What Insights Can Cyclists Unlock with Garmin Smartwatches?
March 5, 2025
With 24/7 health and fitness tracking1 and more, our smartwatches give cyclists valuable insights to support their time on and off the bike.
If you already own an Edge® cycling computer, you know how valuable the Garmin performance data can be. But if you aren’t wearing a Garmin smartwatch, you’re missing out on important off-the-bike training and recovery data.
Your Edge is your bike’s best friend. But to really take your cycling (and your wellness data) to the next level, you need a smartwatch — for cyclists, we recommend Forerunner® 965. This lightweight smartwatch has a bright AMOLED display, advanced performance and training insights, sleep tracking and more. All these metrics can help you better understand your overall fitness and well-being. Here’s how.
Track your health off the bike
Taking time to care for yourself off the bike is just as important as your rides.
After uploading a ride from your Edge to the Garmin Connect™ app, your compatible Garmin smartwatch will report your estimated recovery time. This is a countdown timer that represents how soon you’ll be fully recovered for your next intense workout (but you don’t have to wait until it hits zero). Recovery time is based on your daily activity levels, training intensity, sleep quality, stress levels, training effect of your completed activity and how much time is left on the countdown when you start a new activity.
Letting your body recover properly reduces the risk of getting hurt, avoids overtraining and ensures you get the most out of your training so you’re prepared for your next ride.
The quality of your sleep — and how much you need — can be crucial for harder or longer workouts. Let Garmin sleep coach help. Garmin sleep coach accounts for your age, daily and longer-term activity levels, recent sleep history, naps and heart rate variability (HRV) to calculate how much sleep you need. Then, it gives you personalized coaching on how you can improve.
HRV, the varying time between heartbeats, can indicate how well your body is balancing your training and recovery. It’s a key metric for cyclists. Compatible Garmin smartwatches measure your HRV while you sleep. The difference in milliseconds can point to how well recovered you are. (You can learn more about balancing your HRV status here).
Your HRV enhances insight from other features, including training status and training readiness, for your next ride. HRV also contributes to the Body Battery™ feature, which tells you how much energy you have left in the tank based on your sleep, daily activities, stress and more. With morning report, you’ll see a customized, daily summary when you wake up with information (including Body Battery, your recovery, your workout for the day and more) to jump-start your day.
Plus, if you ever forget your heart rate monitor on your ride, you can broadcast your heart rate from your compatible smartwatch to your Edge.
Training features
Training readiness tells you when you should be training hard and when you should dial it back to keep your training productive. This insight is based on your recovery time, advanced sleep tracking, training load trends, HRV status and recent stress levels.
Your training readiness could range from poor (1-24), low (25-49), moderate (50-74), high (75-94) or prime (95-100). It may not be the best day for a hard ride if you see a poor or low score. A high score means you’re ready to tackle that challenging ride.
Another way to make sure you’re in your best cycling shape? Free and personalized Garmin Coach training plans in Garmin Connect.
Garmin Cycling Coach is a training program that adapts based on your performance and recovery, helping to refine your fitness and prepare you for races and events, train for a personal milestone or simply improve your fitness. It will deliver a new workout to you daily, balancing between personalized workouts and rest days, and outline the week of workouts ahead. Just make sure you’re tracking your daily activity with a Garmin smartwatch to ensure your body can handle the workouts it offers and improve training recommendations.
For the Garmin Cycling Coach plan, you’ll need a power meter (such as Rally™ RS200 power meter pedals) and heart rate monitor so you can get the most precise performance data. Your VO2 max and functional threshold power (FTP) are the foundation of your customized training plan.
If you don’t have a training plan set up, you’ll see daily suggested workouts on your compatible Edge or smartwatch. The daily suggested workouts feature factors in your training status, training load and load focus, plus VO2 max, recovery time, sleep data and the profile of recently performed workouts. It also considers heart rate, lactate threshold or FTP. Daily suggested workouts will focus on recovery some days,…