The Pixel Watch 5 shipped in August with one of the most interesting fitness features Google has put on a watch. It is not on the watch yet.
Advanced strength training is still listed as coming soon on Google's Pixel Watch pages, roughly seven weeks after the watch went on sale. Google has never attached a date to it. But between the company's own demo footage and its product materials, we now know exactly what it does and why it is a bigger deal than the usual workout mode.
What Google Promised
When Google introduced the Pixel Watch 5, its announcement post described the feature in plain terms:
"Coming soon, our new on-wrist Strength Training workout experience brings step-by-step guidance directly to your wrist, helping you move through sets and rest periods while making it easy to log your weights and reps on the go."
That is a different pitch from what most smartwatches offer. An Apple Watch Series 11 or a Samsung Galaxy Watch 9 will happily record a weights session, then tell you your heart rate and calories afterward. Neither walks you through the workout itself. Google's version is built to do the coaching, not just the logging.
How It Actually Works
The system starts on your phone, not your wrist. You open Google Health Coach, describe what you want, and the coach builds the session for you. In Google's demo, the user asks for a 30-minute workout built for a hotel gym using dumbbells only. The coach returns a full session with exercises, sets, reps and suggested weights.
It gets more specific than that. In the same demo, the coach remembers that the user has a shoulder injury and picks exercises that avoid aggravating it. That kind of context is the whole point of running the coach on top of your health data rather than asking you to pick from a static list.
You are not locked into the coach either. According to Google's current description, you can also build a session by hand, choosing the exercises, exact reps, weights and rest timers yourself.
Once the workout is set, tapping start on the phone hands the session to the watch. From there the phone can stay in your pocket. On the wrist you get:
- The exercise you are on right now, with form guidance
- Prescribed reps and weight for the set
- Live heart rate throughout
- Automatic rest timers between sets
- A preview of what is coming next
There is one small feature that stands out for anyone who lifts in a busy gym. If the next machine or rack is taken, the watch lets you swap to a different exercise from your wrist instead of stopping the session to rebuild the plan on your phone. Google's own materials confirm you can adjust reps and reorder exercises right there on the watch.
Why It Matters
Strength training is having a moment. Lifting for longevity and body composition has moved from a niche hobby to something a third of adults do regularly, and the fitness app market has grown around it. Apps like Fitbod built real businesses on guided lifting.
Smartwatches have mostly watched from the sidelines. They are excellent running and cycling computers and mediocre strength coaches, because strength work is not a steady-state activity you can score with pace and heart rate. Counting reps and sets, remembering your last weight, and timing rest is the actual job, and almost no mainstream watch does it well.
If Google ships this, the Pixel Watch 5 becomes the first mainstream smartwatch with a genuinely built-in guided strength system rather than a bare "Weights" activity. That is a real differentiator, and it is the kind of thing that gets people to buy a watch they were not shopping for.
When Is It Coming?
This is where it gets thin. Google has not given a date. The feature was described as coming soon at launch, and regional Pixel Watch pages have pointed to later in 2026. Nearly two months on, there is still no firm window.
That is not the same as a broken promise. Google never named a date to miss, and it has spent the year shipping other things, including the fall update that reached older Pixel Watch models. But it is a long wait for a headline feature on a watch that starts at $399 (currently discounted to $349.99 on the Google Store).
Owners have noticed. On Reddit, Pixel Watch and Fitbit users have been trading complaints about how basic the strength tracking still is. One commenter summed up the frustration: "Still no strength training tracking? Wild such a basic feature is still missing." Another pointed out that on the watch you can track time but not reps or sets. Google's new feature is aimed squarely at those complaints.
What You Can Do Now
If you want guided strength training today, you do not have to wait for Google. The Google Health app already builds and runs strength sessions from your phone, complete with exercise libraries and stretches. On the watch, the session is just hazy on the guided part.
For the gym itself, a few cheap additions close most of the gap. An adjustable dumbbell set covers the same territory as the hotel-gym demo, and resistance bands handle the travel case Google built its demo around. You will still log the sets by hand, but the workout plan and the pacing are the same. And if the watch itself is what you are after, the Pixel Watch 5 is already on sale.
If you are weighing the watch on this feature alone, our Pixel Watch 5 leaks and specs rundown covers the hardware, and our look at the Google Health and Fitbit transition explains why the app your training lives in is changing at the same time.
Bottom Line
Google has described the most ambitious strength training experience any mainstream smartwatch has offered, demoed it in detail, and then left it sitting behind a "coming soon" label for the better part of two months. The feature looks genuinely useful, and it is the kind of thing that could make the Pixel Watch 5 stand apart from the Galaxy Watch 9 and the Apple Watch on fitness grounds alone.
It just is not here yet. Until Google attaches a date, treat it as a promise rather than a feature. If guided lifting is the reason you would buy the watch, the honest advice is to wait for it to actually show up on a wrist before you spend the money.
Sources: Google Pixel Watch 5 announcement post and product pages (August 2026); ZDNET hands-on with the strength training demo (August 20, 2026); Android Guys Pixel Watch 5 launch coverage; Gadgets & Wearables (October 9, 2026); r/fitbit and r/PixelWatch community threads. Google has not published a release date, and the "later in 2026" window comes from regional product pages rather than an official statement.
