Fitness Gift Ideas: GPS Watches, Trackers & Workout Gear

Fitness gifts are high-leverage for the right person and deeply unwelcome for the wrong one. A GPS watch for a runner who already uses Strava is a dream; the same watch for someone who goes to a yoga class twice a month is a pressure gift. Before you buy anything here, ask yourself whether the person has brought up the activity in the last month. If they haven't, this is the wrong aisle.

For the people who have — the runners, the gym regulars, the hikers, the people who actually use their smartwatch — the gifts below are targeted. Garmin's watches vary wildly by use case (the Instinct is the rugged one, the Venu is the style-leaning one, the Vivosmart is the low-key daily tracker). We break down which is for whom, not just which has more features.

Skip: generic fitness trackers with no ecosystem, cheap resistance bands, and protein powder. Those are impulse buys, not gifts.