You can pause the activity through hitting the stop/start button.
A well designed structured workout will often have laps that are ended by a lap button press, rather than a specific duration. So for hill repeats for example, you might have a 1 minute hard effort, followed by 1 minute recovery, then another step ended by a lap button press (rather than a specific duration) to advance to the next effort interval. This allows you to get the right length effort, adequate recovery, and still allowing you some flexibility to get back into position at the bottom of the hill before pressing the lap interval to start the next effort interval.
If I understand your question correctly, it's as good an answer as you're going to get.
In a workout, lap always moves you onto the next step, which can be a rest step, but it will always be recorded either way. There is no way to make the lap key pause recording. Some people stop and restart so the rest isn't recorded bar the first and last few seconds. For me a ten second rest is different from a ninety second rest, and I like to be consistent, I think you're degrading the workout by doing that.
Anyway. If by pause you mean stop and start recording, it can only be done with the start and stop. If you want to record a rest, it depends on making a workout that includes those rest periods, which you can put together on the watch for a simple set where all workout steps are the same. If you want a workout where the fast steps are logged and the rests are not and all you need to do is push the lap key, that isn't possible. If you mean something else, maybe you could explain a bit more?
I want to know if I can set the behavior of the lap button to work like in "strength training" switching between pause/next set or starting a new lap immediately like in "running", on my own or if that is fixed with the activity type.
Strength training is set up so it always works as a workout with alternating effort/recovery steps. Most activities don't work like that. You need to set up a workout. For say run, go into Training>Intervals and set the interval and rest to be open, set warm up and cool down as you want them, number of repeats as you want them, and then Do Workout and it'll do what you want for that session.
I've answered your question quite clearly, explained why it is different for strength training compared with other activities, and given you an explanation of how you can make other activities behave similarly, and you're complaining about it. Classy. Bye now.
