Syncing workouts to your devices and apps

A session carries the same intervals and targets wherever you ride it. Two things depend on your setting: how the workout is written, and how it reaches you.

Scheduling outdoor rides: making workouts suit the road

You can tell the coach where you usually ride, and it writes sessions to match. In Settings, Training tab, set Indoor / Outdoor Bias:

Auto (default) applies no bias, so every session uses its standard structure.

Indoor / Trainer favours shorter, more varied intervals that are easier to execute and stay engaged with on a smart trainer such as Zwift or MyWhoosh.

Outdoor / Road favours longer sustained efforts, with stepped warm-ups and cool-downs instead of ramps, so any bike computer can follow them.

This setting shapes how a session is written. Getting it onto your head unit is a separate step, covered below.

For anything more specific, tell the coach in Coach+ chat, for example "Saturdays are outdoor club rides". It remembers that for future planning.

Indoor: Zwift and MyWhoosh

Workouts sync automatically to Intervals.icu, which connects to Zwift and MyWhoosh. Enable the Intervals.icu integration in your Zwift/MyWhoosh settings and your structured workouts appear there ready to ride.

Outdoor: Garmin, Wahoo, Coros and Hammerhead Karoo

Workouts are uploaded to your Intervals.icu calendar; from there, enable sync to your device — Intervals.icu connects to Garmin Connect, Wahoo, Coros, Hammerhead, Polar, Suunto, TrainingPeaks, and more. Once synced, structured workouts appear on your watch or head unit ready to execute.

Worth knowing how the chain runs: IntervalCoach writes to Intervals.icu, and Intervals.icu pushes to your device. Your watch is never connected to IntervalCoach directly.

Old or duplicate workouts still showing on my watch

If you rebuild or regenerate your plan, the replaced sessions disappear from IntervalCoach and from your Intervals.icu calendar straight away. Copies that your watch already downloaded can stay behind, so the watch shows both the old and the new plan while everything looks correct in the app.

This happens at the Intervals.icu → device layer, not in IntervalCoach: once a planned workout has been pushed to a device, deleting it from the calendar does not reliably retract the copy the device is holding. Nothing we change on our side reaches those leftovers.

First check your Intervals.icu calendar. If it shows only the new plan, your data is correct and the duplicates exist only on the watch. From there the fix sits with the Intervals.icu device connection: disconnect and reconnect the device there, or contact Intervals.icu support, who can see exactly what was pushed to your account. If you are stuck, email coach@intervalcoach.app and we will raise it with them for you.

Why a walking or hiking workout shows as a run on Garmin

If you schedule a Walk or Hike workout, it stays a Walk or Hike in IntervalCoach and on your Intervals.icu calendar. When the structured workout syncs onward to a Garmin device, though, it can appear labelled as a run. That relabelling happens at the Intervals.icu → Garmin sync layer: Garmin’s structured-workout format doesn’t carry Walk/Hike the way it does Run and Bike, so it’s not something IntervalCoach controls.

It doesn’t affect anything that counts: follow the steps as a walk, and the completed activity records normally. If you’d like it filed as a Walk, switch the activity type in Garmin Connect or Intervals.icu afterwards, and it still counts correctly toward your training load and recovery in IntervalCoach.

Does IntervalCoach change my watch’s own recommendations?

No. IntervalCoach never talks to your watch — workouts go to Intervals.icu, and Intervals.icu pushes them to Garmin Connect. Garmin’s readiness, Body Battery and recovery numbers are computed by Garmin from your data, and nothing we send can write to them.

One thing does change, and it can look like your watch went quiet: Garmin only offers its Daily Suggested Workout (including its rest-day suggestion) when nothing is already scheduled for that day. Once a structured session sits on your calendar, Garmin shows that session instead of making its own suggestion. The recommendation didn’t stop — it got superseded by the planned workout.

You’re not losing that guidance either: IntervalCoach makes the same call from your recovery data and schedules a rest or easy day when the numbers say so. If you’d rather have Garmin’s own daily suggestions back, switch off the workout push to Garmin in your Intervals.icu settings — IntervalCoach keeps planning and analyzing as normal.

When you receive emails

Daily workout emails are sent at your preferred time (set in Settings). Weekly summaries arrive Sunday evening. Enable or disable email types in your notification settings. All times use your local timezone.