Suggested workouts - is this normal?

That doesn't sound very ideal for a Suggestion.  I wouldn't worry about the 'Unproductive' that is looking at vo2max trend. 

 Quick check on a couple things that come to mind.

1.)  Are you doing activity by pace or heart rate?  Staying on target?

2.)  Are you using a heart rate strap and/or do the heart rate graphs look good? Are you getting low Aerobic Training Effect on these short/easy runs?  Aerobic TE of 1.5 to 2.7 and Anaerobic of 0.

I think they're still working some bugs out of it.  I hadn't ran since Saturday; on Sun/Mon/Tues, it suggested the same workout:  10:30 pace, for 39 minutes.  Today?  5:20 sprints.  A bunch of them.  Not running since Saturday, and then going out for dead sprints sounds like a pretty quick path to injury..  that said, overall I've been happy with the suggestions.  It is a really, really neat feature and I'm looking forward to seeing them fine tune it a bit in the future. 

I'd give it a few more days. Are you doing the suggested workouts?

Not knowing your history it's hard to know whether or not a base period is required before starting anything else. Most programs, certainly those for whom exercise has not been a regular occurrence, begin with a few weeks of base building to develop muscular skeletal strength and some cardiorespiratory endurance.

Not sure how integrated Garmin have got the suggested workouts with the training status so might be best to ignore those for now.

My take is that Garmin have provided this feature to provide some guidance for those who might be less familiar with exercise programming. if you are already active, have been for an extended period, and following your own program then I suspect there is limited utility from these workouts.

I've been following the suggested workouts for about two weeks now, and it starts out easy and ramps up. I've found the workouts challenging. I've learned I can run a lot further than I'd thought, and uncovered areas for improvement. Go with the flow, it should give a good variety for the areas you need to work on. 

NickMN said:

1.)  Are you doing activity by pace or heart rate?  Staying on target?

2.)  Are you using a heart rate strap and/or do the heart rate graphs look good? Are you getting low Aerobic Training Effect on these short/easy runs?  Aerobic TE of 1.5 to 2.7 and Anaerobic of 0.

I've been doing the runs by pace and sticking to the target. At most 10 seconds per km out on an easy run but still towards the middle of the pace range.

In the past I've some training blocks almost all by HR. I wear a strap every run for the accuracy and HR data has looked good over the last week.

Here's what the full week ended up being with training effect

Monday - Base (31 mins) - Aerobic 3.3, Anaerobic 0.0

Tuesday - Base (31 mins) - Aerobic 3.3, Anaerobic 0.0

Wednesday - Base (31 mins) - Aerobic 2.6, Anaerobic 0.0 (Low HR this day, cooler weather)

Thursday- Recovery (23 mins) - Aerobic 2.0, Anaerobic 0.0

Friday - Base (28 mins) - Aerobic 3.0, Anaerobic 0.0

Saturday - Threshold 4 x 7 mins w/ 2 min jog - Aerobic 4.7, Anaerobic 2.5

Sunday - Base (28 mins) - Aerobic 3.2, Anaerobic 0.0

Monday - Recovery (23 mins) - Aerobic 2.1, Anaerobic 0.0

The threshold session was a solid session and fun to do.Other than that it's been rather relaxed and lower volume than what I would usually do. I'm going to keep following the suggestions for a while to see how it goes.

Dr Phil said:

I'd give it a few more days. Are you doing the suggested workouts?

Not knowing your history it's hard to know whether or not a base period is required before starting anything else. Most programs, certainly those for whom exercise has not been a regular occurrence, begin with a few weeks of base building to develop muscular skeletal strength and some cardiorespiratory endurance.

I've followed the suggested workouts exactly for the last 8 days.

History could have something to do with it now that you mention it. I've done some good consistent training blocks but I've had this 945 for 4 weeks (replacement) and maybe it hasn't picked up enough history? Although the 4 week load focus has still been showing aerobic all in the upper end of the optimal range and anaerobic shortage (below the optimal range). A little strange.

ss29640 said:

I've been following the suggested workouts for about two weeks now, and it starts out easy and ramps up. I've found the workouts challenging. I've learned I can run a lot further than I'd thought, and uncovered areas for improvement. Go with the flow, it should give a good variety for the areas you need to work on. 

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm going to keep following for a while longer and see how it goes. Hopefully I'll see it ramp up soon.

I had sprints suggested this saturday, but as I usually do other stuff during the weekend and workout during the weeks I thought I would do them today. But today the suggesten has changed to really easy 35 minutes of "Base"-run. I think that the watch might be looking at a too "narrow" time frame for suggestions? Would be great if it looked at say the last 4 or maybe even 8 weeks of training, and then took that into consideration? And also, if you could schedule days for workout, e.g. mon-fri. So the watch would know during which days it had to "fit" the training load.

According to Garmin-Brooks - https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-945/243953/tomorrow-s-suggested-workout/1156367# - the DWS algorithm takes into account what workouts have been scheduled in the Garmin Calendar when making the suggestions. So if Garmin were to add a "Rest" workout and make it possible to schedule, you can load that onto the days you want to keep free.

Seems like the new Firmware changed the suggested workout possibly?  Today was the first time in more than a week that the suggestion popped up ("REST") without going to the Workout/Training screen and selecting 'Suggested Workout'.  However... I seem to be stuck in the "REST DAY" endless loop for me.  It has been rest for 3 or more days... i train 6-7days a week, 10-14hrs... so when I do a 30-55min easy run (Aerobic TE 2.0-2.3, Training load 30-50), its an active recovery, pretty much rest day, and ready to work hard the next day usually.  So when it gives me a rest... a day after a recovery run... it is starting to turn an eyebrow.   

Todays 'REST' prompt wasn't too big of a surprise, was a pretty tough treadmill workout for me, strongest in a while.  24min and 16min Tempo run with 2min pushes @8% incline.  Aerobic TE 4.1 and Load 202

For a while it was pretty spot on!  

Yes, same here.. 3-4 days straight just Rest and today the recovery hours was 0 before going out for a run, so it should not be that I really need the rest..

Also it seems that there's something fishy on the thing it says:
Training status went to unproductive after todays run, VO2Max was the same as the whole week. Training status has extra info: "It looks like your current training load is high. Try reducing your training load a bit and adding rest to make your efforts more productive".

7d load is 889, and optimal range is 559-1258. "This load is ideal for maintaining or improving your fitness".

4w Load Focus, Above Targets. "Your overall load is high. Try scaling back the duration and frequency of workouts".

This seems pretty mixed, if my 7d load is in optimal range, I don't understand why the 4w can be problem. From GCW:

I don't see a problem here either.

Same for me. Today it suggested me a sprint training which I did and after that I received an unproductive. Ok maybe I did a failure by adding aditional 1k on top to reach 10k. But then I would expext overreached and not unproduvtive and also with fitness decrease. ??