Garmin Connect Global Trends
According to a new report produced by Garmin and based on your activities recorded in Garmin Connect, Garmin users worldwide continue to significantly increase their fitness activities,
Running
One interesting highlight was Trail Running, which is very much en vogue. Overall, running only slightly increased but Trail Running showed a much more significant increase of 11.58% globally with Europe being that at 14.52%
Other Sports
The increase in indoor activities recorded on Garmin devices grew by twice as many as outdoor activities with standout increases in Pilates (108%) and Yoga (45%)
There was a particularly notable increase in Gravel cycling which almost increased by 50%
- Pilates: 108.30%
- Breathwork: 82.76%
- Gravel cycling: 49.55%
- Yoga: 45.55%
- Winter sports: 39.16%
- Walking: 37.13%
- Golf: 28.35%
- Swimming: 22.48%
- Hiking: 19.57%
- Trail running: 11.58%
Here are some interesting regional variations
- South America performed 125.41% more breathwork activities, 87.51% more gravel rides and 37.6% more trail runs.
- Western Europe logged an increase of 59.86% more gravel cycling rides, 14.52% more trail runs and 65.57% more yoga activities.
- Eastern European countries recorded an 85.02% increase in yoga activities and a 66.13% increase in gravel rides.
- North Americans added 34.39% more yoga activities and 28.54% more gravel rides.
- CAMENA (Central Asia Middle East and North Africa) logged 217.11%more Pilates activities, 57.53% more gravel rides and 44.96% more swimming activities.
- Central America performed 54.49% more gravel rides and 43.98% more swimming activities.
Take Out
The increase in gravel, yoga, breathwork and Pilates is probably real to some degree on the ground.
Let’s not forget that some of these increase represent people recording things that previously they never thought to record (Yoga?!?) and also more accurate recording of the exact sport type eg Gravel vs MTB or Trail Riding.
More: Garmin.com
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These are Bezos graphs. It’s impossible to tell if each person was more active or Garmin sold more devices into a more diverse segment. They also don’t mention that some of those activity profiles are new. I don’t think breathwork existed before 2020 mid-year and Pilates might be new in 2021. Also these activity profiles will launch on a particular device before later being added to other devices.
Some of the winter sports profiles and water sports are new in 2021. Backcountry Ski and Surfing come to my memory.
They don’t mention this one but as an example HIIT is brand new and for example in the fenix 6 you need the 20.00 firmware which halted rollout at 20%. Previously people were divided on whether you should use Cardio, Strength or Other to trac HIIT. This way adding more specific activity profiles will skew year-over-year comparisons.
Lockdowns and quarantines in some regions meant you literally could not exercise outdoors in some places for extended periods. So that could account for the indoor-ness or selling into a new segment who bought fitness trackers to detect early Covid could be the thing.
Anyway. Hmmm. But this doesn’t seem to be enough information to mean anything.
Agreed the amount of science is limited. Other ecosystems have end-of-year wrap ups, so the GC people understandably want to stay in view as well.
It is useful for understanding the diversity of GC customer interests at least.
the garmin report has several product buy links in it.
yes !
I use trail run for 100% of my runs since I don’t care for estimated vo2 max calculations. Their algo sucks and I prefer RunAlyze if I am ever going to want an estimated vo2 for a month.
Runalyze is so perfect, that it shows me 19 mins for 5K – while my October PB is 18:26 and now I am approaching sub 18 coming weekend 😀