Rep The SetUsing a Garmin watch as your heart-rate monitor
Your Garmin can send live heart rate to Rep The Set, so you get zones and a full trace without wearing a chest strap. It takes about thirty seconds to set up — but only on watches that broadcast over Bluetooth, and that is not all of them.
Why some Garmins simply cannot
Garmin watches broadcast heart rate over two different radios. ANT+ is the older one, built for bike computers and gym equipment. Bluetooth is the one an iPhone can hear. Garmin broadcast over ANT+ alone for years and only added Bluetooth broadcasting from around 2019.
That single fact explains the confusing part. An ANT+ only watch still shows up in the app's device list, because it is advertising itself over Bluetooth like any watch — it just has no heart rate to give over that radio. Rep The Set checks for the Bluetooth heart-rate service when you tap, which is why those models are labelled Bluetooth heart rate not supported rather than offered and then failing. No setting, firmware update or app can add a radio the watch does not have.
Which watches work
Broadcasts over Bluetooth
Works with Rep The Set.
Forerunner — 245, 255, 265, 945, 955, 965
fēnix — 6, 7, 8 series (including Pro and Solar)
Venu — 2, 2 Plus, 3
vívoactive — 5
epix, Enduro, MARQ — all current models
Approach — S70
ANT+ only
Cannot send heart rate to any iPhone app. Use a chest strap.
Forerunner — 230, 235, 630, 645, 735XT, 935
fēnix — 5, 5S, 5X and earlier
vívoactive — 3 and earlier
Garmin sells a lot of watches and these lists will never be complete, so here is a test that does not depend on them. Turn broadcasting on, then look at the app's device list. If your watch is there and says sends heart rate, it works. That check is the watch answering for itself, which beats any table.
Setting it up
1. Hold the middle button
On almost every Garmin, holding the middle-left button opens the controls menu — the same place brightness, do-not-disturb and the alarm live. Touchscreen models can swipe down to it instead.
2. Choose Broadcast Heart Rate
Some models label it "Broadcast HR", and some bury it under Sensors and Accessories, then Wrist Heart Rate. If your controls menu has no such entry at all, jump to the compatibility table — that usually means the watch cannot do it.
3. Leave it broadcasting and pick up your phone
The watch stays on this screen while it transmits. Do not start an activity on the watch yet — on most models that ends the broadcast, which is the single most common reason a watch that paired a minute ago has vanished.
4. Tap the watch, then wait for a number
Pairing is confirmed only when a heart rate actually arrives, not when Bluetooth connects. A Garmin sends zero-bpm packets for the first ten to thirty seconds while the wrist sensor finds your pulse, so give it that long before deciding it has failed.
If the watch is on the list but pairing fails
On a supported model, there is one more thing worth knowing. When Garmin first added Bluetooth broadcasting it lived only inside the Virtual Run activity profile; the plain Broadcast Heart Rate control stayed ANT+ only until later firmware. On some watches and some firmware versions that is still where Bluetooth broadcasting actually happens.
So if your watch is on the supported list and the app still cannot get a reading: press the top-right button to start an activity, scroll to Virtual Run, and start it. Then pair from the phone. It is an odd route to a heart rate, but on the models where it applies it is the difference between working and not.
Updating the watch through Garmin Express or Garmin Connect is worth doing first — on several models Bluetooth broadcasting arrived in a firmware update rather than in the box.
Keeping it connected
It drops the moment I start my workout
Expected, and the most common complaint. Most Garmins stop broadcasting when they begin their own activity, because the watch assumes it now wants the heart rate for itself. Either let the watch broadcast and leave the timing to Rep The Set, or use Virtual Run, which records on the watch and keeps broadcasting.
It paired yesterday and will not come back
Broadcasting does not survive the watch sleeping. Turn it on again, then reopen the heart-rate screen. The app remembers your watch and looks for it for about thirty seconds before giving up rather than draining the battery hunting for something switched off.
Readings arrive, then stop mid-session
Usually range. Bluetooth carries poorly through a body, so a phone on the floor behind you is a much harder path than one on a bench in front. Wrist optical sensors also lose the pulse under load — a tight strap one finger above the wrist bone helps, and for heavy lifting or sled work a chest strap is simply more reliable.
Once it is connected
Live heart rate and your current zone on the run screen, and every second recorded for afterwards — that is what the zone breakdown, the heart-rate trace and the pacing analysis are built from. See what your heart-rate zones mean, or connecting a chest strap instead.
Where this comes from
The ANT+ versus Bluetooth split is the part people get wrong, so it is sourced rather than remembered:
- Garmin Adds Dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart HR Broadcasting — DC Rainmaker, June 2020. The change that made the plain Broadcast Heart Rate control send over Bluetooth too, and the record that until then Bluetooth broadcasting existed only inside Virtual Run.
- Garmin Wearable Heart Rate Broadcasting to Apps — DC Rainmaker, April 2020. Names the first models to broadcast over Bluetooth and the older ones that never will.
- Can Garmin wearables broadcast heart rate data? — Garmin support, plus the per-model owner's manuals, for the current device list.
Garmin changes this with firmware, so if your watch behaves differently, tell us and we will correct the page.