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IMO there's a difference between being interested/bemused/baffled by Garmin's opinion of your activity and being hostage to it. I don't think many people subscribe to a philosophy of 'Garmin says this therefore I must obey', we're mostly sharing views around 'I did this and Garmin said that - huh?'.
And thanks to Joshvegas I now have an idea for a new Strava add on - it will find takeaways near the end of your activity and using state of the art AI (of course) will select appropriate dishes to offset the calories you just burned, with a premium option of integrating with Deliveroo.
If you want to see ridiculous, a mate of a mate did a ride recently. Something like 4.5 hours in the saddle, handful of small climbs. Garmin says "Unproductive".
It was a UCI 1.Pro event.
He was just outside the top 30.
Pre packaged plans and electronic gizmos cause people to make dumb choices.
Garmin is not as good as a real coach, obviously, and in this case it's not actully prescribing workouts. My watch does "suggest" workouts but that's all it is - a suggestion. I'm sure that if you read all the blurb it would caveat this with the things you say.
The value of these things is that they shine a light on the type of riding you are doing and what you may be missing. In my experience most motivated people are completely ignorant of the need for base miles, for example, and will simply ride hard all the time thinking the harder the better. Riding long and slow is unintuitive.
But you obviously need to listen to your body. Any human coach you would pay says this, so Garmin needs to as well. And indeed, my watch does that. It says "you have done a load of riding and your heart rate shows you are tired, so take a rest day".
Something like 4.5 hours in the saddle, handful of small climbs. Garmin says “Unproductive”.
It was a UCI 1.Pro event.
That's my point. A race is not a training ride. Too hard a ride is also unproductive.
Oooh how do you get separate running and cycling VO2 maxs, do you need a power meter on your bike?
I've got a Fenix 6 and only have the one VO2 max.
The value of these things is that they shine a light on the type of riding you are doing
Oh, I thought the value was the data that Garmin collects...Or have I got that wrong? I especially enjoy the way that Garmin shows you the data field is zero for instance...You could have data...If you bought this extra thing [that we sell]
I've always struggled to buy into the Sunday club ride or race being bad training. For me a full gas group ride is the ULTIMATE training.
Yeah, the race analogy is rubbish because that's when you spend fitness that you have previously saved.
In that context, think of Garmin as a slightly condescending financial advisor. Put £1k in an ISA? Productive. Overpaid your mortgage this month? Productive. Blown £1500 on one dancer in a titty bar on a stag do because you told her your wife likes horses and she played along and pretended she liked horses too? UNPRODUCTIVE 🤣 (Not me, my best man BTW 🤣 )
It's all about balance innit.
For me a full gas group ride is the ULTIMATE training.
Based on what?
@Rollindoughnut it is certainly very specific training but that's only because it's like racing in how 'unproductive' it is from a physiological perspective.
I guess that comes back to 'what is training' and I had this very conversation with my mate the other day. He was moaning about one of the local rides and I said to him that, sometimes, you need that unpredictability otherwise you lose your edge. Going hard when your pre-planned workout says, for the duration it specifies is one thing but holding on when you want to stop but can't- is where you train your mental game. But likewise, too much of that and you end up blurring the signal to your body.
Case in point, we have a couple of riders who qualified for the Fondo worlds in Glasgow so they made a big song and dance of doing a '4h smashfest' on Saturday. The way one guy carried on about it made me decide not to go and in fact leave a WhatsApp group 🤣 But of course, I couldn't help but look at their data afterwards and it was so very MEH!
There was literally nothing about that ride that made it good training for them. Because they were so desperate to make it fast, they weren't that quick up the hills and likewise, because they were still trying to smash the hills, they weren't even that fast and because one guy was gate-keeping it, there wasn't any unpredictability either. Average power was probably -60w on what I could do for the same duration and yet they were all creaming their bib shorts about it.
They'd have seen a much more specific training adaptation by either cruising between the hills (as they will in the bunch at the Fondo) and going all out up the climbs where the selections will be made in the race (ie working on vo2 max power) OR working on their 'high aerobic' fitness by ignoring the hills and riding the whole ride at a higher average power than they will need for the event.
As it was, they just made themselves tired for no obvious gain.
@jeffl - yep, you need power data for Cycling V02 max. I have a smart trainer for "winter" use on Zwift etc so it collects data from there.
Sounds like the OP just needs to rest more. Does look from your post that there’s not a day when you’re not doing exercise. Could well explain why your hard feeling sessions aren’t that actually that hard.
Also, as others have said, just ignore it and enjoy your riding.
And thanks to Joshvegas I now have an idea for a new Strava add on – it will find takeaways near the end of your activity and using state of the art AI (of course) will select appropriate dishes to offset the calories you just burned, with a premium option of integrating with Deliveroo.
Does shouting Strava get you a queue jump?
"Strava delivery to the sweaty heap next to the knackered polo and antique 26er premium delivery option" TICK
In reply to Rollin doughnute... you've got this upside down....
'Good example this morning: I’d planned a hard run in the classic Thursday threshold session style. However I was tired and sore from previous sessions (and my job) so I just jogged down by the river instead, stopping occasionally to enjoy the dawn.'
If on a prescribed program, it would have considered that a missed workout and my jog as unproductive. However in the circumstances my choice was by far the most productive thing I could have chosen for my long term training goals, both physically and mentally.'
No you're right and wrong at the same time. What you did is the right thing, and the predetermined plan that said otherwise wouldn't have been correct. However what would have been incorrecct would be to go and have a middling hard run... and even more ineffective to have a lot of middling hard runs that aren't easy, or ever hard.
Pre packaged plans and electronic gizmos cause people to make dumb choices. I believe their net affect is more negative than positive in the long run. This is coming from experience having done both styles of training and talking to many fellows over the years.
Well my Garmin would have told me to rest. Many years of experience have taught me that plenty of people have rubbish training , and never improve even tho' they want to as they can't do easy stuff, or hard stuff, but just the stuff in the (ineffective) middle, and they've been able to do that even before watches, HRM's etc. ever became a thing. It's not the technology that's the problem
Personally tho' I don't care if I improve much now as I'm retired from racing, so junk miles is just fine for me. But I don't kid myself it's going to suddenly make me a lot faster.
I think there can be a middle ground on at least one but maybe two points depending on discipline and a little scientific/physiological understanding helps. Mine is purely MTB, so as a coached rider, on Sunday - for example - I have the following choices:
a) As prescribed, 2hrs of Turbo Z2 which will result in maximal mitichondrial development plus not too tiring n effort
b) I'll change it up to Road ride with the club. This extends my "workout" to 3.5hrs but will have less specific Z2, more Z1 and more "other" efforts higher than Z2. But, it's a great mental break and a chance to socialise.
c) I'll change it up to 2.5hrs of a steady solo MTB on the non-race/bigger bike. I'll probably get the lowest level of specific Z2, some mental time to myself, also some tea and cake but importantly add/maintain/test technical skills for the forthcoming Vittoria Marathon.
I don't think any of those will result in me being less capable come Monday morning or less able to complete my Tuesday Threshold intervals, regardless of what the computers will tell me. FWIW I'm leaning toward c) as I <heart> my Occam a lot at the moment.
I wrote a long post on my phone but lost it the bottom line is don't rally worry about it unless your really serious about training and even then i think its only useful for warning that your overtraining when taken with your HRV.
Here's some of training load figures from my Garmin from the past few weeks
100 mile gravel ride lots of climbing but taking it easy, 9 hours pedaling. 140
Zone 2 1 hour at 200w on the Wattbike 140
27 minutes Spinning 170
1 hour Hilly 7 mile run quite fast for me 245
19 mile Zone 2 run 241
To me the 100 mile ride and 19 mile run were much harder than the shorter sessions but from the Garmin algorithm the loads are about the same, as it is heavily weighted towards time spent in the higher zone. Unless your are training a lot or really hard , its easy to slip into the unproductive zone. I notice that my group rides with mates sometimes barely register the last one was 2 hours gravel but was very easy and the load was just 62.
“Strava delivery to the sweaty heap next to the knackered polo and antique 26er premium delivery option”
Lol
Garmin is just programmed with the normal advice any coach would start with, and it is privy to certain metrics about you. However, what it doesn't know is how you feel on the day, wether or not your mates have asked you for a ride, what the weather is like, how hacked off you are with work etc. That's why it's only making suggestions, not giving you a rigid plan. A real life coach will take these things into account, and tell you what to do on any given day if you can't face it or simply don't want to do it. And if you regularly don't want to do it, you tell them and then they change the plan.
Garmin Connect currently tells me I'm not doing enough low aerobic (which I knew). It's not nagging me to do anything, it's just telling me what it has recorded. If people are using this information obsessively, then perhaps Garmin ought to publish something on the subject.
It also tells me I need 3 days to recover from a reasonable ride which I ignore.