Zwift Rides No longer count towards Intensity Minutes

Michelle said:

why would an activity imported from Zwift complete with heart rate data not count towards intensity minutes

Because those are not calculated by the app (or on the server). They are calculated on the device. Same for the Training Effect, VO₂max, and many other features.

Simply wear your Garmin device while riding Zwift, and all of the issues you named will be fixed - the activity will be counted towards badges and challenges, you'll get the Intensity Minutes, and the Performance Status will be updated too. 

I dont think it's that simple. While using your garmin device during a Zwift ride may allow you to record accurate biometrics, you lose equally important activity data like distance, speed and elevation because garmin sees everything as flat.  Distance and speed may be out as much as 50% between the two. 

That's a big compromise, imho.

CoreyW said:

Distance and speed may be out as much as 50% between the two. 

Just set the distance from Zwift into the activity recorded by your Garmin device.

Yep, my garmin watch has cadence lock issues on Zwift so I started using a heart rate monitor, and now intensity minutes and training effect don't work. It has led me to using Garmin connect less and less, and it's becoming clear that I can just use strava for all my activity tracking and leave garmin behind. 

Intensity Minutes and Training Effect work with HRM chest belts all right, as long as they supply also the HR Variability data. And the HRM must be connected to the Garmin watch, of course, as an external ANT+ sensor.

Well I guess I have a reason to move entirely to Strava now, and leave garmin behind entirely, including future HW purchases. Pretty dumb policy to drive users away from your app especially after a couple high profile issues last year where the app was totally unavailable for long periods. I’m not interested in fussing around with all my activities like trux says above just to get garmin badges but enjoyed them when it wasn’t so much effort. 

It is indeed just insane that Zwift rides do not longer count towards intensity minutes and challenges. This renders my Garmin Forerunner 935 pretty much useless now. If this is not fixed, I'm likely moving away from Garmin. The irony is that I'm also using Tacx Neo 2T (Garmin recently bought Tacx), so I really just don't get WTF Garmin is doing. This is extremely frustrating.

Kion said:

It is indeed just insane that Zwift rides do not longer count towards intensity minutes and challenges.

Well, Intensity Minutes never worked on anything else than on Garmin watches, and they still do, even if you do your ride with Zwift. It is enough to wear the Forerunner, while you ride, or in case you use a chest belt HRM, connecting the HRM as an external sensor to the Forerunner (you can connect it to multiple devices).

And if you want the ride to count towards challenges, record the ride with your Forerunner. That's all what is needed.

trux said:

Well, Intensity Minutes never worked on anything else than on Garmin watches, and they still do, even if you do your ride with Zwift.

No it doesn't anymore. It used to before, but stopped working now. I've been trying to understand why and that's how I found this thread.

trux said:

It is enough to wear the Forerunner, while you ride

To be clear, yes, I've been wearing the watch while riding on Zwift.

As I said, it used to work just fine, but stopped to work recently.

In fact, I'm not quite sure if it's a coincidence or not, but I believe it stopped working after I edited my weekly intensity minutes goal. After I did that I noticed that intensity minutes were gone for that particular day (on which I edited the goal), but the following days of that week (it was last week) looked fine, i.e. intensity minutes got logged properly.

Today though, the entire "Intensity Minutes" section disappeared from the Garmin Connect mobile app and my watch face shows 0 minutes, even though I finished a 50 min long med/high intensity Zwift ride a couple of hours ago (again, this kind of rides was properly synced before, but not anymore, it seems).

Since is never has worked with Zwift no matter what you experienced the problem is something else here. Probably something with the heart rate readings from your watch. Check the heart rate on your 935 during a ride and make sure it is high enough. Wrist heart rate is known to be bad and often get lower readings than chest strap.