Garmin vs. Athlytic

Previously, in Fenix 8: reaffiming Garmin’s doom and Apple Watch Ultra: Yes, Garmin is doomed, I discussed Garmin’s future from a tech-investment perspective. But let me take it back to a more practical user’s discussion… using Athyltic over Garmin’s built in features.

When I switched from my Garmin Fenix 6 to my Apple Watch Ultra, I still wanted to have the training stats offered by Garmin. Athlytic came recommended, so I tried that. Athlytic provides some, but not all, of the functionality of Garmin’s training features.

The 3 main overall scores that Athlytic offers are:

Recovery / readiness score

I haven’t really dove into the details of their implementation, but Athlytic uses HRV and RHR to compute a daily readiness / recovery score. It also allows you to grab HRV using the Apple “mindfulness” app. You can read all about it here

I used to use the mindfulness app in the morning to capture HRV. Maybe 75% of the time, when I capture HRV during mindfulness, my recovery score in Athlytic will jump to 90-100%. This will happen even after a hard workout the evening before, so I don’t really see how this can be accurate. I stopped doing the mindfulness capture in the morning.

TBH though, I haven’t ever found recovery scores to be that meaningful, on either Garmin or Athlytic. In my experience, the first 10 minutes of a run is the most accurate way of figuring out how I feel.

Sleep score

Seems the same as Garmin’s sleep score.

Exertion score

This is probably the “overall score” where I get the most value. Or at least, it’s the thing that motivates me the most. After working out, this simply reflects how hard you went that day.

It gives some recommendations of workouts you could do but for the most part (like Garmin), these recommendations are pretty useless. Right now, for example, it says “60 minutes HIGH intensity + 56 minutes MEDIUM intensity”. It’d be nice if this was a more prescriptive run (e.g. track workout or strides). However, Garmin isn’t much better for daily workout recommendations – its running recommendation, for me at least, is “Base.” Pretty much all of the time.

The only downside of this score is that it continues to accrue as I move around during the day. So a day with a 10 mile run might have the same score as a day with a 4 mile run and lots of walking. These don’t seem the same to me. I’d prefer the exertion score only include workouts.

Other features that are like Garmin

Athlytic also has a stress score, fitness / fatigue (I think garmin presents that in “training load”), load focus (anerobic, aerobic), HR zones.

Some Garmin features not in Athlytic (I think)

• Training programs / “coaches”
• Training status (“productive”, e.g.). There’s an athlytic feature called “training adaptation” but it’s not obvious to me how this maps to Garmin’s status.
• Body Battery
• Heat/altitude acclimation
• Recovery time after a workout
• Lactate threshold
• Race time prediction
• Performance condition

So is an Apple Watch + Athlytic good enough if you’re coming from Garmin?

It depends on what motivates you. If Garmin’s features are motivating and helpful to you, then maybe switching off to an Apple Watch + Athlytic would be a problem. For me, I sometimes find Athlytic’s “readiness score” motivating–if it’s high, I’ll try to push harder maybe.

That said, generally, I don’t find stats that tell me how I should feel or how hard I should work out that day to be all that useful, whether it’s Garmin or Athlytic or anyone else.

I was in my best shape when it was me and my boring Forerunner 220 that didn’t do anything except GPS and timing my runs. So maybe I should just delete it all and go back to that and the book that got me in great shape: Run less, Run faster. (Thanks to “RI” who originally recommended that book to me.)

Appendix: When will Apple develop features that crush Athlytic?

Apple WatchOS 11 now has training load built in, as well as “Vitals.” When announced, many called these features the “Athlytic killer.” But the features don’t match up. If you want to get similarity to Garmin’s scores, you still need to use Athlytic.

I said this previously, but it seems like Apple’s philosophy with the health metrics has been to not build prescriptive scores and such. Instead of a “sleep score,” they just give you the raw data. You were awake for 5 minutes, in REM sleep for 2 hours, moved 20 times, etc.

And TBH, maybe this isn’t a bad philosophy on Apple’s part. Over the course of now 3 years of having Garmin and then Athlytic “scores” for stuff, I’m just not sure what to make of them. Everyone’s bodies are different. I just want to do stuff and see my VO2 Max go up, not down. That’s it. I’m not an elite athlete, so the scores just don’t do that much for me in that regard. Putting aside more time for fitness is probably more meaningful than any watch could ever help with.

Lastly, a sub question related to my prior posts on this subject: can these Garmin features save Garmin from doom? Garmin began adding all of these scores and stuff about 4-5 years ago. Time will tell if there’s enough value-add for Garmin’s fitness segment to survive the onslaught of smartwatches. As I’ve said before, for a variety of reasons, I don’t see it happening.

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