My Love/Hate Relationship with Garmin…

I’ll start by saying, I have no affiliation with Garmin. There are many positives and negatives to many brands of watches for athletes, or just people who want to move their bodies. But my personal experience is with Garmin. You could probable insert any fitness tracking watch here, and it would have some similarities. Even within Garmin, there are multiple different models, and they have different features. But anyways, I digress…

I used to have a different model of Garmin watch. This model has a move bar. This feature, if you were sitting too long, would appear on your watch screen. The only way to clear it was to get up and walk, and once you did enough steps, it would go away. Now don’t get me wrong, there are advantages to this. If you work in a sedentary job, this might be nice during your work day. But for me, I feel like it was actually detrimental. Say I ran a half marathon in the morning. Yes Garmin, I am going to sit on the couch for 2 hours and not move in the afternoon. And you know what? That is OK!!! Garmin, don’t you guilt me into getting up off that couch when I SHOULD be resting, and do useless laps around the house until my move bar disappears. This can also be similar to step goals. Raise your hand if you’ve been guilty of doing laps around your house/bedroom/apartment, or even walking in place in your bathroom until you meet your step goal before you go to bed🙋🏻‍♀️! I will tell you right now, that has not made you a better person, a better athlete, and honestly, it will make you lose your mind!!!

So currently, I have the Forerunner 935. With my lovely type A personality, I love having numbers. I love having data to tell me when I do my best. Honestly, its great to have proof when I do great things! But this version of the watch has a feature where it tells you if your training status is “good” or not essentially. It will say it is productive, maintaining, unproductive, recovery, peaking etc.

This once again, can sometimes be a helpful feature. But it can also make you go INSANE…I’m serious. It does not know that you were just sick, or your at 6,000 feet of elevation. It doesn’t know your stressed because you had a fight with your husband, or because you’ve had to work over 60 hours this week. It also doesn’t know what you are training for! I mean, what is “productive” for me is going to be different if I’m training for a sprint triathlon vs a half Ironman.

I’ll be honest, there is no doubt in my mind that I will continue to use my Garmin. But at the beginning of this year, I did take a 5 day break from it. Nothing was recorded…it didn’t “count”. But that is OK! Because you know what? Who I am as a person, if I did a good job today, how I feel about myself should NOT be determined by a watch!