Bizarre Garmin training bug makes every day a rest day

Cat Ellis
·2 min read
Women wearing running gear in bed with her head under pillow.
Women wearing running gear in bed with her head under pillow.

One of your Garmin watch's most useful features is its ability to suggest daily workouts, which should challenge you to improve or maintain your current level of fitness. I say 'should' because several watch owners have noticed a problem where, rather than suggesting a mix of steady runs, tempo sessions and hill training, their devices are prescribing nothing but rest.

The problem seems to have begun within the last two days, and appears to be affecting several different watch models including the Forerunner 265, Fenix 7X, and Tactix 7.

"Garmin gave up on me" wrote Reddit user Short-Second-9372, who posted a video of themselves scrolling through a full week of suggestions on their Forerunner 265 – all of them marked 'Rest day'.

"For some reason Garmin wants me to rest for the rest of my life," they said. "As long as it doesn't lower my VO2 max I'm cool with it."

Garmin gave up on me from r/Garmin

They aren't alone – yesterday another user reported the same issue, and shared photos of their watch suggesting nothing but rest despite their training readiness score being high, with several people in the replies commenting that their was doing the same thing.

Several watch owners have also reported the problem on Garmin's forums in the last couple of days.

"After the software update 15.76 my daily suggested workouts is rest day," wrote one user, who owns a Garmin Fenix 7. "Is a non problem for me, because rarely use that function but I noticed that, so only informing this issue."

"Training readiness high, HRV balanced, training status productive, recovery 0 hours," reported another, "yet my suggested workout is seven days of straight rest. Why is this?"

Garmin has yet to respond to these reports, but the issue only seems to have begun very recently. It's possible that they may be connected to the major software update the company began rolling out on December 6. If you're having the same problem, it seems you may be able to resolve it by entering your training settings, and changing which days are assigned to long runs, but there's no official fix yet.