of time. Some newer watches, just like the Garmin Forerunner 255, also have a Morning Report that offers you that information as quickly as you get up.
Create your individual exercises
Throughout a instructed or scheduled exercise, your watch reveals how your present tempo or coronary heart charge falls inside a goal vary, buzzing your wrist to let you know in case you’re too excessive or low, or if it is time to shift to the subsequent a part of a exercise. It is a incredible self-training too, however as I discussed in my latest Garmin characteristic wishlist, you’ll be able to’t simply edit a exercise previous to beginning it, in case you feel too drained or wired for what the Garmin algorithm is suggesting.
I like to recommend making your individual customized exercises and saving them to your watch so you’ll be able to entry them at any time. Return to Extra > Coaching & Planning and choose Exercises > Create a exercise. You may arrange a run or biking session, put it aside underneath a customized identify, after which ship it to your Garmin watch by tapping the telephone icon.
When you’re on the exercise begin display, maintain the Menu button (left-middle) on 5-button watches or the Again button on 2- or 3-button watches. Choose Coaching > Exercises > Customized exercise identify > Do exercise.
I’ve a couple of generic exercises saved, like “Long term,” that warns me if I fall beneath a sure tempo, or extra particular Observe Run coaching plans for intervals. That means, if I do not like what’s on the Calendar for the day, I can simply drag and drop it to a special day and do my very own exercise as an alternative.
You are in luck in case you’re extra concerned with indoor energy coaching, yoga, HIIT, or different actions than working. On the Exercises display within the app, you’ll be able to Discover a exercise and select between a ton of exercises targeted on finishing reps, both at residence or within the health club.
Garmin has over a thousand exercise sorts, and so they’re animated so you’ll be able to test on the shape earlier than you begin a rep your self. Watches with AMOLED shows just like the Venu 2 Plus provide the finest expertise on that entrance.
Change your knowledge screens
Every sports activities exercise reveals important knowledge in your wrist throughout a run. For instance, the Run exercise reveals the timer, distance, tempo, and coronary heart charge. However you’ll be able to see a lot extra throughout a run if you wish to: coronary heart charge zone, stamina, working energy, your working dynamics (aka stride size, cadence), a map/compass, elevation modifications, and so forth.
You may change an exercise’s default knowledge fields in your wrist or within the app; I like to recommend the latter. Go to your watch settings > Actions & Apps, select a particular exercise, then Knowledge Screens > Add Knowledge Display.
You may add a default display themed on particular knowledge (like stamina or elevation), or you’ll be able to create your individual customized screens with as much as six fields of knowledge. The latter is very helpful since you’ll discover tons of choices that are not on the generic screens, like real-time charts of your tempo/velocity/coronary heart charge over time.
You may combine and match knowledge that may usually seem on separate screens, so you will hopefully spend much less time scrolling by way of them when you need to be staying within the zone. Or you’ll be able to prioritize much less mainstream knowledge fields; for instance, you might desire seeing your Common Tempo or Lap Tempo as an alternative of your real-time Tempo.
Make your GPS monitoring extra correct
The newest and biggest Garmin watches help all-systems or multi-band GPS, making them the most correct GPS watches in my exams. A lot of them use SatIQ to change to raised satellite tv for pc knowledge as soon as it detects a sign blockage or delay, however you’ll be able to select to all the time use the highest-level monitoring if you would like the absolute best knowledge always.
Maintain down the Menu button and choose Actions & Apps > Run (or one other exercise) > Run Settings > GPS and select All + Multi-Band for the absolute best accuracy. When you solely see GPS and UltraTrac, your Garmin does not help the newer choices.
You may in all probability wish to do the identical to your Stroll or Hike exercise, which additionally auto-selects on some watches. Some will desire UltraTrac, which takes rare GPS readings to avoid wasting battery; others will desire one thing extra correct, particularly in the event that they’re utilizing a longer-lived Garmin watch just like the Intuition 2X Photo voltaic.
Battery life vs. options
You in all probability selected a Garmin watch regardless of its lack of conventional smartwatch “smarts” due to its lengthy battery life, amongst different issues. However typically, you will wish to reduce into the battery capability for particular options — or in the reduction of to make it last more. The GPS setting above is only one instance.
In the case of blood oxygen monitoring, Garmin is among the solely manufacturers to supply 24/7 checks as a means for athletes to test their altitude acclimation or common well being, however you may also arrange during-sleep monitoring or carry out handbook spot checks In your watch, maintain down the Menu button, scroll right down to Well being & Wellness, choose Pulse Oximeter, and select both All Day or Throughout sleep in case you assume your battery can deal with it.
When you have a memory-in-pixel show, you might not like how dim the show is, particularly indoors; Garmin tends to make 20% the default exterior of actions, which is fairly exhausting to learn. Maintain down the Menu button, then scroll right down to System > Show > Normal Use. You may change the default brightness, allow raise-to-wake so you do not have to press a button, alter the display timeout time to be a bit longer, and even make always-on the default.
I am assuming that your new Garmin watch has a powerful battery life and may face up to extra demanding settings. However in case you’re having the other drawback and wish to delay your battery, I wrote a information on learn how to repair Garmin watch battery issues that will help you out. Lengthy story quick, you’ll be able to activate a Battery Saver mode that disables the commonest battery-draining options.
Customise your watch face
Your Garmin watch face is what you will spend most of your time observing, so ensure that it is enjoyable (or informative) to take a look at! As soon as once more, maintain down that trusty Menu (or Again) button, relying in your watch’s variety of buttons, and Watch face ought to be your first possibility.
Choose it, then scroll by way of the generic watch faces out there in your watch by default. Choose a watch face you want, then select Customise. You may change the general structure, which knowledge is displayed, and/or the accent coloration for the watch face.
The Garmin icon meanings are a bit obscure, particularly when you’re first beginning out and your knowledge is empty. Go to this Garmin help web page, change the watch identify to your present mannequin, and see (A) which icons can be found in your watch and (B) what they imply.
If you would like recommendation, my private favorites are remaining restoration time (so when your physique is able to work out once more), step depend (duh), earned depth minutes, weekly working distance, and climate. I am not a fan of displaying my coronary heart charge or different well being knowledge, because the fixed replace burns by way of the battery and in addition offers me anxiousness if my coronary heart charge is just too excessive, however it’s as much as desire!
If you would like watch faces past what Garmin provides by default, you will need to obtain a second app — Garmin Join IQ — on the Google Play Retailer or iOS App Retailer. You should utilize Face it to create a customized watch face with your individual private pictures or go into the IQ Retailer and discover/obtain a watch face made by the Garmin group.
Arrange Sizzling Keys
Most Garmin buttons have set shortcuts while you maintain them down, like opening the music participant after squeezing the bottom-left button. However you in all probability do not know (I did not till very not too long ago!) that there are six different shortcuts you’ll be able to arrange on a 5-button watch: Maintain START, Maintain BACK, START + Down, START + UP, BACK + LIGHT, and BACK + UP.
With any of those shortcuts, you’ll be able to pull up a favourite characteristic instantly, as an alternative of getting to scroll by way of widgets or menus to seek out them. Go to Menu > System > Sizzling Keys so as to add your new shortcuts — I depend 24 choices on my Garmin Forerunner 965.
These are my private favourite Sizzling Keys that I would suggest including to your watch:
- Pockets: When you arrange tap-to-pay, you wish to pull up that possibility instantly as an alternative of conserving the folks behind you ready as you swipe by way of submenus.
- Flashlight: Most Garmins do not have a built-in flashlight just like the Intuition 2X Photo voltaic, however this setting will make the display 100% shiny, serving to you see your means in the dead of night in a pinch.
- Timers/stopwatch: These useful instruments do not want any rationalization.
- Navigation: It is good to have the ability to pull up your present environment throughout a GPS-tracked exercise; this solely applies for watches with correct mapping, like a Garmin Fenix or the Forerunner 955.
- Brightness: As I discussed earlier than, you might wish to preserve your brightness low to avoid wasting battery, however have the choice to boost it shortly at any time.
As a facet word, in case your watch helps emergency help and also you set it up, then you could maintain the designated button for about seven seconds, after which, the watch will vibrate thrice and your real-time location will probably be despatched to your preloaded emergency contacts. You may’t change which button triggers this.
Use Discover My Telephone / Discover My Watch
As long as your smartphone and Garmin watch are related by way of Bluetooth, you should use both gadget to seek out the opposite. Garmin’s Discover My characteristic is not practically as sturdy as a Put on OS or Apple Watch because it depends upon Bluetooth. But it surely’s nonetheless fairly useful to have in case you’re in a rush and your watch or telephone is buried within the sofa cushions.
In your watch, go to the Controls menu; maintain the Gentle button on a 5-button watch or the Begin button on a 2-button watch. Discover My Telephone is the icon with a telephone and query mark; choose it. Your telephone ought to ring loudly, whereas your watch will show a colourful indicator exhibiting how shut you’re to it.
Within the Garmin Join app, choose the watch icon and scroll right down to Discover My Machine. Your related watch will vibrate till you dismiss the pop-up notification, serving to you to trace it down if it is close by.
Hopefully, these Garmin ideas and tips will enable you get extra use out of your new Garmin watch! When you do the early work of getting every little thing arrange, Garmin’s analytics and algorithms deal with the remaining, so you’ll be able to simply take a look at your wrist and see what sort of exercise you must do subsequent.
Not all Garmin watches share each characteristic. The extra you pay, the extra Garmin crams into the watch. So in case you’re shopping for a top-end Forerunner watch or Fenix watch, you will wish to transcend what I listed above and actually dive into menus and settings your self, so that you’re getting your cash’s price.
Now that you just’re all set in your Garmin settings, it is time to hit the observe or path and get shifting! And even in case you do not use each Garmin trick within the ebook, it is okay; we not too long ago examined the Garmin Forerunner 265 towards different manufacturers for step depend accuracy, and it outperformed the opposite manufacturers.
