STRAVA Relative Effort – Everything You Need to Know
STRAVA introduced RELATIVE EFFORT 3 years ago (April 2018) as a replacement to their Suffer Score. Since its creation, it’s been expanded to provide validity across many sports; show trends; and to better accommodate shorter, harder efforts.
There is subscriber-only functionality related to RELATIVE EFFORT available at STRAVA online, on your STRAVA app and on some cycling devices – notably WAHOO, Suunto and Garmin.
Much of the functionality requires that you have the STRAVA Subscription at £4 / US$5 per month, it’s slightly cheaper if bought annually. You can get a free 30-day trial.
Designed for STRAVA with Marco Altini PhD: HRV4TRAINING
What is Relative Effort? How does it work? Is it any good?
Yes, it’s good and useful. Here’s why.
At the most simple level, it’s a single number representing the total effort of each of your workouts. That single number should be comparable across sports and across all your friends.
eg Your all out 20 minute run should give the same number as your friend’s all out 20 minute run.
Source: STRAVA
As you can see, Marco Altini based it on Bannister’s widely used TRIMP formulae. TRIMP measures time-in-heart-rate-zone and allocates more points for time spent in a higher zone.
The clever way that it has been implemented by STRAVA is that STRAVA’s large data set has been used to improve the accuracy of the calculations across sports. Also, the efforts used to calculate your zones can be taken automatically from your maximal efforts which the algorithm identifies from your workouts.
Don’t worry if, instead, you know the basis for your HR zones. You can override the automation and use your manual zones.
Your Relative Effort workout scores are then also used elsewhere in the subscription Features to give you an indication of your readiness to train and perform.
On a Garmin watch
This data field is optional. You do NOT have to add this data field to your device, simply recording heart rate is enough. But over two million users already have the data field.
On your Wahoo, all you have to do is add the existing RELATIVE EFFORT data field to an appropriate page. Then, as your workout progresses, you can see your RELATIVE EFFORT score progressively rise from zero to hero. Or not hero depending on how it goes!
It’s a similar thing with your Garmin and you can download the Strava Relative Effort data field that you can add to a screen just as you would do with any other data field.
The Suunto Plus feature for Strava Relative Effort also follows the same principle except you have to enable it at the start of each workout and you can’t use other Suunto Plus features simultaneously.
Note: The RELATIVE EFFORT data field will use the HR Zones as determined by STRAVA rather than the zones that might be on your Garmin/Wahoo. Non-subscribers (ie regular FREE STRAVA users) CAN also see the relative effort score live on the watch…but nowhere else.
Activity Relative Effort
When you check back on your activity either on the app or online platform then subscribers will see their score recorded for posterity.
You could maybe check back at the same ride or run from an earlier week. If your score is progressively falling and your times are getting no slower then you are getting fitter.
It seems that all zones for sports other than bike and run are based on the zones for bike or run! whichever is deemed the most appropriate. Indoor, pool-based activities with no GPS are not supported by RE.
Weekly Relative Effort
This is a nice addition to the app and a little more useful, IMO, than the single Relative Effort number.
STRAVA determines a weekly “RELATIVE EFFORT RANGE” for you which varies daily and is based on a 3-week moving average. If you stay within range then you shouldn’t require much recovery time at all. Consequently, if you go above the range then an easy day might be appropriate tomorrow.
Relative Effort Trends
On the web interface, there is a nice chart that shows how Relative Effort can be used to represent your Fatigue, Form and Freshness over time. Power could be used as a measure of effort instead but this chart specifically uses the Relative Effort metric that has the added advantage of more easily being able to represent sports other than cycling (where power meters are more common).
Is it worth it?
If you are into deep sporty analyses then STRAVA’s RELATIVE EFFORT is NOT for you. You almost certainly will have something similar and a bit better in Golden Cheetah or Training Peaks or similar.
However, if you just have Garmin Connect for your data ‘analysis’ then becoming a subscriber to get RELATIVE EFFORT can give you some interesting and actionable insights. If you are an occasional and time-crunched data analyser then STRAVA could be a good way to go.
Those of you who spend a lot of time on the STRAVA platform for social reasons and don’t look elsewhere for any kind of data analysis will find that RELATIVE EFFORT gives you interesting insights and is probably worth paying a bit of extra cash on to help hone your training.
- Q: Would I use it?
- A: No. But I DO look REGULARLY at the exact same sort of data and analyses but on different software.
My Research and some more informational resources
- I exchanged a few emails on this topic with Marco Altini who did the groundwork for STRAVA.
- STRAVA FAQ
- STRAVA Engineering article
- Source via Marco Altini – STRAVA-approved interview
Last Updated on 29 May 2026 by the5krunner
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tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. ID
I suspect that native Garmin’s (Firstbeat’s?) Training Effect with Exercise Load and additionally with Aerobic/Anaerobic Effects is something very similar and also works fully across all sports types. No idea if it is by any means “better” and whatnot, but I use it personally as some kind of metric of where I am and what accumulated load I receive.
However, all these metrics are based on heart rate and cannot take into account what they don’t measure (obviously). I recently had an inline skating ride – very slow and “easy”, way down in Zone 1, but because it is rare activity, my legs hurt like hell and running the next morning was uncomfortable to say the least.
yes the TRIMP appraoch has many variations and is used by a huge number of companies in this space.
partially an explanation of your skating could be the zones. you will be using muscles differently. had you performed a lactate test or similar then those muscles would have ‘failed’ earlier
I don’t find the relative effort score matches my bodies feedback. I can smash a weight training session for an hour to the point my muscles are completely dead and the score is low 20-30ish.
I can then run a 45 min 10K and the RE is up in the hundreds. Doesn’t make sense to me…
I’d be interested to compare the output to whoop band but I don’t have one.
the strain from weights or team sports is different, on the whole, to endurance type workouts. TRIMP/relative effort is best for endurance workouts.