Central de Ajuda
This page is a map, not a manual. Find the thing you are stuck on, read the short answer, and follow the link if you want the long one.
Getting started
Training data has to come from somewhere, so connecting a device is the first thing to do. Lactate Training syncs Garmin activities and health data, and Strava activities. If you use both, connect both — Garmin brings the daily health picture that Strava does not carry.
- Garmin: see the Garmin integration guide.
- Strava: see the Strava integration guide.
- Not sure what the app does: the features overview is the shortest version.
What to expect in the first few days
Less than you might hope, and that is normal. A connection that has just been made has very little of your history to reason from, and several of the numbers you will want to look at are measured relative to your own baseline — so they need a stretch of ordinary days before they mean anything. Early guidance is cautious by design. It sharpens as real sessions arrive.
Your data: inputs, not instructions
This is the single most useful idea on the page, so it goes near the top.
Your watch is very good at measuring and quite bad at telling you what to do next. It can count your heartbeats to the millisecond and track your sleep all night. What it cannot do is know that you have a race in five weeks, that you were ill a fortnight ago, or that today's session is the one that matters. So it averages you against a model and produces a verdict.
The numbers are inputs. The decision is yours, or your coach's. Treating a recovery estimate as an order is how good training weeks get thrown away — and if you want the whole picture of what each metric is and is not, every Garmin metric is explained here.
Your zones
If you only fix one setting, fix this one. Zones decide how hard every session in your week actually is, and a wrong set quietly ruins all of them — easy runs become moderate, hard sessions become merely uncomfortable, and nothing improves much.
- Setting zones from a lactate test — what to do with the result, and the mistakes that waste it.
- Heart rate zones explained — what the bands are for.
- What lactate threshold is — why it is the better anchor.
- What zone 2 is and why age-based zones are only a starting point.
- Why your Garmin zones are probably wrong — the most common cause, and the fix.
Your plan
The plan is built from your training history and adapts as that history changes. That matters most when life interferes, which it always does.
- You missed a session. Let it go. Do not cram it into the next day — a plan that adapts has already accounted for what you actually did.
- You missed a week. Come back slightly below where you left off and build again. The fitness is mostly still there; the readiness to absorb hard work is not.
- You are travelling, or everything is at the wrong time of day. Keep the easy volume, move the hard sessions, protect the long one.
- You feel wrecked and the numbers disagree. Trust how you feel, this week at least. See common signs of over-training.
Making sense of a Garmin number that looks wrong
Most support questions are really this question. Find the number that is annoying you.
| The number | The usual complaint | Read this |
|---|---|---|
| Recovery time | Days of recovery after an ordinary session | Why recovery time is too long |
| Body Battery | Drained before you have done anything | Body Battery explained |
| HRV status | Unbalanced, or stuck with no status at all | HRV status explained |
| Training readiness | Low on a day you feel fine | Training readiness explained |
| Sleep score | Poor after a night that felt good | Sleep score explained |
| Stress | High while you sit perfectly still | Stress score explained |
| Training status | Unproductive or detraining mid-block | Training status explained |
| VO2 max | Falling while your training is going well | VO2 max explained |
| Race predictions | Wildly optimistic, or weirdly pessimistic | How accurate race predictions are |
| Resting heart rate | Creeping upward week on week | Why resting heart rate rises |
| Pulse ox | Alarming overnight readings | Pulse ox explained |
| Training load | Out of range however you train | Training load explained |
| Training effect | An easy run scored as hard, or the reverse | Training effect explained |
| Endurance score | Barely moving despite long sessions | Endurance score explained |
| Lactate threshold | Never updates, or jumps around | Why the threshold will not update |
| Maximum heart rate | Set from your age and far too low | Why max heart rate is set too low |
A pattern runs through almost all of those: the watch is reporting honestly on a model that does not know enough about you. Correcting the inputs it does hold — your threshold, your zones, your maximum heart rate — fixes more of these than any other single action.
Health, illness and anything that worries you
None of this is medical advice, and no wearable metric is a diagnosis. If a number frightens you, if symptoms persist, or if something feels wrong in a way that training does not explain, speak to a doctor rather than to a graph.
Getting in touch
If your question is not answered above, use the contact page and ask. Tell us what you were doing, what you expected, and what happened instead — it saves a round of messages. If you would rather know who you are writing to first, the about page says where this comes from.
Frequently asked questions
Which services does the app sync with?
Garmin and Strava. Garmin supplies both activities and health data; Strava supplies activities. Connecting Garmin gives the fuller picture, because the daily health signals come from there.
Is the app available in my language?
It is available in 24 languages. If yours is among them you can use the app in it rather than in English.
Do I need a lactate test before I can use threshold zones?
No, but a lab test is the most accurate anchor you can get. Without one you are working from an estimate, which is a reasonable starting point as long as you treat it as provisional. Here is what a lab test involves.
My watch says I should rest and my plan says train. Who wins?
You do. The watch is reporting a model's opinion of your physiology, with no knowledge of your race date, your week, or how you actually feel. Use both as evidence and make the call yourself.
I missed two weeks. Should I restart the plan?
No. Rejoin slightly easier than where you stopped and let the next few sessions re-establish the pattern. Restarting from the beginning throws away fitness you still have.
Something still is not working. Who do I ask?
Send the question through the contact page, with your sport, your device and what you expected to happen. Those three details answer most questions on their own.
Spend less time arguing with your watch
Half the questions on this page come from the same place: a device that measures beautifully and then tells you what to do without knowing anything about your week. Lactate Training takes that data in — Garmin activities and health data, Strava activities — sets your zones from your lactate threshold, and builds a plan that adapts as you do.