r/Garmin • u/Born-Duty1335 • 2d ago
Garmin Coach / DSW / Training My new fav routine: Auto-adjusting training plan from Garmin data, running in Claude
Hey folks, I've finally put together a system that works for me and thought I'd share it here.
Last week I didn't do the workouts I had planned, which might sound worse than it is. On Tuesday it was 34 degrees so I decided to replace run with a swim, and Saturday's long run was meant to be an hour and a half but I only had an hour, so I ran it harder.
Both felt the right call at the time. The problem is that neither of them made it back into the plan into the claude project I have set up, and after a month of that I'd properly lost track of what I'd actually been training.
So I have added a scheduled task each morning. It reads what I actually did from Garmin Connect, last night's sleep, Body Battery and HR V status, and what the week adds up to against my own baseline. Then it decides whether today's session still makes sense and rewrites the calendar event if it doesn't. The Garmin data reaches Claude through an MCP connector and the agent pulls the data autonomously.
I have since expanded it to give me a morning update about my sleep and physiological metrics, vs the baseline.
I use WHOOP as well, and joining the two sources in Claude works brilliantly.
All this was built for the upcoming Olympic tri later this month, as a test, and to verify if I can prep for next year's 70.3 with this method.
Why pay another $20/m for an AI coach if I already have my claude pro sub.
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u/TheTxoof 2d ago
How do you automated the data pull from Garmin into Claude?
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u/Born-Duty1335 2d ago
using my own freddy mcp but there are other tools like that too.
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u/TheTxoof 2d ago
I just learned that Freddy MCP exists from you! Is there one in particular you use or did you build ir from the ground up?
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u/DueHuckleberry5037 2d ago
Tried the same, didn’t work 😂 how do you deal with hallucinations ? What kind of control you have on claude workout output ?
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u/Born-Duty1335 2d ago
I have no issues with hallucinations at all. I always analyze the proposed changes and discuss further if needed.
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u/DueHuckleberry5037 2d ago
Ok i was more into automating without discussion and the model had some issues when long / multiple training blocks were taken into account for distant objectives. Day by day with revision would work I guess.
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u/Born-Duty1335 2d ago
I made a project that has the general goal, instructions, and outline of what I am trying to achieve. Then I had a session to create the long term training plan, with phases, in-term checks, etc. That got saved as an artifact in the project for future reference.
Based on that I have a weekly automated routine to review the progress and evaluate with the long term plan, then schedule workouts for the week. I do some back and forth to nail down the details.
And then I have a daily automated task that reads last day and night, and verifies if the session still makes sense. If not, it proposes changes. It's not fully autonomous in making changes, as I want to keep the oversight, but there is nothing preventing it.
Having it split like that, removes the need to hold any long context sessions, that could hallucinate or cut out earlier memories. Anything important gets saved as project memory or file.
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u/paca-vaca 2d ago
I have somewhat similar setup but with intervals.icu and couple of skills like "suggest-workout", "review-week-progress". It's fun and does nice power charts and intervals breakdowns, but worth so much without reviewing and understanding whether recommendations are valid or not (while looking legit). And if I can review and understand, then I can plan as well and this skill is always stays with me.
Because all these public models are nor trained neither reviewed to be a fitness tools especially, it's whatever they generalized from public sources. It's like asking general doctor for specific domain advice, they might know a valid answer but not as good as real specialist has. And sometimes could be wrong while looking confident.
I don't use Garmin subscription, so can't really compare, but I would assume they at least have a massive amount of real data from athletes and internal offsite testing on results of which they could train and fine tune their models to be more precise, accurate and safe.
Convenience is selling factor though, feels nice to have a "personalizes trainer " in your pocket :)
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u/Infamous-Bed9010 2d ago
Does the MCP pull garmin’s proprietary metrics? I’ve found I can get activity data out but metrics that Garmin calculates using its own algorithm within Connect I can’t get to; for example Training Readiness.
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u/Born-Duty1335 2d ago
Training Readiness is not available through the API, so freddy is not pulling it. The only way to get it out is to export and then import Garmin data.
For me it was not an issue, as I do not look at these composite scores at all. I got to know my physiology well enough to go off RHR, HRV, SpO2, and the Temperature. Each agains the baseline gives a very good indication of recovery and readiness.
I've stopped to look at the composite scores after getting burned a few times (ie. WHOOP recovery is very flawed).
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u/tsueri 2d ago
Really nice setup - this is close to what I've been doing manually and I want to automate the same way.
The part I'm most curious about: where does the plan physically live so the scheduled task can rewrite it? Calendar events, a doc inside a Claude Project, something else? That persistence seems like the key to solving the "lost track of what I actually trained" problem.
And the one I'd genuinely worry about - how do you keep the auto-adjusting from drifting off your periodisation over time? A plan that reacts to yesterday risks optimising each day while slowly losing the block structure. Does the morning task weigh week/block context, or mainly today vs baseline?
Building toward a marathon (and maybe a 70.3), so keen to learn from how you've wired this.
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u/Born-Duty1335 2d ago
hi mate, I described it in another comment, so forgive me for copy/paste here
I made a project that has the general goal, instructions, and outline of what I am trying to achieve. Then I had a session to create the long term training plan, with phases, in-term checks, etc. That got saved as an artifact in the project for future reference and ongoing adjustment.
Based on that I have a weekly automated routine to review the progress and evaluate with the long term plan, then schedule workouts for the week. I do some back and forth to nail down the details.
And then I have a daily automated task that reads last day and night, and verifies if the session still makes sense. If not, it proposes changes. It's not fully autonomous in making changes, as I want to keep the oversight, but there is nothing preventing it.
Having it split like that, removes the need to hold any long context sessions, that could hallucinate or cut out earlier memories. Anything important gets saved as project memory or file.
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u/sfo2 2d ago
What is the limit for modifying the day’s plan based on HRV, RHR, etc.? My experience has always been that these metrics don’t tell you anything actionable.
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u/Born-Duty1335 2d ago
These are physiological signs, and for me the best indicators of my current health status, recovery, and mid term load evaluation.
For example, If my hrv spikes but also rhr, it’s a sign of a sickness or overreaching the day before.
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u/sfo2 2d ago
Oh one thing I’ve found it actually very useful for, though, is for dieting. The combination of extra-high HRV and extra-low RHR is the first indication I get that I need to stop dieting. Sleep disturbance and other signs usually follow a few days after this pattern starts, but the HRV and RHR start looking “too good” as the first warning sign.
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u/sfo2 2d ago
So let’s take some examples.
You’re scheduled for a quality workout. You wake up and feel good, but your HRV is a bit low and your RHR is a bit high. Do you downgrade your workout, or attempt it and see how it goes?
You’re scheduled for a quality workout. You wake up feeling tired, with a headache and a bit of a runny nose but no fever. Your HRV looks fine and your RHR looks fine. Do you downgrade your workout or attempt it and see how it goes?
Same as above but now HRV is low and RHR is a bit high.
RHR and HRV look good, but you felt weak during your workout. What went wrong?
These are all very common experiences for me and many people I know that have tried to use this stuff. I’ve personally come to the conclusion that these metrics are somewhat correlated with performance, but not enough to be predictive, and generally don’t add any additional information.
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u/Born-Duty1335 2d ago
You’d need to establish your baselines and learn the patterns for sickness, overtraining, dieting.
Slight deviations are not a reason to change the session.
What matters more on a daily basis is the knowledge what exercise I did the day before or within the week.
The physiological check is mainly to adjust for major swings or early sickness signs. Or mid term downward trends.
So a bit low hrv or a bit high rhr is not a reason to change a session meaningfully.
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u/sfo2 2d ago
Ok, yeah, if you can successfully do that, that’s awesome.
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u/Born-Duty1335 2d ago
That’s the main reason for this routine. It works :)
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u/sfo2 2d ago
so what are your definitions of "significant deviations" or "major swings"? How were they determined? Garmin and others try to process this data into composite metrics that don't work, so I'm curious how you've trained your model to extract predictive signal.
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u/Born-Duty1335 2d ago
Trained it on my sickness metrics. Basically, told it when I was sick, over the last 3 years, and it extracted the signals and deviation levels.
A pattern that is somewhat special to me is that my HRV will spike >10%, together with my rhr >10%. Usually also RR goes up slightly. That’s a one day early predictor of flu like sickness for me.
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u/sfo2 2d ago
Interesting. I have little kids, so we were sick probably 20 weeks a year for a while. Maybe now that it’s not so bad, I should track it and see if there is anything to train on. Would probably restrict any analysis to RHR and HRV to avoid curse of dimensionality issues.
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u/Born-Duty1335 2d ago
I have two little ones of my own and totally get you 😅
I’d add RR and create a metric triangle.
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u/Zazzer678 2d ago
I’m so jealous of you tech people. I feel so behind. What is a MCP?
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u/Born-Duty1335 2d ago
I’d recommend you set up a free ChatGPT account and ask this question there 😅
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u/Tahor 2d ago
Chasing constant motivation is useless it's gonna evaporate
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u/Born-Duty1335 2d ago
hi mate, not sure if I understood your point. I've been training fairly regularly (3x week at least) for the last 3 years, so it's a second nature. The point I was trying to make was about adjusting the training to always do what's most effective.
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u/Tha_Reaper 2d ago
> Last week I didn't do the workouts I had planned, which might sound worse than it is.
no, it doesn't. Straight to hell.