Five days after Garmin announced it was buying TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic, the internet is full of predictions. Most of them are guesses. Before deciding what \u2014 if anything \u2014 you should do about it, it helps to separate what is actually known from what is speculation. That’s what this article does, and then it gives you a practical way to think about your own situation, because the right answer is not the same for every coach.<\/p>\n
Just as telling is what has not<\/em> been said. When industry journalists asked Garmin directly whether uploads from competitors’ devices are guaranteed long-term, they got no answer. The reassurance on cross-platform support has come from TrainingPeaks \u2014 not from its new owner.<\/p>\n The headline names two apps, but the deal reaches further:<\/p>\n Peaksware kept its music-education businesses, which reads as a deliberate, planned exit from sports software rather than a distressed sale.<\/p>\n Garmin hasn’t explained its strategy beyond the press release, so analysts have filled the gap with two main readings \u2014 and they can both be true at once. The first is about data: decades of records showing what real human coaches prescribed and how athletes responded, across every device brand \u2014 exactly the raw material you’d want for building AI-assisted coaching, and something Garmin cannot produce from its own ecosystem alone. The second is about subscriptions: Garmin’s Connect+ has struggled to justify its price, and TrainingPeaks features plus a virtual cycling platform are an obvious way to change that. There’s a defensive layer too \u2014 the largest independent training platform is no longer available to anyone else.<\/p>\n The unease is not about Garmin’s stated intentions. It’s about memory. One coach summed it up in a comment that made the rounds this week: they were \u00aba bit shook,\u00bb still carrying \u00ablingering pain from the Today’s Plan acquisition, and lots of lost data.\u00bb<\/p>\n That memory is doing a lot of work, because the coaching software world has been through this before. Today’s Plan, an independent coaching platform, was acquired by Zwift and shut down in 2024. Wahoo closed RGT after acquiring it. And when Garmin bought Firstbeat in 2020, the physiology metrics kept working \u2014 but over the following years, new third-party licensing quietly dried up. None of these platforms died on announcement day. The change came later, gradually, and mostly without press releases.<\/p>\n The honest conclusion from those precedents is not \u00abGarmin will ruin TrainingPeaks.\u00bb It’s narrower: public reassurances at acquisition time tell you about intentions, not outcomes.<\/strong><\/p>\n Here is the structural shift that matters. For twenty years, supporting every watch brand wasn’t a favor TrainingPeaks did the market \u2014 it was how TrainingPeaks made money. Neutrality was the business model, so you didn’t have to trust anyone’s goodwill; the incentives did the work.<\/p>\n As of last week, cross-platform support is no longer the business model. It’s a policy inside a hardware company whose revenue comes from selling watches \u2014 a policy that can be reviewed in any annual planning meeting. It probably won’t change this year. But \u00abprobably\u00bb is a different foundation than \u00abstructurally guaranteed,\u00bb and every coach now has to decide how much of their business to build on it.<\/p>\n What you should actually do depends almost entirely on what your coaching business looks like.<\/p>\n You have the least exposure and no reason to rush anywhere. Treat this as a hygiene reminder: export a full backup of your training history and plans \u2014 something worth doing on any platform, in any year \u2014 and carry on.<\/p>\n You are the coach this acquisition actually affects, because your workflow depends on exactly the compatibility that is now discretionary. You don’t need to panic, and mid-season is a bad time to migrate. But hedging is cheap:<\/p>\n This group is discussed the least and affected the most. Your storefront, your customer relationships, and your commission terms are now owned by a hardware manufacturer with its own strategic priorities. Nobody has announced any changes \u2014 but distribution you don’t control is a risk you should never leave unmanaged. Diversify: sell through at least one other channel, and own your customer contact list somewhere outside the platform.<\/p>\n Ignore the noise and watch for these specific events. Any one of them is your cue to act rather than wait:<\/p>\n The independent ecosystem is bigger than most coaches realize \u2014 industry roundups published since the acquisition count more than a dozen platforms still unaffiliated with any hardware maker. Which one fits depends on what you need:<\/p>\n And staying on TrainingPeaks is a legitimate choice too \u2014 just make it with your data backed up and a plan B identified, rather than by default.<\/p>\n We build TrainerPlan, so read this section knowing that. We’re not going to promise you independence \u2014 promises are exactly what the precedents above said to discount. What we can point to is our incentive structure, the same test we applied to TrainingPeaks: TrainerPlan sells software to coaches. We don’t make watches. Two-way sync with Garmin, Polar, Suunto, COROS, Strava, Wahoo and Apple Watch isn’t a policy we maintain \u2014 it’s the product. The day we degrade it is the day we have no business.<\/p>\n In one platform you get strength and endurance planning, athlete management, performance charts, payments, your own branding, and a marketplace to sell your plans. And if you decide to move, our team migrates your athletes, history, and plans for you at no cost<\/strong>.<\/p>\nWhat Garmin actually bought<\/h2>\n
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Why Garmin did it<\/h2>\n
Why coaches are uneasy anyway<\/h2>\n
The real question is not Garmin’s intent \u2014 it’s your dependency<\/h2>\n
Three coaches, three different answers<\/h2>\n
If your athletes are nearly all on Garmin devices<\/h3>\n
If your roster is mixed \u2014 Polar, Suunto, COROS, Wahoo, Apple Watch<\/h3>\n
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If you sell training plans through the TrainingPeaks marketplace<\/h3>\n
The three signals worth watching<\/h2>\n
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If you decide to look around<\/h2>\n
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Where TrainerPlan stands in this<\/h2>\n