Despite being some of the most advanced personal devices on the market, fitness watches like those produced by Garmin are often under-utilized. Many runners, whether novices or seasoned athletes, often feel that their device’s metrics are more of a mystery than a benefit, leading them to disregard this wealth of data at their fingertips. This is like having a high-tech lab on your wrist and ignoring the results it generates. It’s time to rethink this approach.
These watches are not just ordinary devices – they are sophisticated pieces of technology, the result of years of intensive research and testing by teams of dedicated engineers and scientists. They’re designed to do one thing exceptionally well: deliver accurate, reliable data that provides invaluable insights into your training and performance.
Your Garmin watch is more than a timekeeper; it’s a window into the complex world of your body’s performance under stress. By interpreting Training status correctly, you can use it to improve your training efficiency, help avoid injuries, and enhance overall performance. The key to maximizing these benefits lies in understanding what your watch is telling you.
Training Status
Runners are often bemused by their Garmin watch’s Training Status. Training Status is an interpretation which combines your VO2 max and training load data and produces your current training status. It could be anything from Peaking (you’re in ideal race condition) to Overreaching (you’re pushing too hard and need to rest). It’s designed to prevent overtraining and undertraining, guiding you to train at the right intensity for optimum performance.
Garmin metrics are only as accurate as the information you provide. Ensuring your device has up-to-date personal biometric data such as age, height, weight, lactate threshold values, or maximum heart rate values is crucial for accurate readings and accurate interpretation of the data your watch uses.
Demystifying Garmin’s Training Status
First we provide a quick overview on each status and then we’ll follow up with a deep dive into each.
Peaking
You’re in ideal race condition! Your training load is right where it should be, and your fitness is at its peak. This is a state that can only be maintained for a short period, so if you have a race or event coming up, now’s the time to go for it. This is what we want our training status to be in the days before our big events.
Productive
This is the sweet spot for most athletes. Here, your current training is consistent and challenging enough to boost your fitness level. Keep up the good work!
Maintaining
Your training is maintaining your fitness level, but you’re not making significant progress. Consider modifying your training plan to include more challenging workouts or a greater variety of training.
Recovery
Your lighter training load is allowing your body to recover, which is crucial in any training regimen. You might be in this state following an intense training period or a race. Use this time to rest, recuperate, and prepare for the next cycle of training.
Unproductive
Here, your training load is at a good level, but your fitness is decreasing. You may not be giving your body enough time to recover or your training may have become too repetitive and your body has adapted. Try varying your workouts and ensuring you get adequate rest.
Detraining
Your training load has been low for a while, and it’s impacting your fitness. If you’ve had to take a break due to illness, injury, or personal circumstances, you might find yourself in this state. The good news is that with a consistent training plan, you can recover and improve your fitness level.
Overreaching
Warning! Your training load is very high, and your fitness is decreasing. This status suggests that you’re training too hard, risking injury, and burnout. It’s crucial to give your body the rest it needs to recover.
No Status
If you see this, it means that either you haven’t logged enough activities yet for the watch to assess your status or your most recent activity was more than seven days ago.
Each of these statuses provides essential insights into your training regimen and can guide you to make informed decisions about your workout intensity, recovery times, and overall approach to fitness. Garmin is primed to maintain a balance between training and rest which is key for achieving long-term fitness goals and avoiding injury. It’s important to keep in mind that these categories are not ranks, but rather an interpretation of your body’s response to your training load.
Lets look deeper into Training Status
Productive
The principle of overload is a fundamental aspect of physical fitness training. It stipulates that in order to improve our physical performance, whether that’s increasing endurance, strength, or speed, we need to increase the load, or intensity, of our exercise over time. Essentially, it involves pushing the body beyond its comfort zone to elicit a response that will lead to improved fitness. However, it’s important to note that the key here is balance. Overload should be progressive and consistent, but it should also be managed appropriately to avoid injury or burnout.
When Garmin’s Training Status shows that you are in a Productive phase, it’s indicating that you’re striking the right balance. You are successfully applying the principle of overload — your training is challenging enough to promote improvement, but not so intense that you risk overtraining. You’re effectively increasing your body’s capacity to handle physical stress, which results in improved fitness. Being Productive suggests that the workload you’re giving your body is enough to stimulate adaptation. You’re providing a consistent challenge that urges your body to become stronger, faster, and more efficient. However, the Productive phase is not a static state, and it requires continuous effort and appropriate adjustments to your training load to maintain. Your body will adapt to the current level of stress, and when that happens, your progress may plateau. This is where the principle of progressive overload comes in. You need to keep slightly increasing your training load — whether that’s running a bit further, adding more incline, or increasing your speed — to continue seeing improvements.
Remember, though, that overload without sufficient recovery can lead to fatigue and overtraining. It’s vital to ensure you’re giving your body the rest it needs to recover and adapt. So, being Productive is about maintaining a delicate equilibrium. It’s about pushing your body to improve, but also allowing it the time and resources it needs to rebuild and come back stronger.
Maintaining
The Maintaining status is often misunderstood, with some viewing it as a stagnation point. However, in reality, it’s a normal and even necessary phase in the training process. It’s unrealistic and unfeasible to expect continuous improvement indefinitely. There are numerous factors at play, including time constraints, individual physical capabilities, lifestyle factors, and even genetic predispositions, which all influence an athlete’s ability to continuously improve their fitness.
When your Garmin watch indicates you are Maintaining, it signifies that your current training load is sufficient to sustain your fitness level but isn’t enough to trigger further improvement. This status isn’t necessarily negative, and at times it may even be strategic. For example, when an athlete has reached their target fitness level for an upcoming event, Maintaining ensures they stay there without overtaxing their body or risking injury before the event.
However, if Maintaining becomes a long-term status and further progression is the goal, then it’s time to apply the principle of progressive overload in a strategic and measured manner. This might involve increasing the intensity of your workouts, such as running at a faster pace or incorporating more hill work, or it could mean increasing the volume of your training, like adding an extra run to your week or increasing the length of your existing runs. But remember, any increase in training load should be undertaken mindfully to avoid the pitfalls of overtraining. An abrupt or excessive increase in load can lead to injuries and a decline in performance. As always, it’s about balance—training hard enough to stimulate adaptation and improvement, but not so hard that it leads to fatigue, injury, or burnout.
The Maintaining status isn’t a standstill; it’s a plateau that can be leveraged strategically. It provides an opportunity to reassess your training routine and make targeted adjustments to help push your performance to the next level when the time is right.
Unproductive
This status means your training load is substantial, but instead of leading to fitness improvement, your fitness level is decreasing. This can occur for various reasons, often relating to inadequate recovery, lack of variety in training, or a combination of both. Let’s delve deeper into these factors.
Insufficient Recovery
The process of training is essentially a cycle of stress and recovery. When you exercise, you impose stress on your body, which disrupts its equilibrium. During recovery, your body works to restore this equilibrium and adapts to better handle the imposed stress in the future – that’s how fitness improvements occur. If the balance tilts too much towards stress without enough recovery, your body’s ability to adapt can become compromised, leading to a decline in fitness despite a high training load. This could be why your Garmin watch is indicating an Unproductive status.
Lack of Training Variety
Another reason for an ‘Unproductive’ status could be training monotony. When the body is exposed to the same type of stress repeatedly over time, it can adapt to that specific stress, making the workouts less effective over time. Varying your workouts introduces different types of stress, forcing your body to continually adapt and improve.
So how can we address an Unproductive status?
First, ensure you are allowing your body ample time to recover. This might mean incorporating rest days, getting more sleep, focusing on nutrition, practicing mindfulness exercises for stress management, or even incorporating active recovery sessions into your regimen.
Second, look at the variety in your training program. If your workouts are too similar, consider introducing diversity in your exercises. Mix up your routine with different types of runs—long runs, speed work, hill repeats, tempo runs, and easy runs. Cross-training, such as cycling, swimming, strength training, or yoga, can also introduce new forms of stress to keep your body adapting and improving.
And remember, while it can be disappointing to see an Unproductive status, it’s also an opportunity. It’s your body’s way of telling you that something in your current approach needs adjustment.
Unproductive – the status that Ultra Runners hate
Unproductive is a status that frustrates a lot of ultra-runners. All of the long steady distance runs at low intensity will often illicit a status of Unproductive from your Garmin. Rather than ignore the status , adding some variety into your training regime can lead to significant improvements. It might seem counterintuitive since ultra races are primarily about endurance, not speed. However, incorporating sessions at VO2Max and above into your training can yield substantial benefits.
Here’s why:
Increased Cardiovascular Fitness
VO2Max is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use during intense exercise. Training at or above this level pushes your cardiovascular system to its limit, which can lead to improvements in your heart’s stroke volume (the amount of blood pumped per beat) and the oxygen-carrying capacity of your blood. Over time, this can increase your overall VO2Max, improving your body’s ability to deliver oxygen to your muscles – a crucial factor in endurance events.
Muscular Strength and Efficiency
High-intensity sessions can help develop muscular strength and power, improving your running economy. This means you can maintain a given pace while using less energy, which is especially valuable in long-distance events like ultra-marathons.
Metabolic Adaptations
Training at high intensities can also lead to metabolic adaptations. For example, it can increase your body’s ability to clear lactate, a byproduct of intense exercise that can contribute to muscle fatigue. The more efficiently you can clear lactate, the longer you can sustain higher-intensity efforts.
Breaking Plateaus
Lastly, as we’ve already discussed, variety in training helps prevent plateaus. If you’re always running long and slow, your body will adapt to this particular type of stress. Mixing in some high-intensity work provides a different kind of challenge, forcing your body to adapt and improve.
Remember, though, these high-intensity sessions should form a small percentage of your overall training volume and be a supplement to, not a replacement for, the long, slow distance (LSD) runs that form the base of ultra training. The key is balance. Integrate high-intensity work carefully into your training program, allowing adequate time for recovery, and you can reap the benefits without increasing your risk of overtraining or injury.
Detraining
Detraining indicates that your training load has been insufficient for a while, leading to a decline in fitness. This status is often seen after prolonged breaks due to factors such as illness, injury, or personal commitments.
While the term Detraining may sound alarming, it’s essential to understand that fitness is a dynamic aspect of our health that fluctuates with our lifestyle and training habits. Even the most elite athletes can experience periods of detraining.
However, the good news is, it’s not a permanent state. Here are some strategies to bounce back:
Ease back into training
It might be tempting to jump back into intense training to regain lost fitness quickly. However, this approach can lead to injury or burnout. Instead, start with low-intensity sessions and gradually increase the volume and intensity of your workouts.
Consistency is key
Regular training sessions, even if they’re shorter or less intense, can help rebuild your fitness. Consistency will allow your body to adapt to the increased activity and gradually regain lost fitness.
Monitor your progress
Use your Garmin device’s metrics to track your progress and adjust your training plan as needed. Look at your training load, recovery time, and other key metrics to ensure you’re pushing yourself enough to improve, but not so much that you risk injury or overtraining.
Nutrition and recovery
Pay close attention to your diet and recovery during this period. Proper nutrition will fuel your workouts and recovery, and adequate rest will give your body time to adapt and grow stronger.
Setbacks are part of every athletic journey. Encountering a detraining phase does not mean failure; instead, it’s a signal that your body needs a different approach to training.
Overreaching
At its core, overreaching represents an imbalance between training stress and recovery. When you exercise, you impose stress on your body, challenging its equilibrium. This is a positive process, stimulating adaptations that improve your strength, stamina, and overall fitness. However, these benefits only materialize if you also provide your body with sufficient time to recover and adapt.
Overreaching occurs when the scales tip too heavily towards stress, with inadequate recovery to compensate. This excessive stress can be as a result of a high volume of training, overly intense sessions, or a combination of both.
If unchecked, overreaching can lead to overtraining syndrome, a state of chronic performance decline associated with prolonged excessive stress and inadequate recovery. Overtraining syndrome can result in myriad negative consequences, such as reduced performance, decreased immunity, hormonal imbalances, mood disturbances, and even increased risk of injuries. Clearly, it’s a condition that any mindful runner wants to avoid.
When your Garmin device flags an overreaching status, it’s time to take action:
- Incorporate More Rest: If you’re overreaching, the first step is to reduce your training load and increase your rest. This might mean taking additional rest days, decreasing the volume or intensity of your workouts, or a combination of both.
- Focus on Recovery: Incorporating active recovery sessions, focusing on sleep quality, and paying close attention to nutrition can all help facilitate recovery. Mindfulness exercises for stress management may also be beneficial.
- Review Your Training Plan: Overreaching can indicate that your current training plan is not sustainable. It might be worth consulting with a coach or experienced runner to help you develop a more balanced plan that better fits your fitness level and goals.
- Listen to Your Body: Garmin’s metrics provide powerful insights, but they should be used in conjunction with your own body’s feedback. If you’re feeling persistently tired, struggling with motivation, or noticing decreased performance, these could be signs that you need to reduce your training load and prioritize recovery.
In conclusion, overreaching is a clear warning from your body that it’s time to slow down, rest, and reassess. While it might be disappointing to have to scale back your training, remember: the goal of mindful running is not just about achieving peak performance, but also about sustaining a healthy and enjoyable relationship with the sport in the long term. Responding wisely to overreaching is an essential part of this journey.
When Overreaching might not be!
Overreaching often occurs in athletes who are returning to training after a break, such as following a major race or event. The enthusiasm to get back into the routine or a drive to make up for “lost time” can inadvertently lead to training at higher acute loads than is safe or advisable.
A good rule of thumb to prevent overreaching in these instances is to ensure a gradual return to your previous training intensity and volume. This slow build-up gives your body the time to adapt to the increasing demands. However, it’s important to note that there may be instances where the Garmin statistics show an Overreaching status in the early stages of this return-to-training phase.
In these cases, a more nuanced understanding of your training history and capabilities is beneficial. If you’re aware that your acute loads are high but this is part of your planned and experienced return to training after a break, it’s important to monitor how your body responds. If you’re not experiencing any signs of overtraining such as persistent fatigue, decreased performance, or disrupted sleep, you might choose to continue training at these loads for a short period of time.
During this period, your chronic training load (CTL) will have the chance to catch up with the acute training load (ATL). Once they’re more aligned, the overreaching status should resolve, indicating that your training is now within a safer range relative to your fitness and ability.
So, while the Garmin metrics provide incredibly valuable data for informing your training, it’s also important to incorporate your personal knowledge and experience into your decision-making process. Remember, the Garmin watch is a tool to help guide your training, but you, the athlete, are in control.
With mindful, well-informed training decisions, you can successfully navigate the delicate balance between pushing your limits for improvement and avoiding overreaching and potential injury. In this journey your watch should be trusted and utilised to its fullest.
If you’re looking to work with a coaching team who understand and value the incredible instrumentation you wear on your wrist then take a look at Mindful Runner and sign up for training.
I have intentionally left out Peaking , Recovery and No Status. The summary information at the start of this article has enough detail on those.
