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. The watch permission is part of the Garmin link, so if you linked before October 2026 and the send is refused, relink from Your Settings and accept the workout permission.

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."

The assistant writes the session in Simma's workout format: a sport, then an ordered list of steps and repeat blocks. 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, a share of your threshold, a heart-rate zone or an effort. Rest is its own step. Pool steps can carry a stroke and a send-off. Every step keeps the words it came from, so what you said survives into the watch.

Version one covers runs and pool swims. An open-water swim becomes one long step.

What Simma checks

Before anything is sent, Simma checks the workout against your own settings: the pool length, your threshold pace, your heart-rate zones. 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 targets and a lap-button step have run end to end on a Garmin watch. Pace targets, heart-rate-zone targets, pool swims and send-offs go through the same converter and are checked the same way; Garmin's 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 ride with power targets. Email coaching@getsimma.com with the tool you want and we will build it.