No coding needed. If you're a developer who wants Garmin data in your own app, see Build with Garmin data instead.
In Part 1 you connected your Garmin account to Claude and asked your first questions. Now let's get good at it.
Claude can see a lot: sleep, HRV, resting heart rate, stress, Body Battery, steps, every activity with its splits, training readiness and status, race predictions, personal records, weight and more. But how you ask makes a big difference to what you get back. This post covers:
- Five habits that make answers better
- Questions worth asking, by topic
- How to tell a solid answer from a guess
- What Claude can't see
Five habits that make answers better
1. Name the period
"How's my sleep?" makes Claude choose a period for you. "How was my sleep over the last 14 nights?" doesn't. Be specific: "this week", "since I started my plan on September 1st", "October compared with September".
2. Compare something
Numbers mean little on their own. A resting heart rate of 52 is neither good nor bad; 52, when it's usually 47 is a signal. So ask for comparisons:
Compare my resting heart rate and HRV this week with my average for the last two months.
3. Give context Claude doesn't have
Garmin knows what you did, not why. One sentence of context changes the answer:
I'm training for a half marathon on December 7th, and I had a cold last week. Am I ready to go back to intervals?
4. Ask for the format you want
Claude can answer in a sentence, a table or a chart. Ask for what's most useful:
Show my weekly running distance for the last 12 weeks as a chart.
Put my last five long runs in a table: distance, pace, average heart rate.
5. Follow up
The first answer is a starting point. "Why do you think Tuesday was so bad?", "Is that unusual for me?" and "What should I change?" often get the most useful part.
Questions worth asking, by topic
Sleep
- "How was my sleep this week compared with last week? Which night was worst, and why?"
- "Am I getting less deep sleep on days I train in the evening?"
- "What's my average sleep over the last month, against what Garmin says I need?"
Garmin files each night under the date you woke up. If Claude's dates look a day off, that's why.
HRV and recovery
HRV (heart-rate variability) is one of the best recovery signals your watch measures, and the most misread.
- "What has my overnight HRV done over the last month? Is anything unusual?"
- "My HRV status says unbalanced. What does that mean, and how long has it been like this?"
- "Show my HRV next to my training load for the last six weeks."
The thing to understand: HRV is personal. A value of 45 can be excellent for one person and low for another. Garmin judges it against your baseline, so ask about trends and your own normal range, not about the number on its own.
Readiness and training status
- "Am I ready to train hard today? What's dragging my readiness down?"
- "What's my training status, and what has my load looked like over the last four weeks?"
- "I feel tired but readiness says 80. What's Garmin basing that on?"
Readiness is recalculated during the day, after activities. Ask about this morning's readiness if you want the number your watch showed when you woke up.
Activities
This is where Claude saves the most tapping:
- "Find my runs over 10 km since June, longest first, and compare their average pace and heart rate."
- "Did my last tempo run go better than the one two weeks ago? Compare the splits."
- "How much did I ride this month, and how does that compare with last month?"
- "What were my fastest 5K efforts this year?"
Claude can search by type, date, distance and more, and open any single activity's laps, heart-rate zones and weather.
Race predictions and personal records
- "What are my race predictions, and how have they changed since the summer?"
- "Show my personal records, and which activity each one came from."
Treat race predictions as estimates from your fitness data. They're most reliable for distances you actually train for.
Body, stress and everyday health
- "Show my weight and resting heart rate trend for the past 90 days."
- "Which days this month had the highest stress, and what did I do on them?"
- "How does my Body Battery recover on nights after a drink versus not?" (Tell Claude which nights.)
How to tell a solid answer from a guess
Claude is good with numbers, but it can still pick the wrong period, miss a gap, or overstate a pattern. Three checks keep you safe.
Look at what it fetched. Above each answer there's a small line like "used Garmin MCP integration". Click it to see which data Claude asked for and for which dates. If you asked about "this month" and it fetched one week, the answer won't be right. Say so and ask again.
Watch for gaps. If you didn't wear your watch for a few nights, those nights have no data. A good answer says so. If an average looks surprisingly good or bad, ask: "Were there any days with no data in that period?"
A good answer about a gap: Garmin recorded no readiness score that day, so Claude says so and explains what it based its verdict on instead. The numbers have been changed for privacy.
Ask for the numbers behind a claim. If Claude says "your sleep has improved", ask "show me the nightly numbers". A claim backed by a table is one you can check. A claim with no numbers is a guess.
And remember what this is. Garmin's numbers are estimates from a wrist sensor, and Claude is reading them back to you. Neither is a medical device. Use it to notice patterns and ask better questions; if something about your health worries you, talk to a doctor.
What Claude can't see
- Anything your watch didn't record or sync. If it's not in the Garmin Connect app, Claude doesn't have it.
- Data from other apps, unless it syncs into Garmin Connect. (Strava, for example, doesn't sync back.)
- How you felt, unless you logged it. You can tell it, though: "Tuesday I felt terrible" is useful context.
- Your Garmin Coach plan's reasoning. Claude can see your plan's scheduled workouts, but not why Garmin chose them.
Everything Claude fetches becomes part of your conversation. That's what lets you ask follow-ups, but it also means the conversation contains your health data, so treat it accordingly.
What's next
So far Claude has only been reading. In Part 3, it starts doing things for you: you describe a workout in plain words, Claude builds it, and after you've checked it, puts it on your calendar and sends it to your watch.
- Set-up guides and example questions: garmin.ficdev.xyz/claude
What's the most useful thing you've asked so far? Share it in the comments. The best ones go into the next post.
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