Garmin Sleep and Step Challenges With Friends

Steps and sleep are two of the best friend challenge formats because nearly everyone already measures them. Garmin records both, the rules are easy to understand, and nobody has to schedule the same workout.

The hard part is choosing a fair target and including friends who use something else. Here is a simple setup for both.

How Garmin data reaches a challenge

Connect Garmin once from your Meryus profile. After your watch syncs with Garmin Connect, supported daily steps, sleep duration, and sleep score can update a matching active challenge. Other Garmin health metrics, including HRV, resting heart rate, stress, and body battery, can also sync when Garmin provides them and the challenge uses that metric.

Your Garmin remains the source of the data. Meryus supplies the custom goal, private group, join code, and shared progress chart.

Garmin step challenge formats

Monthly total steps

Everyone contributes every step toward an individual target, such as 240,000 steps in 30 days. This is flexible because a quiet weekday can be recovered on the weekend.

Daily consistency

Aim for 8,000 or 10,000 steps on a set number of days. This rewards routine rather than one very long walk. Agree whether the score is total qualifying days or total steps before starting.

Team total

Pool the whole group's steps toward one number. This works well for families and workplaces because strong walkers help the team instead of making beginners feel beaten on day three.

Use the monthly step goal guide if you need a target based on the length and activity level of your group.

Garmin sleep challenge formats

Sleep duration goal

Choose a realistic target, often seven to eight hours, and count nights that reach it. Do not reward the person who simply stays in bed longest.

Monthly average

Compare average sleep duration over two to four weeks. This smooths out travel, illness, and the occasional terrible night.

Consistency challenge

Count nights within a chosen range, such as seven to nine hours. Consistency is easier to compare across people than a device-specific sleep score.

Sleep scores are useful within one device family, but they are estimates. If friends use different brands, sleep duration is the cleaner shared metric.

Include friends without Garmin

A Garmin owner can sync automatically while someone with another watch reads their daily number and logs it manually. A friend with only a phone can do the same for steps. Everyone uses the same metric and appears on the same chart.

For mixed-device groups:

• Compare steps with steps, not one person's steps against another person's active minutes.
• Prefer sleep duration over proprietary sleep scores.
• Let manual entries count. Requiring a particular watch defeats the point of a friend challenge.
• Keep the group private by default and invite people with the join code.

Start the challenge

Pick steps, sleep duration, or sleep score when you create a free Meryus challenge. Connect Garmin in your profile for automatic updates, then invite friends on any device. For the full device setup, read how to run a Garmin challenge with non-Garmin friends.