Send a Workout to Your Watch from Your Assistant

A structured workout on the watch is the difference between "run 5 × 1 km hard" as a note and a watch that counts the reps, holds the target and beeps at the end of each. Building one in Garmin Connect is slow enough that most people never do. With Simma connected, you describe the session and the assistant does the building.

This guide assumes Simma is connected to your assistant (Claude or ChatGPT) and your Garmin is linked in the Simma web app. Sending needs the workout permission on that link. If Garmin refuses a send for lack of permission, relink Garmin from Your Settings and accept every permission on Garmin's consent page.

Ask for the session

"Write me a 40-minute easy run with four 20-second strides near the end and send it to my watch."

"Take Tuesday's session from my plan and put it on my watch."

"A 2 km pool set: 400 warm-up, 8 × 100 at threshold on 1:45, 200 easy."

"Three by eight minutes at sweet spot on the bike, four minutes easy between."

The assistant writes the session in Simma's workout format: a sport, then an ordered list of steps and repeat blocks, nested up to two deep. Each step has an intent (warm-up, work, recovery, rest, cool-down), one length (a distance, a time, or open until you press the lap button) and at most one target: a pace range (runs and swims), a power range in watts (rides), a share of your threshold, a heart-rate zone, a heart-rate range in beats per minute, a cadence range (runs and rides) or an effort. If the plan gives two, such as power and cadence, the assistant makes the one you want alerts on the target and writes the other on the step. Rest is its own step. Pool steps can also carry a stroke (freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, IM, mixed or drill), equipment (fins, kickboard, paddles, pull buoy, snorkel) and a send-off. Every step keeps the words it came from, so "hold within five seconds of the first rep" survives as the step's note even though a watch cannot enforce it.

Runs, rides and pool swims can be sent. Simma can check an open-water swim written in the format, but cannot send one to Garmin yet, and strength sessions are not in the format at all. A session written with a range ("3 to 5 × 1 km") is a template: choose the number before it can be sent.

What the watch shows

The watch runs the steps, lengths and repeats exactly. Targets carry over unevenly, so it is worth knowing which ones the watch will alert on:

• Runs. A pace range, or a share of your threshold pace, becomes a pace target the watch alerts on. A cadence range and a heart-rate range in beats per minute become targets too. A heart-rate zone is sent as a zone number, and the watch uses its own heart-rate zones, not Simma's. An effort target has no watch equivalent, so it goes in the step's note.
• Rides. A power range in watts, or a share of your FTP, becomes a power target. A share of FTP needs your FTP in Simma; without one it is written on the step instead. Cadence and heart rate work as they do on runs.
• Pool swims. Garmin's swim workouts carry no pace target. The target goes in the step's note, along with any send-off time; the send-off also becomes a rest step timed to the interval. Garmin takes one piece of equipment per step, so a step with fins and paddles shows the first.

What Simma checks

Before anything is sent, Simma checks the workout and fills it in from your own settings: your pool length, unless the workout names one, and your threshold, which turns a share of threshold into a real pace for a run or swim, or real watts from your FTP for a ride. A mistake comes back with the path to it so the assistant can fix it. A good workout comes back read as plain lines, with the totals and whether it can be sent. Ask to see that read-back; it is the session as the watch will run it.

Simma holds the format's rules and examples, so the assistant can look them up itself. You never write the format by hand.

The confirmation

Sending is the one step that reaches outside Simma, so it is gated. The assistant shows you the session read back and asks. Where the assistant can, it also raises a prompt of its own; declining there sends nothing. Only on your yes does the workout go to Garmin.

It lands in your Garmin workout library, where you pick it on the watch or in Garmin Connect. It is not scheduled on a date, and nothing already in your library is changed. If Garmin refuses a session, you see Garmin's own reason rather than a generic error.

What is proven on a watch

Running sessions with timed steps, repeat blocks, effort notes and a lap-button step have run end to end on a Garmin watch. Pool swims are built in the same shape Garmin accepted from Simma's earlier swim workouts, but none has gone through this version yet; rides, power, pace, cadence and heart-rate targets, and swim send-offs are also still to be proven. Whatever Garmin decides, its answer is passed back to you, so you find out in the conversation, not on the pool deck.

For coaches

The same works for an athlete on your roster: "Write Sam a 6 × 800 m session at 5k effort and send it to her watch." Simma checks it against Sam's settings, you see the read-back and the confirmation, and it goes to Sam's Garmin. Simma's default coach account cannot send to anyone's watch; it has to be your own roster.

The session still comes from you or the athlete's plan. Simma does not write workouts or plans; it checks, converts and delivers what the assistant wrote. For what to ask about the training that follows, see the athlete's guide or, for coaches, Every Simma Connector Tool, and What to Ask For. The exact tools and their arguments are in the connector tools reference.

What should your assistant be able to do next?

Today it writes a session, Simma checks it, and your watch runs it. Tell us the next step: a whole week from your plan sent as a set, a session scheduled on its date, or a strength session. Email coaching@getsimma.com with the tool you want and we will build it.