If your plan to get fit for 2024 is already in trouble in the notoriously tough first week of January, fear not: new Garmin data has arrived to give us all some new inspiration, based on the biggest fitness trends of last year.
The Garmin fitness report 2023 is based on the data it has collected from tens of millions of Garmin Connect users worldwide. So while it doesn't tell us what new types of workouts Apple Watch fans are doing, it does reveal some interesting trends that could help guide your 2024 plans.
The biggest takeaway is a boom in workouts at the gym, especially HIIT (high-intensity interval training) sessions. Among Garmin users, these rose in popularity by 112% year-on-year, which is the biggest spike in the entire report.
In fact, the use of fitness equipment has increased everywhere, with stair climbing sessions (up 31% compared to 2022), strength training (up 30%), cross trainers (up 17%) and indoor rowing (up 14%) all showing the popularity of these machines, whether used at the gym or at home.
Not that strength training and indoor cardio have overtaken traditional training classics. Garmin's report shows that running, walking and cycling were still the top three activities among Garmin Connect users, ahead of indoor alternatives. But there are also some interesting subgroups within these top three categories.
For example, track running saw a 76% increase in Garmin data year-on-year, making it the fastest growing form of running by some distance. It was well ahead of indoor, treadmill and trail running in terms of year-over-year increases – and because Garmin watches like the Forerunner 235 have been able to record track-based running for some time, the data won't have been affected by the arrival of new Garmin features also not.
However, some of the 2023 increases in Garmin's report may have been influenced by hardware and software changes. For example, Garmin devices only started supporting e-bike data from mid-2022, so a year-over-year increase was always likely here.
Certainly, both e-bike and e-bike mountain tracking both increased last year (62% and 49% respectively) compared to 2022. Likewise, yoga (23%) and pilates (which grew 48%) were both more popular. than in 2022. Although these may have been influenced again by the arrival last year of muscle map graphics (which help you plan workouts based on training load) for those activities on some Garmin watches.
Wait, eSports tracking is a thing?
Another interesting example of how Garmin's activity profiles influence fitness report data is eSports. Yes, some of Garmin's more premium watches (like the Epix Gen 2, Fenix 7, Forerunner, and Venu series) let you track eSports activity to help improve your gaming performance. According to the report, eSports tracking will also grow in 2023, albeit at a slower pace than HIIT sessions.
Garmin says heart rate, stress, sleep and energy can all have a big impact on the skills of professional gamers. That's why the Activity Profile tracks all this data and even syncs it with a Garmin GameOn desktop app, so you can see how your body reacts while gaming. and after matches.
Still, it's fair to say that most of us are still using Garmin's more old-fashioned tracking profiles. And while tennis and bouldering both showed big increases in Garmin's data (up 76% and 68% year-over-year respectively), good old walking was still the second most popular activity overall in 2023.
But does walking 10,000 steps a day really keep you fit? We tried that every day for a week instead of going to the gym – and you can read our findings. Spoiler: it went well and the goal of 10,000 steps per day certainly does not only apply to the elderly.