Garmin HR zones vs TP Zones

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March 16, 2021 at 4:30 pm #52097

Anonymous
Inactive

Hello,

I am new to the training and was wondering if anyone else is using Garmin as their training device (Fenix 6). The issue I cannot figure out is how to set the watch for only 4 zones like is explained in the HR Drift articles and setting the ranges in TP. Garmin seems to only allow 5 zones and no less. So do folks set the 4 TP zones as zones 1-4 on their watch or zones 2-5, since you must have 5 zones. What do you put in the extraneous zone that is not needed?

Thank you
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Posted In: General Training Discussion

Participant

Shashi on March 16, 2021 at 6:55 pm #52107

adebowski – Welcome to the Uphill Athlete forum.

I am not a Garmin user, but had a similar issue with my Coros.

If you use the UA Training Zones calculator, it should give you five zones that you can use for your set up. I use these zones in my TP as well as Coros.

Hope this is helpful.

Participant

rita on March 17, 2021 at 4:13 pm #52136

That training calculator doesn’t mention zone 5. The uphill athlete book has an explanation on the 5 zone model, where zone 5 has no associated heart rate to measure intensity since the duration at this zone is too short (8-60sec) for HR to reflect. What I did in Garmin was set Zone 4 to be from LT to an approximate max HR, and Z5 to be above that which my HR would never actually reach during training.

Participant

Shashi on March 18, 2021 at 4:36 pm #52180

Rita – yes, the calculator doesn’t mention Zone 5 but gives you five zones that you can set up in your watch or apps. I was addressing the need to set up five zones but I might have misunderstood. Thanks for sharing your Garmin setup.

Inactive

Anonymous on April 30, 2021 at 9:52 am #53518

WRT to your watch, just ignore them. The Garmin zones aren’t useful anyway. Garmin Connect isn’t that helpful for specific intensity work, and if you’re using Training Peaks, you’re only adding to your workload without any benefit.

Once you’ve measured your thresholds and are using a training-focused tool (like Training Peaks, Today’s Plan, etc.), then the generic Garmin metrics are useless.

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