STRYD Structured Workouts

STRYD has just released a new CIQ 3 app for your compatible Garmin watch. It is a well-featured app, it runs smoothly and is customisable. seems to do the job for runners needing structured power workouts in their training.

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Table of Contents (Click to Expand)

Background

The bottom line is that either Garmin &/or STRYD appears unwilling to make an ANT+ running power standard into a reality. The consequence of that to us just means that some of the standard functionality like performance-exception alerts and structured power workouts is missing.

Until now…

STRYD Structured Workouts App on Garmin CIQ – Overview

I’m going to touch on most of the key areas but here are the basics of what you need to do

Download the STRYD WORKOUT APP from the CIQ store. It’s an app, not a data field.
You open the app on your compatible Garmin as if it were a sports profile.
Create a new workout on the watch, or use one you’ve saved.
Decide on the workout display options
Start the workout.

Here are some more details and I’ll add some comments as we go

Download the app

You’ve done this before and you know you can either do it online or direct from the CONNECT IQ app on your smartphone. That’s NOT the regular CONNECT app.

You should note that only CIQ3-compatible devices can run this. Basically, that means ones from the Garmin 935/Fenix 5 onwards also including MARQ, FR245/645 and VA3/4.

An interesting thing to note: In Garmin Express you can enter your user ID against the app. Hmm…there’s no point in doing that. So…that means more related goodies to come! Speculation?…nah, I’m certain, but I’ve been told nothing officially or otherwise.

Start The App & Create a New Structured Power Workout

Again, this is not rocket science and the images below give you a flavour of what to do. The interface works smoothly and well but the design is a bit clunky, I guess. Although that comes from the restrictions of the watch and CIQ itself.

Some interesting things to note

In STRYD’s terminology, a block contains repeats of segments. You make a workout as a series of blocks
There is an indoor/treadmill option which stops the app looking for GPS
Once you’ve created a workout you can view it as a series of steps (image above)

Define the screen layout and run the workout

You can have 3 or 4 elements to the screen and each is configurable like a data field and some are themselves customisable. So, for example, here I have chosen to display live power rather than a smoothed average.

Also on display is the green bar showing progress on the interval (segment) as well as the segment target. The REAL wattage data field changes colour depending on whether or not you are on target or not (RED), which is nice.

Thoughts & Futures

This is nice functionality that works and does the job. It could look a tad nicer but I don’t really mind about that at all.

This is a BIG step forward. If nothing else were done here it would probably be alright for most people using STRYD.

Clearly what’s missing is the wider piece, that being STRYD’s structured workout platform, namely:

Ability to take external workouts and run them on the watch
Ability to follow an external plan – for example from FinalSurge or TrainingPeaks
Ability to create and schedule your own workouts within Powercenter’s calendar
Ability to have and re-use workouts from a workout library within Powercenter.
Ability to link an online/app workout platform to Polar, Suunto and Apple Watch (maybe others too)

Sure there are many tweaks that can still be made including, for example, more data field options with the STRYD ap, defining workouts by ZONE and perhaps the facility in Powercenter to compare your planned workout performance to your actual workout performance.

My thought would be that STRYD will prefer to link to external providers of workouts and plans rather than to replicate what Training Peaks can do to within PowerCenter.

Summary

9/10. Sweet.