What is GARMIN Training Status?

If you’re reading this post there’s a good chance you’ve found your Training Status is often “Unproductive” and, like Richard, you’re looking to understand how GARMIN calculates this metric.

Rest assured you are not alone, this is one of the most common frustrations that I hear from GARMIN runners.

Let’s dive into what Training Status means, how it’s calculated and how to leverage it to optimize your training.

What is Training Status?

In short, Training Status is GARMIN’s way of telling you whether or not your training is resulting in progress. While the goal is to maintain a “Productive” status (meaning your fitness is increasing) as much as possible, most runners find that elusive and more often find themselves stuck in “Unproductive” or “Maintaining” status.

Here’s a list of all the possible Training Statuses and what they mean:

• Peaking – You’ve trained hard, recovered from that training and now you’re primed to race.
• Maintaining – you’re not losing fitness but not gaining it either.
• Unproductive – Your training is ineffective and you’re losing fitness. Usually a result of an unbalanced Load Focus or general wellbeing issues (sleep, stress, nutrition).
• Overreaching – You’re overdoing it. You’ve increased the amount of training you’re doing too quickly.
• Recovery – The opposite of Overreaching, you’ve really eased up on your training, but not to the point that you’ve lost fitness – yet.
• Detraining – You’re losing fitness because you’re either not running or running very little.

How is Training Status calculated?

GARMIN calculates Training Status by combining four readings from your watch: VO2 max, Heart Rate Variability, Acute Load and Load Focus. There’s a lot of science behind these metrics, pages could be written about each one, I’ll provide a quick primer on each one below but for now let’s skip to the simple terms…

If you’ve read my free guide “Three Ways To Use Garmin Data to Break Through Unproductive Status” (available here) you know that a successful training program has three elements:

Consistency, Variety and Recovery.

GARMIN looks at these three elements in your recent training and boils your overall situation down into a one word summary that is your “Training Status”

So, if your Training Status is anything other than Productive you can use the glossary I provided above to decode which part of your training might be off. A few examples:

• Maintaining may indicate a lack of Variety in your training. Try adding different types of workouts (sprints, intervals, longer runs) or gradually increasing your weekly mileage.
• Overreaching probably means you’ve added something into your recent training that isn’t Consistent with your usual training load. If it’s mileage, keep in mind the rule of thumb that a 5 to 10% increase week over week is best.
• Unproductive could be the result of a lack of Variety, but it may also be a Recovery issue. Check your recent Sleep and Stress data.

Mastering your GARMIN data so that you can become your own coach can be a bit like putting together a puzzle. If the meaning of a particular piece of GARMIN data isn’t obvious it may help to first determine if it relates to training consistency, variety or recovery. Almost every piece of data the watch provides will impact one of these three aspects of training.

I hope you found this overview helpful!

As promised here is a summary of the four specific metrics that GARMIN analyzes to calculate Training Status. Keep in mind these are my attempts to explain them in simple terms, a lot more can be written about each one…

• VO2 Max – How much oxygen can your cardiovascular system process? Measured in milliliters per kilogram of body weight per minute. The higher the number, the fitter you are. This is the most direct measurement of cardiovascular fitness.
• Heart Rate Variability – The slight variation in time between heartbeats. That’s right, our hearts don’t beat in a steady rhythm. In fact, less steady can indicate better health and fitness. A higher number indicates better recovery.
• Acute Load – How much training have you done over the past week? More than usual, less than usual or the usual amount?
• Load Focus – An optimal training plan will include a mix of anaerobic, high aerobic and low aerobic work. This metric speaks directly to training variety. See my previous Blog post on this topic here.

Please feel free to message me with any questions!

My coaching program will help you accelerate the learning curve in using your GARMIN data to become your own coach. To learn more click here to signup for a free discovery call.

–Chris