How Garmin’s Acquisition of TrainingPeaks Could Impact Your Training Program.
This morning, Garmin announced the acquisition of TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic. These platforms are major players in the endurance and strength training world, primarily due to the quality of their training plans. This news has already sparked much speculation—and skepticism—among athletes and coaches who have built their training around these tools. Here’s what this acquisition could mean for your approach to training.
Why Garmin Acquired TrainingPeaks
According to Garmin’s official press release , the acquisition “strengthens Garmin’s fitness ecosystem by delivering customized training programs for endurance, strength, and performance athletes at every stage of their fitness journey.” The deal applies only to TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic, not the entire parent company, Peaksware Holdings. This represents Garmin’s focused focus on endurance and strength-related assets, rather than a sale of the entire parent company.
TrainingPeaks is best known for its training plans, logs, and coaching tools, but this deal also draws attention to its other features and benefits. For example, Garmin is likely eyeing TrainingPeaks Virtual , a user-friendly platform for indoor cycling.
It’s also worth noting that TrainingPeaks owns the trademarks behind several popular metrics for serious cyclists, such as Training Stress Score, Normalized Power, and Intensity Factor. Other companies, such as Wahoo, Hammerhead, and TrainerRoad, currently license these terms for use in their products—it remains to be seen whether the deal with Garmin will impact this. Garmin already dominates the hardware space with its watches, cycling computers, and data-generating sensors. What it lacks is the planning and training capabilities that underpin it all.
TrainHeroic also features a strength training component. Garmin is clearly trying to strengthen its position in the world of strength and hybrid training, and acquiring an existing strength training programming platform is a much faster approach than building one from scratch.
What’s next for TrainingPeaks?
This is where the community’s concerns arise, and they’re not without merit. Currently, TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic connect to over 100 devices and apps, including those from Garmin’s direct competitors, such as Wahoo, Coros, Polar, Suunto, and Apple. Garmin now has an incentive to make this platform less accessible. Whether the company will act on this incentive remains unclear, so people are speculating based on three main scenarios:
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Ideally, Garmin would keep TrainingPeaks largely unchanged as a standalone product, maintaining its compatibility with devices from multiple manufacturers, and perhaps integrating some select TrainingPeaks features into Connect+.
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Middle ground: Garmin treats TrainingPeaks the same way Strava treated Runna when it acquired it, which could look like some sort of combo subscription.
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Worst-case scenario: Garmin takes over TrainingPeaks’ features and makes them entirely paid. Existing users will lose years of training history, race notes, and coach-led training plans.
Nothing in today’s statement directly addresses these concerns. For now, all Garmin rhetoric boils down to “improving the ecosystem.”
Result
Typically, such acquisitions take months (sometimes longer) before any product changes are made, and Garmin hasn’t given any timeframe. Here are a few long-term issues to keep an eye on:
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Will support for non-Garmin devices be discontinued?
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Will Garmin’s strength training system finally get better?
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Will prices change on both platforms?
Garmin is already a major player in the athletic device and data market; today’s acquisition expands the company’s reach, enabling it to offer coaching services and structured training plan development.
Perhaps TrainingPeaks’ best training tools will make their way into Connect+, Garmin’s strength training tools will receive a long-awaited update, and everyone will benefit. Or perhaps this beloved independent tool will gradually be absorbed and degraded. For now, we can only wait to see whether TrainingPeaks’ integration with Garmin’s competitors will continue and what will happen to pricing.