Stop Taking Splits During Your Workout

Let your watch do the work for you

Aug 14, 2026

Whether you sport Garmin or Coros as your watch provider, you really should be setting up your watch to work a little harder for you.

It takes a bit of pre-planning, of course, but setting up your watch to take splits for you - just as it probably does on an easy run - can help you focus on the workout while the watch does the rest.

Here’s how it works (if you didn’t already know):

Garmin has a feature that allows you to plug in your workout - no matter what it is - into your watch. Personally, I find it just as easy to do on my phone as on my computer, so choose what works best for you.

Then you get to building the run you want to have. Include a warm-up and a cool down, the intervals you plan on running (by time, by distance, etc), and the recoveries you want after each of them. This works for ladder workouts, intervals, tempos… You name it.

Sync it to your watch, and when you start your run, find it in the Training section of your watch, and you’re good to go!

Garmin Watch Auto-Splits

Garmin has a feature that allows you to plug in your workout - 12 x 400, a ladder workout, 6 x 1 mile, 5 x 1200 + 5 x 200… You name the workout, you can program it into Garmin, sync your watch, then do the workout and your Garmin will take splits (and recoveries) for you!

Magic.

What’s So Cool About Auto-Splits?

When you’re out on the roads doing a workout, it’s not ideal to always be looking at your watch for when you need to split your watch.

One of the goals of a workout is to get into a flow and you can’t do that nicely if you are always checking your watch to hit the split at the right time.

This feature is really useful if you are doing a road workout because you don’t have set markers like you would on a track.

Marc uses Garmin to plan his running workouts and races

How to Program the Watch

Go to Garmin Connect, then More, then Training, then Workouts. Go to Create a Workout. From there, you’ll want to hit Run. I always include the warmup and cool down.

If you are running repeats, like 6 x 800 you’ll hit Add Repeat.

If you are running various distances, like a ladder or a combo workout, you’ll want to hit Add Step.

Remember to include rests (time or distance).

Hit Save at the top. Then sync your watch.

I tend to call workouts by either the date or what the workout is so that it’s easy to find it on my watch.