Strength Activity Profile Detects the Wrong Exercise

When I perform a Strength activity on my watch, it will detect the exercise I'm doing based on the movement I'm doing.  For instance, when I'm doing squats, I will perform the set, enter the weight I just lifted and then 'Rest', then I do my next exercise, enter weight, etc.  On some sets, the specific exercise is not detected and that's ok.

The problem is, when I go into the Garmin Connect app later to view and clean up the Strength activity (edit the number of reps, add exercise names for sets that were not detected, etc.), when I edit it, the weights for 'Squats' change from the value(s) that I entered to 'Body'.  I suspect that this is because the watch's exercise detection defaults to a bodyweight movement instead of a weighted movement ('Squat' is a bodyweight movement and 'Barbell Back Squat' is a weighted movement), even though I entered a weight on the watch.

I think that when I enter a weight for the exercise/set, the watch should know it is a weighted movement instead of a bodyweight movement.  In this example, the detected exercise should be 'Barbell Back Squat' instead of 'Squat'.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

have you heard of this before?

  • 1. Yes

    2. Yes

    I have been using Garmin to track my workouts for a few years and this has always been an issue.

  • Same thing is happening to me specifically with squats, but no other exercises. Very annoying. 

  • There are a lot of exercises (leg stuff probably the worst) that a wrist watch wouldn't be able to determine by motion what it is, especially with the huge number of potential exercises that make it nearly impossible to detect.    Mine messes up quite a bit, but its easy to detect patterns, lat pull down often gets mistaken for pullups or bench press.  I have found I like to keep a lift order routine anyhow, so i have the first half of my typical workout programmed as 'workout', so autodetect doesn't mess up at least the first half of my workout that is programmed.

    How could it possibly know if someone was doing squats, calf raises, single leg calf raises, etc.  Similar to many of the machines ... chest press, row, fly, etc... all such a similar wrist movement.    Or all the variations of possible curls...   

    I guess often it at least does point you in the right direction on some of the things, good thing for me is that i keep a google sheet with workout info, so going back and updating works well.  EXCEPT, when the weight is cleared out to body weight even though i put in a weight!!! ugh!

  • I hate to say it but you may as well wear a banana to detect exercises.  The watch will never correctly identify most exercise bar the easy ones.  

    Peoples form is a factor, the fact that the movement of many exercises is similar.  

    The best idea is to use a tracking app.  There are plenty in the iOS or google App Store.  Way better than the Garmin app for strength training. 

    Use the watch for sets and rest and forget the rest.  It will never work how we would all like it to.  Sooner you embrace it the sooner you can move on.  

  • I don't think any of us expect the watch to detect exercises 100% correctly, especially lower body. I think we can all agree though that it shouldn't overwrite the weight we entered when we go to edit the exercises, regardless of whether it correctly detected the exercise or not

  • I think you've misunderstood what's the problem here. I don't care if the exercise is detected correctly or not. I just want the watch to NOT delete my weight I entered manually during the set if it thinks I did a bodyweight exercise...

  • I agree, it shouldn’t.  However, the garmin app is terrible for weights.  There are plants of much better apps.  

    appreciate that you may want to use Garmin, however, I don’t see any reason why anyone would.  You have to mess around correcting exercises and this bug is also present.  

    I appreciate we are all different and there may be a valid reason to use Garmin.  It just not for me.  I use strength and haven’t looked back. 

  • I use both Garmin and Strong for my workouts. I like the ease of editing in Strong, but really like being able to track time between sets and like having all my workout history available on Garmin (not just strength training). I've since switched to using preprogrammed workouts so that the weight doesn't get overwritten, but having the option of more ad hoc workouts without worrying about weights resetting would be nice

  • I still use the watch to record the workout and use it for the sets and rest time.  The watch is amazing for that side of things.  

    I just never look at the workout after.  As I said, we are all different and have our own needs.  My running is stored in Garmin, my workouts as well, however the data of the workout is in strength.  Works perfectly for me.  

  • It'd probably work fine for me too, but it would bug me that the one place where everything is has incorrect data even if I rarely look at it. To each their own though.