Training Load and Recovery Time: How to Read Your Garmin Metrics for Peak Performance

You finish a long run, press save, and your watch tells you to take 52 hours of recovery. The next morning your legs feel fine, and you have an easy run planned. Do you go?

The answer depends on what the number is actually telling you. Here is how to read Garmin's training load, recovery time and training status, and how to use them to build without breaking.

Photo: SportPlus.sg / Isis Ang

Garmin's Training Metrics at a Glance

Acute Load

Garmin describes acute load as a weighted sum of your excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) for the last several days. In plain terms, harder and longer sessions add more load than short, easy ones.

The gauge shows whether your current load is low, optimal, high or very high. The optimal range is based on your own fitness level and training history, and it moves as your training time and intensity go up or down. A beginner and a seasoned marathoner can carry the same load and get very different readings.

Training Load Focus

Garmin splits your training into three categories: low aerobic, high aerobic and anaerobic. Training load focus shows how much of your last four weeks sits in each one and gives targets for each. It needs at least seven days of training to show whether your load is low, optimal or high, and gives more detailed targets after four weeks.

• Low Aerobic Shortage: Garmin suggests more easy aerobic work to provide recovery and balance for your harder sessions.
• High Aerobic Shortage: Garmin suggests more high aerobic work to help improve your lactate threshold and VO2 max.
• Balanced: Your load is spread in a way that gives all-round fitness benefits.

Recovery Time

Recovery time appears as soon as you save an activity. Garmin says it counts down until it is optimal for you to attempt another hard workout, and the watch updates it through the day based on changes in sleep, stress, relaxation and physical activity. The maximum is four days.

That means 52 hours of recovery is not an instruction to stay off your feet for two days. It is a signal to hold off on the next interval session or tempo run. An easy, conversational run is a different thing from a hard workout.

Garmin also notes that recovery time uses your VO2 max estimate and may seem inaccurate at first, until the watch has a few activities to learn from.

Training Status

Training status pulls these together. Garmin bases it on changes to your VO2 max, acute load and HRV status over an extended period. Here is what the main labels mean, in Garmin's words:

For an up-to-date status, Garmin says the watch needs at least one VO2 max measurement per week, which means at least one outdoor run that reaches 70% of your maximum heart rate for 10 minutes or more.

Recovery time is about your next hard session, not your next run.

How Fast Should You Build?

The 10% rule says you should never add more than 10% to your weekly distance. It is easy to remember, but the evidence for it is thin.

• The 10% Rule Trial: In a 2008 randomised trial of 532 novice runners preparing for a 6.7km event, a 13-week programme built on the 10% rule had almost the same injury rate as a standard 8-week programme: 20.8% against 20.3%.
• The Big Jumps: A 2014 study gave GPS watches to 874 novice runners for a year. Overall injury rates did not differ between groups, but runners who increased their weekly distance by more than 30% seemed more vulnerable to distance-related injuries, such as runner's knee and shin splints, than those who increased it by less than 10%.

So a steady build still makes sense. The point is to avoid sudden spikes, and your acute load gauge is a good place to spot one.

Using the Numbers Day to Day

• Stay Near the Optimal Range: If acute load jumps into high or very high, make the next few days easier.
• Do Not Stack Hard Sessions: With plenty of recovery time left, swap intervals for an easy run or a rest day.
• Read the Status Over Weeks: Strained after a race is normal. Unproductive for a while is a sign to look at rest, food and stress.
• Trust How You Feel: If the watch says Peaking and your legs feel heavy, believe your legs.

Train with Garmin on ATHLO+

Browse the Garmin range on ATHLO+, including the Forerunner 265, whose owner's manual is the source for the features described here.

Ready to see what your sleep and HRV add to the picture? Read Sleep, HRV and Body Battery next.