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.

Turn off the greeting and closing messages in workouts

Each workout starts with a short personal greeting and ends with an encouraging note, shown as on-screen messages on your head unit, watch or in Zwift. If you'd rather see only plain step names, go to Settings → Training → Workout content and switch off Coaching messages in workouts. Workouts written after that come without the greeting and closing note.

In the same card, Cadence targets & drills controls whether cycling workouts carry RPM targets. Turn it off to ride every block at your own cadence.

How do I connect my Garmin, Wahoo, Coros or Suunto?

You connect your device to Intervals.icu, not to IntervalCoach. IntervalCoach writes your workouts to your Intervals.icu calendar and reads your activities from there, so there is no Garmin button in IntervalCoach to look for.

In Intervals.icu, open Settings and connect your device in its section (Garmin Connect, Wahoo, Coros, Suunto, Polar and so on). Switch on both directions: syncing activities (your rides and runs come in) and uploading planned workouts (your sessions go to the watch). In IntervalCoach, Settings → Integrations → Manage on Intervals.icu takes you there.

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.

Zwift shows an older or longer version of my workout

Zwift keeps a copy of your workouts and does not always fetch a changed one while it is running. If the coach adjusted a session, or you changed it, after Zwift last loaded it, Zwift can still show the old version. Close Zwift completely and start it again; it then loads the current version from Intervals.icu. Your Intervals.icu calendar always shows the version that counts.

Nothing reaches my watch, but my rides come in fine

Those are two separate switches, and they can be set differently. Your activities arriving in IntervalCoach means the connection works in the direction of your watch to Intervals.icu. Sending planned workouts the other way, from Intervals.icu down to your watch, has its own setting, and it is off by default for some accounts.

In Intervals.icu, open your settings and find the section for your device (Garmin, Wahoo, Coros, Suunto and so on). Alongside the switch for syncing activities there is a separate one for uploading planned workouts. Turn that on. Sessions created after that point start appearing on the device; ones already on your calendar may need to be re-saved before they are pushed.

If it is on and workouts still do not arrive, tell us in Coach+ chat and we can check which destinations your account is actually sending to.

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.

My Garmin calendar only shows the next week of workouts

That is normal. Your full plan is on your Intervals.icu calendar, but Intervals.icu only uploads roughly the next 7 days of planned workouts to Garmin Connect, so your watch doesn't fill up with weeks of sessions. The window moves forward every day: sessions further out appear on your Garmin calendar automatically as they come within a week. There is nothing to switch on or fix.

If a workout that is less than a week away is still missing on Garmin, see the next section.

A workout I moved, or one the coach adjusted, is not on my watch

When a session moves to another day or the coach adjusts it to your recovery, IntervalCoach changes it on your Intervals.icu calendar, and Intervals.icu sends the change on to your device. That second step is where it can get lost: the watch may keep the old day or the old version, or miss the session.

First open your Intervals.icu calendar. If the session is there on the right day, IntervalCoach did its part. To push it to the device again, open the workout in Intervals.icu and save it, then sync your watch (in the Garmin Connect app: pull down to sync). If it is not on the Intervals.icu calendar either, tell us in Coach+ chat.

My run workout has no pace targets on the watch

Run paces are written as a percentage of your threshold pace, and Intervals.icu turns them into real paces using the threshold pace in your Intervals.icu run settings. Without one there is nothing to convert, and the watch gets no pace target. Open Intervals.icu → Settings → your Run sport settings, set your threshold pace, and re-save the workout (or wait for the next one).

If your threshold pace is set and the watch still shows no pace, send us a screenshot of the workout in Garmin Connect together with your watch model, so we can see which step loses it.

Where are the cadence targets on my Garmin?

Garmin shows a cadence target as a secondary target inside each step, next to the power or heart-rate target, and only while that step is running. The workout overview before you start does not list them. If you would rather not have them, switch off Cadence targets & drills in Settings → Training → Workout content.

Strength workouts show as one general set on Garmin (no exercise list or timers)

Intervals.icu sends a strength session to Garmin as text: the exercises, sets and reps are in the description, but Garmin does not get them as a structured strength workout with rep counts and rest timers. That is a limit of the Intervals.icu to Garmin connection, not of the session itself. To follow it on the watch with timers, build it once with Garmin Connect's own strength workout builder.

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.