Train with a Training Plan

A Training Plan takes you week by week toward one of your goals. The AI Coach drafts it with you, FitKeep matches your runs to its sessions as you train, and the coach reviews your runs and suggests changes. Nothing in the plan changes without you.

What a plan is

A goal it works toward: a race, finishing a distance, improving a time, or staying fit. A total distance goal can’t have a plan
Phases: blocks of weeks with one focus each, from the start date to the goal date
Plan Weeks: Monday to Sunday in your timezone, each with a weekly target, such as “31 km · Goal pace again”. Weeks are labeled with their ISO week number, such as W46, the same number many watches and calendars show
Planned Sessions for the next week or two: each day’s run with its kind (easy, steady, long run, tempo, intervals or race), a distance or duration, and often a pace range or heart rate zone. Later weeks are filled in as you go, and until then they can show a Week Sketch

A plan to stay fit has no end date and no Phases. Each week gets its target when it is planned.

Phases

A Phase is a named block of weeks with a single focus, such as “Build: Tempo and goal pace” or “Sharpen and race”. On the plan page each Phase is a panel around its weeks, and the current one says where you are, such as “Week 5 of 9” (counted over the whole plan). The page header shows the current Phase too.

Week Sketch

A coming week without sessions is marked Not planned yet. It can still have a Week Sketch: the rough shape of the week, such as “Long run ~14 km, Tempo ~8 km, Easy ~6 km”. Open the week to see it under “Not planned yet. Sketch of the week:“.

A sketch names no days, paces or steps. When the coach drafts the week’s sessions it starts from the sketch, and may change it to fit how your training went. Once the week has sessions, the sketch is no longer shown.

The coach writes sketches when it drafts the plan. If coming weeks have none, Sketch the weeks ahead under the first of them asks the coach to suggest them, as a Plan Proposal for you to confirm.

Session Steps

A session with a structure has steps: warm-up, work, recovery and cool-down, each lasting a distance or a time, with its own pace range or heart rate zone. A work step and its recovery can repeat, such as “6 × (800 m at 4:40–4:50/km, 400 m recovery)“. Tempo and intervals sessions always have steps; an easy run usually has none.

The session’s line on the plan shows its steps, such as “8 km · 2 km warm-up, 4 km at 4:50–5:10/km, 2 km cool-down”. Steps are what your watch follows when the session is sent to it, so they are also what its laps record. The steps of a session add up to its target distance or duration.

Getting access

Training Plans are part of the AI Coach, which is switched on one account at a time. If the coach isn’t on for your account, there is no Plan link in the navigation. See Chat with the AI Coach for how to ask for access.

Create a plan

Select Plan in the navigation, or Make a plan on a goal on the Goals page
Pick the goal and the start date
Set your Training Preferences: your training days, your long run day, the most sessions a week, and whether training on back-to-back days is fine
Select Draft my plan

The coach drafts the plan in a conversation next to it. Ask it for changes in plain English, such as “make the long runs shorter” or “start with three runs a week”. When the draft looks right, select Confirm on the card in the chat. Nothing is saved until you do. You have one active plan at a time: confirming a new plan ends the current one.

The plan page

From top to bottom:

The header: the plan’s goal, its dates, the weeks to go, the target and the current Phase. The ⋮ menu holds Abandon plan, and the ? button in the top bar opens this guide
Needs attention: what the coach has for you, see below
Today: today’s session, or Next up (or Tomorrow) when today is a rest day. It also shows how far along this week is, such as “This week 19 km of 30 km · 3 of 4 sessions”, and “No run in 5 days” when you haven’t run for a while
Sessions: the week list, see below
Past weeks and Past plans

On a wide screen the coach sits beside the plan, showing your latest conversation about it. Hide coach and Show coach fold it away and back. On a phone or a narrow window, switch between the plan and the coach with the Plan and Coach tabs.

Still open

When a session’s day has passed without a run but you can still make it up, the Today card leads with it in amber: “Still open · from Thu”. A run today counts for that session, as long as it is in the same week and at most 2 days from the session’s day. If today has its own session, that one stays on top and the open one is a line under it.

The week list

The list runs from this week to the end of the plan, grouped in Phase panels. This week starts open and every other week is one line with its target. Select a week to open it and see its days.

Edit week on an open week lets you change its sessions, see Change the plan
Plan W48 (with the week’s number) sits on the first week that is not planned yet, see Plan the coming weeks
A Plan Proposal label marks a week the coach suggests changing
Month view shows the whole plan as a calendar. Tap a day to open its week
Past weeks (closed at first) holds the weeks behind you, newest first, and below them your past plans

Needs attention

The box at the top of the plan page collects what the coach has for you. Decisions come first, marked with a raised hand: it is your turn to answer.

Plan Proposals waiting for you, such as “Weekly Check-in ready · Plan Proposal”, “Overdue session · Plan Proposal” or “New goal date · Plan Proposal”. They stay until you confirm or cancel them
Plan Proposal from your chat: a draft from a conversation with the coach that you haven’t confirmed yet
Move the next session too? after a run moved a session, see below
The coach couldn’t update your outline, with Try again
Send your sessions to your Garmin watch when Garmin is connected without the “Training” permission, with Connect again or Not now

Then news, newest first:

New review: an Activity Review of one of your runs from the last 14 days
Weekly Check-in ready: the coach’s look back at last week, when it proposes no change
You moved a run: adjust the week? after you matched or unmatched a run yourself, with Ask the coach to adjust
The coach is updating your outline while it works on a new outline after you changed your goal’s date

When automatic coaching is paused, the box also says so, with Resume.

Select a row to open it. Opening or dismissing news marks it as read. The number on Plan in the navigation counts new reviews, check-ins, the coach’s proposals and the suggestions to move or adjust a session. It doesn’t count the outline rows, proposals from your chat or the Garmin row. The dashboard’s plan card shows the first row, except a proposal from your chat or an outline the coach is still working on.

Discuss with coach on a row starts a new conversation about it, with what the coach wrote already in it.

How runs are matched

When a run arrives, FitKeep matches it to a Planned Session by itself. This link is a Session Match. A run and a session can be matched when:

they are in the same Plan Week, and
the run is at most 2 days before or after the day the plan put the session on

FitKeep looks at the whole week at once and prefers the session on the run’s own day, so a run on Wednesday takes Wednesday’s session even if an earlier run had been matched to it. Your own matches never move.

A match moves the session to the day you ran, when that day is free in the plan. The session then shows “Planned for Tuesday” so you can see where it came from. If you unmatch it, it goes back to its planned day when that day is free. A session with a match stays on the day of its run: unmatch it first to move it.

Two days after a Plan Week ends, its matches are locked. They can no longer change, by you or by FitKeep, so a late upload won’t rewrite a week you’ve already looked back on.

Only runs are matched. A run from before the plan’s start is never matched to it.

Done, Unplanned and other labels

Done: a run is matched to this session. Open the day to see the run, its target badges and its review
Unplanned: a run that matched no session. It still counts toward the week’s distance. The activity page shows it as an “Unplanned activity”
Overdue: the session’s day has passed without a match, but its week is still running. A run up to 2 days after its day can still take it (see Still open)
Missed: the week ended without a run for this session
Skipped: you marked the session as not done. It is never matched afterwards

Change a match yourself

Open a day on the plan page and select Edit on the session:

Unmatch activity releases the run. A run you unmatched isn’t matched to that plan again by itself
Match links a free session to a run within 2 days of it. A run already matched elsewhere says “(matched to Tue)”; picking it moves it here
Skip marks a session you won’t do, and Un-skip brings it back

On the plan, an unplanned run under a day opens Match to a session. On the activity page the Training plan card does the same: Match to session… for an unplanned run, Move to another session for a matched one. When a week is locked, these say so instead.

After you change a match, Needs attention offers to ask the coach to adjust the rest of the week.

Target badges

A matched run gets a badge for each target of its session: Distance or Duration, and Pace when the session has a pace range. A run meets its target when:

Distance or duration: from 10% under to 20% over the target. For a long run or a race, 10% either way
Pace: within the session’s pace range, give or take 5 seconds per km

How the pace is measured depends on the session:

With steps, when the laps line up with them (one lap per step, as a watch records a workout it follows): each work step is judged on its own lap against its own range. The badge shows the worst one. A work step without a pace range isn’t judged
With steps, when they don’t line up: your fastest laps that add up to the session’s work distance (the work steps added up), so the warm-up and recoveries don’t pull the pace down
Otherwise: the whole run

Pace counts the time on your device’s timer, so time with the timer stopped doesn’t count. The activity page’s average pace also counts short stops, so it can differ a little.

The colours:

Green: the target was met, or the coach’s review says the miss was fine for this session (“Fine for this session”)
Yellow: the coach’s review has a note about the miss
Neutral (grey): the target was missed and there is no verdict, with the difference shown, such as “Pace 5:27/km (+22 s)”

A review’s verdict counts only for the session it was written for. If the run is matched to another session, or the session’s targets change, the badges go back to the plain rule until a new review.

Activity reviews

While a plan is active, the coach writes an Activity Review of each run a couple of minutes after it is matched, or after it is marked unplanned. A review compares a matched run with its session, and an unplanned run with the week. For a run that missed a target, the review also says whether the miss is fine or worth a note, which is what colours the target badges.

The review appears on the activity page in place of the AI summary, and as New review in Needs attention. Read the review under a done session opens it on the plan page. On the activity page:

Regenerate asks the coach to write it again. When the run is matched to another session, the coach updates the review by itself
Write review asks for one when the coach didn’t write it by itself, for example because it had reached its daily number of reviews
Discuss with coach, and the questions under Ask your coach (such as “What could I have done better?”), start a conversation about the review. “How does this affect the rest of my week?” is only offered while the run’s week is still running

Change the plan

Your own edits

Your own edits apply right away. Select Edit week on an open week, then the pencil on a session to change it, or Add session on a free day. Done editing ends it. In a session you can change its kind, target, pace range, heart rate zone, steps and description, move it to another day (two sessions swap days), or move it to a free day in a coming week with Or move to another week. Delete session removes it.

A session with a Session Match stays on the day of its run, and matched or skipped sessions stay in their week.

Plan Proposals

A Plan Proposal is a change the coach suggests. Ask the coach in the chat to change sessions, weekly targets, Phases, Week Sketches or your Training Preferences, and it shows the changes as a card with Before and After. Proposals the coach makes on its own, and drafts from the chat you haven’t confirmed yet, appear in Needs attention and on the weeks they change.

Nothing changes until you select Confirm. Cancel discards it, and Discuss with coach talks it through first. If the plan changed since the coach proposed something, the card is marked Outdated: ask the coach to propose it again. A newer proposal replaces an older one that is still waiting, except that a draft in the chat only replaces it once you confirm the draft.

Plan the coming weeks

Sessions exist for this week and next. Plan W48 (with that week’s number) asks the coach to draft the sessions of the first week that isn’t planned yet, looking at how your past weeks went. It shows on next week if that has no sessions, and otherwise on the week after, from Thursday. The coach answers in a new conversation with a Plan Proposal, and the plan page opens that week so you can see it.

Sketch the weeks ahead asks the coach for Week Sketches of coming weeks that have none, see Week Sketch.

What the coach does on its own

While you train with a plan, the coach does some work without being asked. All of it is reviews or proposals: nothing in your plan changes until you confirm.

Activity Reviews of each run, see above
Weekly Check-ins every Sunday evening, except in the plan’s last week, see below
Overdue sessions: the morning after a session went without a run, when there are days left in the week, it proposes how to fit the rest of the week (“Overdue session · Plan Proposal”)
A new outline when you change your goal’s date so that the plan gains or loses weeks (“New goal date · Plan Proposal”). Until it arrives, Needs attention says the coach is updating your outline; if it fails, Try again
A Completion Review when a plan completes, see When a plan ends

On its own, the coach writes at most 5 Activity Reviews a day, and at most 2 Weekly Check-ins, overdue proposals and Completion Reviews together. You can always ask for more yourself. When you haven’t visited FitKeep for 14 days it pauses, and the plan page says “Automatic coaching is paused” with Resume. See Automatic coaching, and Email notifications to get an email when the coach checks in.

Weekly Check-ins

On Sunday evening the coach looks back at the week that is ending: what you ran against its target, the sessions done, missed and skipped, and how your runs went. It comes with a Plan Proposal for next week (“Weekly Check-in ready · Plan Proposal”), or on its own when next week needs no change (“Weekly Check-in ready”). Open it in Needs attention to read it. The plan’s last week has no Weekly Check-in: the Completion Review looks back on the whole plan instead.

Move the next session too?

When a run moves a session to a later day, the next session can end up right after it, such as a long run the day after a tempo run. FitKeep then offers to move that next session too: “Move Long run on Sat to Sun?”, under the session and in Needs attention. Move it moves it, Keep it leaves the plan as it is. This is a simple rule, not the coach, and nothing moves unless you choose it.

Send sessions to your watch

FitKeep can put your Planned Sessions in your watch’s calendar, steps and paces included:

Garmin Connect™ gets the sessions from today to the end of next week. When you change, skip or delete a session in FitKeep, it is updated or removed there too. Garmin needs the “Training” permission, which you allow when you connect
COROS gets today’s and tomorrow’s sessions. COROS doesn’t let FitKeep move or delete a workout, so one that no longer fits is renamed to say what happened, such as “Moved to Thu 12 Nov, see FitKeep”

Sessions on days that have passed are never sent. Only one service gets your sessions at a time; choose which one under Settings → Integrations. See Which service gets your Planned Sessions.

When a plan ends

A plan completes by itself once you reach its goal, or two days after the goal date, so a run on the last day can still be matched when it arrives late. The plan page then shows Plan completed with the weeks, sessions done, missed and skipped, and the distance you ran, and under What next? you can Plan to stay fit or Train for a new goal.

When a plan completes, the coach writes a Completion Review: a look back at the plan against its goal, with a proposal for your next goal. Confirming it creates the goal.

To stop a plan earlier, choose Abandon plan in the ⋮ menu. Sessions from tomorrow on are removed, and the plan stays readable under past plans.

Past plans

Past plans at the bottom of the plan page lists your completed and abandoned plans. Open one to see all its weeks, sessions and runs as they were, and its Completion Review if it has one. A past plan can’t be changed. Back to training plan returns to your current plan.

What plans don’t do yet

Running only. Sessions are runs, and only runs are matched to them
Sessions a week or two ahead. Later weeks have a target and maybe a Week Sketch, and get their sessions with Plan W48
One active plan at a time. Confirming a new plan ends the current one
No plans for total distance goals. Pick a race, finishing a distance, improving a time, or staying fit