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Strength Training Integration with Hevy App & Improved Workout Tracking Experience

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Hi all,

I'm currently using an iPhone 15 Pro Max along with a Garmin Epix Pro Gen 2, and while I'm absolutely impressed with how well Garmin handles outdoor tracking (like running and cycling), I’ve found the strength training experience to be lacking—especially when it comes to workout creation, usability, and social engagement.

After trying the Hevy app, I was blown away. It’s incredibly intuitive for building and tracking strength workouts directly from the phone. It has a slick, modern interface and even includes social features like following friends, viewing their workouts, and staying motivated. Starting a session is as simple as one tap.

Comparatively, Garmin Connect feels much less intuitive, both in terms of creating custom strength workouts and engaging with the community. The process is more time-consuming, and there’s not much in the way of gym-specific feedback or community-driven features.

What I’d love to see from Garmin:

- A way to track strength workouts using a third-party app like Hevy on the phone, while simultaneously allowing my Garmin watch to record HR, movement, and intensity data.
- After the session, all data (including Garmin's physiological metrics) could sync into Garmin Connect, Hevy, and Strava as a single activity.
- An improved and more engaging strength training experience in Garmin Connect, ideally with social components and simpler custom workout creation.

Question to Garmin:
Has the team ever considered partnering with or acquiring Hevy—or at least opening an API path for deeper integration?

This kind of synergy could offer the best of both worlds: Garmin’s elite sensors and health metrics combined with Hevy’s ease of use and focus on strength training.

Also, this isn’t just a personal opinion—this topic has been brought up frequently on Reddit and other fitness communities, often with frustration over Garmin’s current strength features and lack of third-party support.

I truly hope Garmin can take this feedback seriously, and if possible, I’d appreciate a detailed response—not a canned reply. I'd also be grateful if you could point me to someone within Garmin (perhaps a product manager or dev contact) where more detailed feedback could be sent.

Thanks for reading and for all the amazing tech you’ve built. Can’t wait to see what’s next—especially looking forward to the Fenix 8!

Best regards,
Radenko

  • 0

    +1 the strength training experience on my Fenix 8 is horrible 

  • 0

    This absolutely needs to happen. Please take weightlifting seriously, and Hevy is one of the best apps I know.

  • 0 in reply to 6170158

    Garmin acquired TrainHeroic recently. I wonder if they'll integrate that rather than a 3rd party app. 

  • 0

    Hello Garmin team,

    I train for trail ultramarathons with a Forerunner 970 and combine running with structured strength training three times a week. I log every gym session in Hevy (exercises, sets, reps, weight and RPE per set), because Garmin's own strength tracking is not practical for this. I am writing to complain about two problems that make Training Load, Training Status and Training Readiness unreliable for anyone who trains and lifts seriously.

    1. Garmin does not accept strength workouts from Hevy.
    Hevy states on its help center that Garmin declined its request for API access. As a result, 36 of my last 59 strength sessions do not exist for Garmin at all. My heaviest leg session of the week simply disappears from my acute load and from the next morning's Training Readiness.

    2. Even when I record the session on the watch, the load is badly underestimated.
    Training Load is derived from heart rate (EPOC). Heavy, low-rep sets with long rest periods barely raise heart rate, so Garmin treats a hard gym session as a light one. My own data:
    - easy 39-minute run, average HR 127: load 50.6
    - heavy leg session: load 43.5
    - 45-minute upper-body session: load 18.6
    According to Garmin, an easy jog costs more than a heavy leg day. The sports-science literature has long shown that heart rate is a poor measure of resistance-training load, and that session RPE (duration x perceived exertion) is the validated method.

    What I am asking for:
    - Open API access, or at least an official import path, so that strength apps like Hevy can write completed strength workouts (exercises, sets, reps, weight) into Garmin Connect.
    - Make Training Load, Acute Load and Training Readiness account for resistance training beyond heart rate, for example by using the perceived-effort rating your watches already ask for after an activity, multiplied by duration.
    - As a minimum, let users manually set or adjust the training load of a strength activity.

    I paid for a premium device precisely for these recovery and readiness metrics. Today they are systematically wrong for hybrid athletes, and the fix is in Garmin's hands.

    Please forward this to the product teams responsible for Garmin Connect and the Connect Developer Program and allow Hevy to sync data with Garmin.