Using your Garmin to achieve greatness

Using your Garmin to achieve greatness
BY Virgin Active South Africa
Posted On 5 January, 2023

Whether you are setting out for a run or ride, hitting the gym, or attempting to get a good night’s rest, your Garmin smartwatch can help you keep track of your workout stats to get the most out of your activity, and ultimately help you reach your goals.  

Side note: Did you know we have partnered with Garmin to give Virgin Active Premier and Collection members a 25% discount on selected wearable products. Get the details of the Garmin discount here. Discover our other awesome membership perks. Not a member yet? Join Now! 

Let’s look under the metaphorical hood, into the treasure trove of stats we can use to improve our training and general well-being.  

Let’s start with the basics 

My Day, is your homepage in the Garmin Connect app, displaying all your health and performance stats from the last week. This could include activities tracked by your Garmin device, daily step count, heart rate, stress level and more, depending on your device’s capabilities. But did you know, you can customise your My Day screen based on the stats you’re most interested in? 

Check out your activity details 

Garmin Connect lets you take a deeper look into your activity details, including typical running and cycling data like distance, pace, and heart rate, as well as strength training metrics like reps, sets, calories burned, and even estimated sweat loss. 

GPS-tracked activities include a map with a themed polyline that details the metric of your choice along your route. The mobile app and website also provide historical activity report so you can track your personal records, training history, overall mileage and more. 

Monitor sleep & recovery

Sleep and recovery have a huge impact on our general health and wellbeing. Garmin is at the forefront of sleep technology with advanced metrics that show you the duration and quality of your sleep over time. Beyond tracking your total duration and sleep stages, Garmin Connect gives you a nightly sleep score that ranks the overall quality of your sleep and makes suggestions to try and improve your sleep. 

Track women’s health

Both Garmin smartwatches and Garmin Connect have several women’s health tracking features. Instead of using a separate app to track your Menstrual Cycle, use Garmin Connect to log your period dates, receive future period predictions, track symptoms, and more. Tracking your menstrual phases can help you understand how hormonal changes can affect your workouts and nutrition. 

Train hard

One area where Garmin Connect stands above the competition is as a training tool. Whatever your goal, Garmin Connect likely has a workout, training plan, pacing strategy or performance stat to help you achieve it. One of the standouts is Garmin Coach training plans, which let you choose your running coach, select your race distance, and once you start working towards your goal, the workouts adapt to your performance. 

Your Garmin device is the ultimate training partner, in or out of the gym – setting you up for success with all the important metrics and expert training plans. Don’t miss out on your 25% Garmin discount