An uploaded ride counts toward Training Status only if Garmin treats it as a recording of a Garmin device, or if it comes from one of the platforms Garmin names. A file that another app uploads for you, or that you import yourself, shows up in your Garmin Connect list with distance, heart rate and power, but Garmin calculates no Training Effect and no training load for it.
What does Garmin say counts?
Garmin’s support page Can Third-Party Activities Impact My Garmin Training Metrics? lists the platforms whose activities can update Training Status, training load, Training Effect and VO2 max: Concept2, Peloton, Rouvy, SYSTM, TrainerRoad, Wahoo and Zwift. Even for those, Garmin sets conditions: an activity of the same type has to be recorded on your Garmin device, the device has to have measured a VO2 max estimate during it, and you may need to switch on Physio TrueUp. A file you import, or one that a sync app uploads, is not among the listed platforms.
What did we see on our own account?
On 12 September 2026 we looked at a Wahoo ride from 31 August 2026 that a third-party sync app had uploaded to Garmin Connect. We exported the file back out of Garmin Connect: its File ID still named Wahoo Fitness as manufacturer, with Wahoo’s product number and the Wahoo unit’s serial number. The sync app had passed the file through unchanged.
Garmin Connect showed the ride with distance, calories, heart rate, power, elevation, cadence, temperature and intensity minutes. Training Effect and training load were missing. On a Zwift ride from 9 September 2026 in the same account, Garmin showed a Training Effect with the primary benefit “Base”. Our outdoor rides had not been feeding the watch’s Training Status at all, only the Zwift rides had.
Is the number in the file and Garmin just ignores it?
No. Neither the Wahoo file nor the Zwift file contains a Training Effect or load field. Garmin calculates these values itself, which is why the Zwift ride had them and the Wahoo ride did not. The details are in why an uploaded ride shows no Training Effect in Garmin Connect.
What decides whether Garmin calculates?
The device named in the file. We wrote the manufacturer, product, serial number and software version of our own Garmin Forerunner 570 into a copy of the same Wahoo ride, 16 bytes in total, deleted the earlier upload and imported the copy. Garmin Connect has listed it since then as a recording of the Forerunner 570, with the watch’s device picture and software version. Which bytes change is in what changes in a FIT file when Nabe sends it to Garmin.
What does Nabe do differently?
Nabe writes the identity of your own watch into the file before it uploads a ride to Garmin Connect: manufacturer, product, serial number and software version, read from your Garmin Connect device list or from a file your watch recorded. Everything you rode stays as it was, and exporting the ride from Nabe always gives you the original file. Garmin has no official way to do this, and Garmin’s own list of platforms does not mention it. You should know that before you rely on it.
What else has to happen before the watch knows?
Your watch has to sync. Garmin’s support page says the device downloads the activity on the first sync, calculates the new values and uploads them on the second, so you sync twice. How a Garmin Edge and a Garmin watch share the result is in how an Edge and a watch share training load.