Garmin glossary
Garmin metrics, explained without the marketing
Garmin's onboard metrics are the most powerful free physiology data set in the world for endurance athletes — but the labels are terse and the documentation isn't great. Plain-English explanations of what each metric actually measures, when to trust it, and how to act on it.
Training Status
The single highest-level Garmin label for your current training direction. Combines VO2max trend, training load balance, and recent intensity — what each status means and what to do about it.
Body Battery
Garmin's energy-reserve metric, derived from HRV, stress, sleep and activity. Why it drops, when it's accurate, and what a 'low Body Battery' actually tells you about tomorrow's session.
Training Readiness
Garmin's 0–100 readiness score blending sleep, HRV, recovery time, acute load, and stress. The most useful single number Garmin produces — and the cases where it's wrong.
VO2max
Garmin's running and cycling VO2max estimates. How they're computed from heart rate and pace, how accurate they really are vs lab testing, and how they relate to your VDOT.
Recovery Time
The Recovery Time clock — how Garmin estimates it, when it's overprotective, when it's right, and how to use it alongside HRV and Body Battery instead of blindly waiting it out.
HRV Status
Garmin's 7-night rolling HRV — the most accurate readiness signal in your wrist data, and the one most athletes ignore. How it's measured, what 'Balanced / Unbalanced / Low' actually mean, and the daily and weekly patterns to watch.
Why we built this
Inside SportPlan's adaptation engine, every one of these Garmin metrics gets a weight. Training Status, Body Battery, HRV trend, Recovery Time, Acute:Chronic load ratio — they all feed into the daily "why today?" decision the engine makes about your next session.
But for most athletes, the metrics just sit on the watch with no real interpretation. Garmin's in-app explanations are vague ("your training is productive"); third-party blogs mostly copy Garmin's marketing copy. This glossary is the technical interpretation — the same way a coach would read your data on a Monday-morning data review.
Each entry tells you what the number actually measures, how it's computed, when you should trust it, when it's wrong, and how to act on it day-to-day. If a metric isn't moving your decisions, it's noise.
Related tools and reading
Want your Garmin data read for you, every day?
SportPlan syncs every metric — Training Status, Body Battery, HRV, Training Readiness, Acute Load — and adjusts tomorrow's session based on what changed. See your first week before you pay. €9.99/month, cancel anytime.
Methodology designed by Ramon Curto, MSc Exercise Physiology
Ramon Curto designed SportPlan's endurance-training methodology from exercise-physiology principles. SportPlan applies it autonomously to the information you enter and the data you choose to connect; it is not ongoing one-to-one coaching or medical care.
Last revised July 2026
- MSc Exercise Physiology
- Endurance-training methodology
- Connected training-data analysis
- Block periodization · Polarized training