Garmin Sports Profiles – all you ever needed to know
A sports profile is a predefined or customisable collection of settings on a fitness or sports device (such as a GPS bike computer, smartwatch, or fitness tracker) tailored to a specific sport or activity. It determines which metrics are tracked, how they are displayed, and what features or sensors are activated during that activity. But their uses and implications go much deeper than that; let’s take a step back and slowly delve into everything you need to know about Garmin and the industry’s close to 200 sports profiles.
A Brief History of Sports Profiles and their strategic importance to watch and bike computer brands
Many years ago, a Garmin sports profile would have been used for high-level exercise categorisation like Run – Bike – Other/Custom. Each had several sport-specific screens and metrics. More advanced profiles from other brands would include behind-the-scene differences like the method of calorie estimation, but that was it. Sports profiles were almost an afterthought.
Next, for example, came the differentiation of different bike sub-activities, including MTB, gravel, road, and more. These tended to exist in the Garmin ecosystem only when there were specific metrics to validate their existence – such as the Grit and flow metrics for MTB. To a large degree, it felt like we were only allowed these profiles if the technical reasons permitted. But many people like collecting, classifying, and having correct data. So we have recently seen Garmin jump onto the bandwagon of supporting EVERY sport regardless of whether it merits special treatment. Sometimes, the new sport is simply a label.
Multisport profiles created unique complexity. Many brands have long supported a triathlon profile, essentially a collection of existing profiles sequentially executed. But Garmin was the first to perfect the complexity of multisport, allowing optional transitions, infinitely repeated sport combinations (for training) and the ability to join any number of sports to handle duathlon, aquathlon, aqua bike (hmmm), cross triathlon and more. Then came the ability to automate the progressions between the sub-sports and undo occasions where we’d incorrectly progressed from one activity to another. Garmin has been well ahead for years, with no real competition for advanced multisport sports profiles even today.
But the complexity of regular sports profiles has also increased, seemingly exponentially. Sports profiles have evolved to incorporate new and complex features introduced by modern sports devices.
Some brands use sports profiles to attract new customers to niche activities like darts, pickleball, and bouldering. To some degree, Coros did this in the climbing world.
A fun X account is @theappleguy, who invents the iconography for invented and somewhat useless activities!
There are now so many sports profiles and their associated complexities that Garmin has effectively created another barrier to entry for companies trying to emulate it – capturing the sport-specific motion metrics and estimating the calorie consumption during each sport is do-able, but when you have to do that and several other profile-specific tasks for 200 sports you suddenly bring in the need and cost of employing someone for a year to comprehensively cover all the sports – you have to sell a lot of watches to recoup that cost.
What Makes a Sport Profile
From the athlete’s perspective, the sports profile intuitively fits their workouts. But from a technical perspective, it organises and customises disparate aspects of your sports tool into one neat package.
- Sport Type
- Displayed Metrics
- Sport-Specific Algorithms
- Customizable Data Fields
- Workout Parameters
- Alerts and Notifications
- Sensor Integration
- Equipment Tracking
- Safety Features
- Multisport Support
- Training and Recovery Metrics
- Social and Motivational Features
- Third-Party Platform Integration
Sports profiles on fitness devices serve multiple essential functions, providing users with precise tracking, personalized monitoring, and enhanced functionality across diverse activities.
As we’ve already said, one of the primary roles of sports profiles is to organize and differentiate activities, facilitating the tracking of relevant metrics and aiding in historical data analysis. Additionally, many profiles incorporate sport-specific algorithms to calculate key metrics like calories burned, training load, and VO2max, which reflect each exercise’s distinct intensity and mechanics.
Sports profiles enhance training experiences by offering customized workout parameters and alerts. Features such as hydration reminders, excessive effort warnings, interval timers, and auto-lap functions can be fine-tuned to individual preferences, ensuring that each workout is optimized for personal needs. Moreover, seamless integration with sensors, such as heart rate monitors, power meters, and smart radars, enables users to achieve more precise, safe and effective workouts, minimizing the need for manual adjustments during exercise.
Another function of sports profiles is tracking equipment usage. However, further complexity is introduced here if you use one piece of gear across several sports or, for example, if you use more than one physical bike for gravel cycling. Furthermore, sports profiles assist in event preparation, offering tools like multisport modes for triathlon simulations and readiness metrics, including predicted race times and overall training status.
Performance tracking is a cornerstone of sports profiles, allowing users to monitor improvements both within specific activities and across diverse disciplines. For example, cyclists can track power changes, while triathletes can gauge performance across multiple sports, allowing for a composite view of progress.
Safety features are another vital aspect of sports profiles. These profiles activate sport-specific safety measures, such as incident detection for cycling or mountain biking and location-sharing capabilities for solo activities like hiking or skiing, ensuring that users remain protected while engaging in high-risk sports.
Additionally, sports profiles provide valuable insights into training intensity and load, facilitating recovery optimization. By analyzing the raw data, users can receive recovery time recommendations and monitor training load focus, helping them manage their physical readiness and prevent overtraining.
Motivational and social elements are also embedded within sports profiles. They enable users to share activities, engage in challenges, and interact with fitness communities through apps and social platforms, fostering a sense of connection and competition. Integration with third-party platforms such as TrainingPeaks and Strava simplifies data sharing and fosters collaboration within the broader training community.
The more you think about them, the more you realise that sports profiles are the fundamental glue for our sports data and social ecosystems.
How to add a Garmin sports Profile
I recommend modifying or copying an existing profile to ensure the Garmin ecosystem treats it correctly. It might even be a simple case of unhiding a profile you previously hid from the main list. Precise instructions vary by model, but it’s often this.
Select> Settings> Activity Profiles> Add New
You can then choose each page’s name, colour, and metrics. Further refinements let you add alerts and notifications.
A Definitive List of Garmin Sports Profiles (maybe)
You probably came here for a definitive list. I only got to 169!
Which have I missed that exists on Garmin and competitor watches?
Running and Walking
- Outdoor Running
- Treadmill Running
- Trail Running
- Ultra Run
- Virtual Running
- Indoor Track Running
- Walking (Outdoor)
- Walking (Indoor)
- Power Walking
- Race Walking
Cycling
- Road Cycling
- Mountain Biking
- Gravel Cycling
- Indoor Cycling (Turbo Trainer)
- E-Biking (Road)
- E-Mountain Biking
- Commuter Cycling
- Cyclocross
- Fat Biking
Swimming
- Pool Swimming
- Open Water Swimming
- Swimrun
Triathlon and Multisport
- Triathlon (SBR)
- Duathlon (RBR)
- Aquathlon (SR)
- Aquabike (non-Garmin)
- Bike-Run
- Custom Multisport Profiles (would include Brick workouts)
Fitness and Strength Training
- Strength Training
- Functional Fitness
- Cardio
- HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training)
- AMRAP (As Many Rounds As Possible)
- EMOM (Every Minute On the Minute)
- CrossFit
- Bodyweight Exercises
- Pilates
- Yoga
- Meditation
- Jump Rope
Winter Sports
- Downhill Skiing
- Cross-Country Skiing
- Backcountry Skiing
- Ski Touring
- Snowboarding
- Ice Skating (Outdoor)
- Ice Skating (Indoor)
- Snowshoeing
- Sledging
Water Sports
- Rowing (Outdoor)
- Stand-Up Paddleboarding (SUP)
- Kayaking
- Canoeing
- Surfing
- Windsurfing
- Kiteboarding
- Sailing
Climbing and Hiking
- Hiking
- Mountaineering
- Indoor Climbing
- Outdoor Climbing
- Bouldering
- Via Ferrata
Team and Court Sports
- Soccer
- Futsal
- Basketball
- Volleyball
- Beach Volleyball
- Tennis
- Table Tennis
- Badminton
- Handball
- Rugby
- Field Hockey
- Floorball
Racquet Sports
- Squash
- Pickleball
- Paddle Tennis
Recreational Activities
- Golf
- Disc Golf
- Horseback Riding
- Fishing
- Hunting
- Archery
Specialised Activities
- Tactical (Military/Law Enforcement)
- Navigation
- Expedition
- Orienteering
- Aviation (for specific Garmin devices)
- Scuba Diving
- Snorkelling
- Freediving
Miscellaneous
- Rowing (Indoor)
- Casual Activity Tracking
- Indoor Activities (Uncategorised)
- Dance
- Pole Dancing
- Cheerleading
Customisable Profiles
- Custom Workouts (e.g., gym-specific routines)
- Custom Outdoor Sports
Niche and Specialised Sports Profiles (Numbered Starting at 98)
Emerging and Uncommon Sports
- Adventure Racing
- Freediving
- Spearfishing
- Wingsuit Flying
- Drone Racing
Recreational and Gaming Activities
- Ping Pong (Table Tennis)
- Chess !
- Darts
- Bowling
- Curling
Water Sports
- Water Polo
- Wakeboarding
- Water Skiing
- Jet Skiing
- Rafting
Combat and Martial Arts
- Boxing
- Kickboxing
- Judo
- Karate
- Taekwondo
- Wrestling
- Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)
- Fencing
Dance and Rhythmic Sports
- Ballet
- Hip-Hop Dancing
- Zumba
- Contemporary Dance
- Tap Dancing
Outdoor Exploration and Navigation
- Orienteering
- Canyoning
- Geocaching
- Rock Scrambling
Winter Sports (Less Common)
- Nordic Walking
- Ice Fishing
- Tobogganing
- Biathlon (Skiing + Shooting)
Cycling and Related Activities
- BMX
- Cyclocross
- Gravel Biking
- Bikepacking
Recreational Court and Team Sports
- Pickleball
- Dodgeball
- Lacrosse
- Ultimate Frisbee
- Field Hockey
- Cricket
Water-Based Adventure Sports
- Whitewater Kayaking
- Surf Skiing
- Hydrofoil Surfing
Motorised Activities
- Motocross
- ATV/UTV Riding
- Motorcycle Touring
- Enduro Racing
Fitness Variations
- Parkour
- Calisthenics
- Circuit Training
- Bootcamp Workouts
- Barre Fitness
Strength and Power Sports
- Powerlifting
- Strongman Competitions
- Olympic Weightlifting
Cultural and Recreational Sports
- Pétanque (Boules)
- Bocce Ball
- Gaelic Football
- Hurling
Miscellaneous and Creative Profiles
- Dishwashing (example of niche activity tracking, user-generated or experimental)
- House Cleaning
- Yard Work
Custom and User-Created Profiles
- Frisbee Golf
- Rollerblading
- Kite Flying
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I’d be curious to see this list of sport profiles broken down into which ones have specialized metrics/features, versus which ones are just a copy of a another sport profile with a different name/categorization.
For example, things like Swimming, Skiing, Golf, etc, all have specialized metrics/features. But other like Tapdancing, ballet, dodgeball, etc. are basically just a generic Cardio activity with a different name, with no special features/metrics.
that’s a couple of days work them for some curious soul!
I suspect the trend is that newer profiles are much more likely to be sports tags rather than contain sport specific metrics
To me not the useless separation is the problem.
It is that one cannot use the Group categories as sports apps. If there are Tapdancing, ballet, dodgeball apps etc, fine, but there has to be a Cardio app.
And Generic Walk app including walk indoor, walk outdoor, hike etc.
You know just to let people live with simple categorization.
Last time I even became confused when I did not see my Strength Training activities in Strength Training filter/view in GCM, just because I disabled rep counting and auto set, so no muscle data were gathered. Funny, how the heck I should have known that Strength Training view do not show all the Strength Training activities?! Thx to God, in the meantime they moved this view under Gym & Fitness Equipment, so it became a bit more logical even if its name is totally misleading. Blimey!
different people will have different ideas/schemas for categorization.
is WALK INDOOR an INDOOR activity or a low-level RUN (or generic WALK) activity
I’ve been “struggling” for years with the fact that there is no KICK BIKE activity (scooter) on any watch (Garmin, Polar, Suunto, ..). Even though I’ve already written to Garmin and Polar, not only me, but also many other users.
It’s a very popular sport in Finland, Germany, here in the Czech Republic and elsewhere.
I don’t understand what the problem is, while Garmin has no problem with obscure activities like washing dishes or cleaning the house.
You missed one quite important…Indoor Rowing and added others like Fat Biking, CycloCross and Gravel Biking twice. But that is an impressive number, even though I doubt that all of them give you proper metrics other then HR and cals.
!!
tho to be fair it often feels like garmin forgets about indoor rowing!
kudos for actually checking the list, I was secretly hoping no one would 🙂
I have a Concept 2 rower in my basement…..that’s why I found out..;-)
I have never become a friend of the separation of Walk and Hike. Eg. this year I already had one day (9 hours) quasi continuous walk in the low mountains (hills by the others) collecting a total ascent of like 1000 m. Since there was no steep climbing sections the distance was quite substantial 34 km.
I would call it a Hike, even if it was not a multi-day activity on foot without running, jogging. But the best is if one records this type of activities as Walk. Why?
Although thus I sacrifice Stopped time, Moving Time and Moving Speed, which go only with Hike, I keep the chance to influence my VO2Max with a walk including high intensity sections, I get the option to filter to these activities on GCM/Activities Tab, moreover I can see together all my walks independently whether they were leisure walks with my better half or Performance Hiking events with time limits.
But Garmin thinks differently…….. Or think nothing, just leave it so as it was yesterday,
Do you still use the vasa swim trainer? If so, what set up are you using on your Garmin? Still trying to find a good way to get the data incorporated into garmin connect
i’m using it on and off.
garmin bricked the way i used to use.
have to admit to giving up trying to do it properly. i only have so much time.
I think you missed jump rope. I do it a few times a week, and Garmin have it on the FR265 and 965.
You missed Ultra Run. Has specific settings (round button = start/end rest).
Impressive list
both added !