New Peloton on Garmin Workout Sync Now Live! (How to guide)

After a lot of initial flirting and a little integration, Peloton and Garmin have finally enabled syncing of your Peloton workouts on the Garmin Connect platform. This means that your completed Peloton runs will now appear natively in Garmin Connect, along with progress on your watch, including Garmin metrics including Training Status, Recovery Time, and Training Load.

Previously, the integration was from Garmin to Peloton, which pushed your Garmin activity to Peloton. While that would be useful for some people, the most interesting scenario for many was the opposite: Pushing Peloton to Garmin, which allows you to double-jump start a workout on your Garmin watch. Previously, if you hadn’t started a workout, Garmin would ignore that from a training perspective. That has now been resolved.

How to set up:

Setup is very easy, and can be done within the Peloton app, under Settings > Connected apps & devices. From there, you’ll see the Garmin Connect option:

After clicking, it will redirect you to Garmin Connect:

This is the piece that previously would allow syncing from Garmin to Peloton, including Historical Data (if you’ve changed it, it’s turned off by default), then a new option that syncs from Peloton to Garmin.

At that point, you’ll return to the Peloton app to confirm everything and redefine it:

From here, you are completely prepared and ready to roll. It doesn’t matter if you complete the workout with the Peloton app or equipment (eg Peloton Bike, Treadmill, etc…). Synchronization is set up in the backend at the Peloton platform level.

So, let’s go practice.

Exercise and Synchronization:

Garmin says that this feature includes all types of Peloton workouts, and will include all the data from the Peloton workouts you have connected (eg if you have connected a heart rate sensor, that data will come out, the same goes for the cadence sensor, power if on a Peloton Bike, etc…).

In my case, I have a race tomorrow, so I just went with an easy 20-minute Matt Wilpers Recovery Ride, with a few sprints in there to loosen things up. Nothing crazy. I did this fully from the Peloton app, except *with* the Garmin watch/workout device started, just so I could see the changes happening.

I used the Apple Watch as a Bluetooth heart rate monitor for the Peloton app, but I was on a smart bike trainer. Because the Peloton app in cycling mode can only connect to heart rate sensors and cadence sensors (not third-party power meters), no power data comes here. But if I was on a Peloton Bike (any model), then the power data would appear. Similarly, on the Peloton Treadmill, you will get full data there, although the Peloton App can connect to treadmills via Bluetooth FTMS.

Once the workout is complete, it will automatically push and sync to Garmin Connect:

You can see the workout details here:

The following values ​​are populated from this test into the Garmin Connect file:

– Distance (as I mentioned in the Peloton App later)
– Perfect Time
– Medium speed
– Average heart rate
– Full Heart Rate Data
– Time Zone Data (HR)
– Training Score (Includes Aerobic and Anaerobic scores)
– Main Benefit of Training Result (eg Recovery, etc…)
– Complete Cadence data (if a cadence sensor is paired, or on a Peloton Bike)
– Full Power Data (if on Peloton Bike)
– Exercise Load (this is used for Heavy Load, etc…)
– Total Calories
– Power Minutes (and categories within that)

It is then pushed forward on your watch. In fact, technically speaking this is the most important part of reviewing all the metrics below, because in Garmin’s world, these metrics are calculated not by Garmin Connect, but by your ‘Primary Training Devices’ (as configured in Garmin Connect Mobile under Settings > Device Priority). So from a technical level, it should be quickly synced to your watch and back for the metrics below to improve. Usually, that happens seconds after, but just a little FYI.

Here are the prices for the watch and the Garmin Connect app before starting a Peloton-only workout:

Training Readiness (before): 70
Heavy Load (Training Load – before): 569
Recovery Time (before): Nothing
Training Status (before): It is productive
Endurance Score (before): 7,246
Effective Calories: 4

With that, here are the prices later:

Training Readiness (after): 61 (-9pts)
Heavy Load (Training Load – after): 629 (+60pts)
Recovery Time (after): 11 hours (+11hrs)
Training Status (after): Productive (same)
Endurance Score (back): 7,263 (+23pts)
Effective Calories: 237

All of the above looks good to me, except, the only weird thing is that total calories seem to be ignored. The exercise itself specified 262 total calories, but after my walk it showed 237 calories from ‘Active’ calories. So there is still a small deviation that needs to be corrected (as I suspect this deviation would be higher in long high intensity workouts).

Still overall, it’s exactly what people have been asking for, finally delivered!

Finish:

It’s funny, this is something the people at Garmin (both Garmin users and Garmin users alike), have been hoping for since the last decade. Although these two companies have little competitive edge, they are *better* as partners than pretending to be competitors. This ultimately makes life easier for Garmin+Peloton.

Sure, there were neat third-party options for syncing data between the two platforms, but none of them were very impressive from a security perspective, as they required sharing your real username/password. So this improves the security posture of both sides of the equation.

With that, get out and connect, it’s quick and easy!

Thanks for reading!

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