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Garmin is one of the most popular brands for sports watches and activity trackers. The company has built a reputation for creating great products such as the Garmin Forerunner watches, or the Garmin Edge bike computers.
While your watch or bike computer can track your workout data, these gadgets aren’t really the ideal place for looking through your stats in any detail. That’s where Garmin Connect comes in. What is Garmin Connect, and how do you use it? Keep reading to learn more.
What is Garmin Connect?
Garmin Connect is a website and free app for iOS and Android that allows you to keep track of all the health and fitness data gathered by your Garmin fitness devices. Your Garmin Venu 2 may be the device that records all the data, but it’s the Garmin Connect app where that data really comes to life.
The app does a lot more than just keep track of all your health and fitness data, too. You can join challenges, find training plans and workouts, or even create your own.
Which devices work with Garmin Connect?
The app is compatible with the vast majority of Garmin fitness devices. This includes smartwatches such as the Garmin Venu series, Garmin Instinct series, Garmin Fenix series, and Garmin Forerunner series. It also works with more basic Garmin fitness trackers such as the Garmin Vivofit and Vivosmart series. As well as wearables, the Garmin Connect app is compatible with Garmin bike computers such as the Garmin Edge series, as well as other Garmin fitness products such as the Garmin Index Smart Scale and Garmin Vector power meter bike pedals.
Can I use Garmin Connect with devices from other brands?
The Garmin Connect app will only work with compatible Garmin products; you can’t sync your Apple Watch to the Garmin Connect app, for example. However, it is possible to connect the Garmin Connect app to other services, such as Apple Health, Strava, and MyFitnessPal, and share your fitness data. For example, you can set a calorie goal in MyFitnessPal, record your food intake in that app, and any calories burned from exercise that are synced to your Garmin Connect app will also be passed to MyFitnessPal, leaving you with an accurate measure of your calorie count for the day.
How to sync your Garmin device with Garmin Connect
In order to use the Garmin Connect app, you’ll need to sync a Garmin device to the app.
- In the My Day tab, tap the blue + (plus) at the top of the screen.
- Select your device from the list of options.
- Follow the on-screen instructions to put your Garmin device into pairing mode.
- Enter the code shown on your Garmin device into the Garmin Connect app.
- Pairing will start.
- Once it’s completed, tap Next to continue device set up by following the on-screen prompts.
- When you’re done, tap Finish.
- Your device is now synced with Garmin Connect.
How to use Garmin Connect
Once you’ve connected a device, you’re ready to start using the app. There are a lot of features packed into it, but the main focus is on four main tabs: My Day, Challenges, Calendar, and News Feed.
My Day
My Day is where you can see all of your health data for the current day. Depending on the sensors on your device, you can see information such as heart rate, stress levels, step count, floors climbed, sleep data, hydration, blood pressure, calories, weight, and more. If you’ve synced an activity such as a run or a bike ride, you’ll also see a card with information about that activity, too.
Swiping down, you also view your health and fitness data for yesterday, and if you continue to swipe down, you’ll see your key information for the past seven days.
Challenges
The Challenges tab is where you can find motivation for your exercising. There are weekend challenges, such as completing a 3-mile walk over a weekend, monthly challenges such as swimming 4000m within a month, and even yearly challenges such as cycling 2700km throughout the year. The challenges regularly update. You can choose challenges for a variety of activities, including steps, running, cycling, strength, swimming, and even yoga.
As well as challenges, there are also expeditions. These are challenges that are based on your step count or floors climbed count. For example, you can try to climb Mount Everest by recording 2,700 floors climbed or go a little easier and trek the Grand Canyon rim trail by walking a total of 30,000 steps. If you complete a challenge or an expedition, you get a badge to prove that you’ve completed it.
Calendar
The Calendar tab is where you can see all of your past data. Tap on any date in the calendar to see your recorded activities, and any other health and fitness data that was recorded for that day. You can tap into each activity to see detailed information such as calories burned, activity duration, average and maximum heart rate, lap times and average speed, and graphs of your heart rate, elevation, and heart rate zones. It’s a quick and easy way to see you progress over time.
News Feed
The News Feed tab is the social hub of the Garmin Connect app. By adding friends who also use Garmin Connect, you can see information about each other’s workouts, and add comments or likes to their activities. It’s a good motivational tool knowing that if you give up halfway through your run, your friends are going to see it.
You can add friends from your phone contacts, or by linking your Google account to connect with your Google contacts. You can also invite friends directly.
Viewing your activities
A lot of the best features of Garmin Connect are hidden in the More tab. This is where you can search for information on specific types of activities, if you want to see data on all of your runs, for example. You can see a 7-day, 4-week, or 1-year view of activities such as running, cycling, and swimming, or view a list of all your recorded activities.
Health and performance data
The More tab is also where you can find your health and performance data. This allows you to see statistics about health metrics such as sleep, weight, heart rate, blood pressure, and hydration. Once again, you can see this data of a week, month, or year, in order to spot trends.
Training and planning
Garmin Connect comes with a wide selection of workouts directly within the app. These include bodyweight workouts, strength training workouts, Pilates, and yoga. You can also create your own workouts by adding steps such as warmups, activity, rest, and cool downs, and adding multiple rounds if needed. You can create workouts for activities including running, cycling, swimming, strength, cardio, HIIT, yoga, and Pilates, or create a custom workout instead.
There are also training plans to help you train for specific targets. There are running plans for training for a 5K, 10K, or half marathon, for example. There are also cycling training plans for working up to riding 100 miles, training for races, or building fitness for mountain biking.
Gear
The gear section lets you add exercise equipment to the app, in order to keep track of how long you’ve had it and how much it’s been used. You can add running shoes, for example, and keep a track of how far you run in them. You can add a bike and track the number of miles you’ve ridden on it, or you can create your own custom entries.
Insights
The Insights section allows you to see some key health and fitness insights such as the days that you’re least active, or if you’re getting more sleep than the average Garmin Connect users of your age and gender.
You can also see graphs of information such as average weekly running distance for other Garmin users of your age and gender, average floors climbed, average steps taken, and average cycling distance. You can see your current average as part of the graph, so you’ll know if you’re ahead of the curve, or are lagging behind.
Connected apps
If you have a Garmin device but are a fan of another health and fitness app or service, all is not lost. It’s possible to link Garmin Connect to certain apps and share your data with them. Any data recorded by your Garmin device will sync with your Garmin Connect app and then be based to any connected apps, allowing you to gain even more insight into your health and fitness.
Some of the apps and services that you can connect include:
- MapMyRide
- MapMyRun
- Nike+
- Runkeeper
- Slopes
- Strava
- Weight Watchers
- MyFitnessPal
Is Garmin Connect any good?
If you own a Garmin device, you’re going to have to use the Garmin Connect app to record and monitor all of your data, but is the app actually any good? Well, the short answer is yes. There’s a lot more than meets the eye with this app, including free workouts, a useful social aspect that can provide genuine motivation, and the ability to spot trends in your health and fitness stats over time. It may take you a while to find the parts that are most useful to you, and it isn’t the slickest app that’s ever been created, but what it does, it does well. The integrations with other fitness apps are also really useful allowing you to get a much broader picture of your health and fitness. Now all you need to do is decide which Garmin watch or activity tracker you’re going to buy.
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