Strength Companion is a data field designed for strength training practitioners using Garmin’s built-in application. It primarily allows for the use of variable rest times and comments as exercise names. It also adds a number of full-screen alerts to address the shortcomings of the exercise list screen.

In more detail:

• For recovery with a fixed time, Strength Companion displays a progress bar in the background to give an idea of the remaining time.
• For recovery with free time, Strength Companion will generate a small vibration (optional) every 30 seconds or every minute with a full-screen notification (optional) to indicate the current recovery time.
• When the ‘Lap’ button is pressed, Strength Companion memorizes the duration and uses it for other sets by displaying an end-of-recovery notification. The minimum and maximum duration is configurable.
• If the exercises have a comment, it is used as the title. This allows storing the values of session timers in sessions and using exercise names that are not in the Garmin database.

Configuration

Proceed as follows:

1. Install the Strength Companion data field in the Strength Training application on your Garmin watch¹.
2. Enable full-screen alerts for Strength Companion:
   1. Edit the settings of your running activity.
   2. Go to the “Alarms” menu.
   3. Select “Add New”.
   4. Select “Connect IQ Data Fields”.
   5. Select “Strength Companion”.
   6. Exit by pressing the back button several times.
3. Configure the alerts and the duration of rest periods in the “Connect IQ” application.

Note that some Garmin watches have a bug in displaying full-screen notifications. In this case, please enable the option “Hack for notification display”.

Free Session

During the execution of a free session, an automatic timer will be activated during rest. Use the ‘Lap’ button to set its time for the next rest.

Structured Session

Rest Timer

The rest time is defined using the ‘Lap’ button for rests with an indefinite time. It is therefore recommended to replace the fixed rest time with the “Press Lap Button” option in the training programming.

It is also advisable to add a title as a comment for each exercise. This is then used for notifications and is displayed directly on the screen for each set. Using comments also allows the application to memorize a default timer from session to session. This is practical for not having to remember rest times.

Tempo support

Tempo can be specified using the exercise note: just add at then end of its title the tempo specification.

Two different specifications are supported:

• The short form: v/r (vibrate v seconds and then wait r seconds)
• The full form: v1/r1/v2/r2 (vibrate v1 seconds, wait r1 seconds, then vibrate v2 seconds again and finaly wait r2 seconds)

The cycle is the repeated infinitely and can be used as a metronome.

Example: “Bench Press 3/1/0/1” will display “Bench Press” as exercice title. Then the watch will repeate until the end of the exercise the following vibrations:

1. 3 seconds of vibration
2. A pause of 1 second.
3. A short vibration of a fraction of seconds
4. A pause of 1 second.