Garmin Run Coach - Training every single day? + Is there a tutorial?

In the Garmin Run Coach settings, you can select at most two rest days for a week, but not consequtive days. (I personally don't understand why you cannot select more rest days, I'm 55 and would like to run only every other day, now I have to do that by skipping some workouts).

You can rest as much as you want. The daily suggestions are exactly what they claim to be - suggestions. There is no obligation. Do what you feel fitting your possibilities, fitness level, mood, and time, and future suggestions will accommodate to it. If you take a few days rest, you will get different suggestions, than if you do a 30 km trail run instead of the suggested workout.

Bitti said:

In the Garmin Run Coach settings, you can select at most two rest days for a week, but not consequtive days. (I personally don't understand why you cannot select more rest days, I'm 55 and would like to run only every other day, now I have to do that by skipping some workouts).

Maybe not what you’re looking for, but if you’re willing to use a plan older than the new Garmin Run Coach, you can schedule 3-5 days of training per week.

- The old Garmin Coach adaptive plans (with Coach Jeff, Amy and Greg): selectable in the Connect website via Training & Planning > Browse All Plans. Also offered alongside the Garmin Run Coach plan in both the Connect website and the Connect app when you just use the normal UI [by not pressing Browse All Plans but by choosing a category such as “Train for an Event” or “Achieve a Milestone”]

[I think at some point these were not available via the default Training & Planning UI on the website — i.e. if you didn’t press “Browse All Plans”, or via the Connect app by any means, but I’m guessing maybe enough users asked for these plans back.]

These plans let you schedule 3-5 days per week.

- The old self-guided running plans (selectable in the Connect website via Training & Planning > Browse All Plans). There are different variants of these plans with specific amounts of runs per week (e.g. some plans have 3 days per week, others have 4, while others have 5)

For what it’s worth, you are not the first user to complain that Garmin Run Coach asks you to schedule 5-7 days per week, and in those other discussions, it was also suggested (as trux did) that you don’t actually have to do all the workouts, and the training plan will adapt to your actual activity.

Without actually using any of the plans or knowing the internals of their implementation, my hot take as a completely uninformed layman is that if Garmin Run Coach is smart enough to adapt to you actually only running 3-4 days per week (for example), why not simply allow you to select 3-4 days of workouts in the first place?

By asking you to select 5-7 training days, it immediately gives the impression that you’re “supposed” to run 5-7 days per week, and that if you don’t, you’re “doing it wrong”. I’m not claiming that this impression is true, I’m just saying that it seems natural to me. That’s def what I would think.

I also think it’s interesting that the text in the UI initially claims that Garmin Run Coach involves 4-7 days of running, but if you actually select the plan, they pull the ol’ switcheroo and demand that you select 5-7 days. Maybe a typo, but maybe an indication that the minimum used to be 4 days and it was deliberately changed?

Anyway, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve personally never seen any improvement from running only 3-4 days per week. At best that’s enough for me to maintain cardio fitness. So I kinda get why Garmin Run Coach asks you to select 5-7 days. 

Yes, I know and have used the old Garmin coaches. I also believe the new plan adapts. My gripe is that when you skip and choose just some of the suggested workouts, it's more difficult to keep good balance of low aerobic, high aerobic, and anaerobic workouts. If you have a rest day when an anaerobic workout is suggested, the plan is most likely not going to offer it the next day. So you then have to yourself pick one from further down the week. 

But it still kind of works now if you consider the suggestions just as a list of potential workouts from which it is your responsibility to choose a suitable workout for today (or to decide to have a rest day).

Yeah especially if running isn't your primary sport, I can imagine you wouldn't want to do it 5 times a week.

For most ppl I know, 1 day of running per week is too much (even though they'll do plenty of sports which are actually fun, like basketball or volleyball.)

Bitti said:

But it still kind of works now if you consider the suggestions just as a list of potential workouts from which it is your responsibility to choose a suitable workout for today (or to decide to have a rest day).

From my pov it's tough to decide bc if I skip easy runs, I risk injury, but if I skip workouts, I don't improve speed or stamina. If I skip long runs, then I don't have enough mileage (total or max) to achieve my goals. (It's also hard to do the workouts in the first place without the proper aerobic base / mileage).

So what runs are ok to skip? I guess if you have 2-3 easy runs in a week, maybe it's "ok" to skip 1 or 2. But I did that all the time, at a point when I was improving very rapidly, and I was predictably rewarded with an overuse injury.

Thank you all for your answers!!! You helped a lot!