COROS Training Hub Update – Athlete Version

Another week…another new Coros feature. At this rate, by the end of 2021, they will have run out of features to include.

The Training Hub feature is an important step that should see Coros gain more credibility as a one-stop ‘pro-level solution’. Plus it demonstrates their ambition and gives a good indication of where they are taking the entire platform.

Q: And how much will the subscription for this new feature be?

A: Nada. Rien. Zip. Nothing. It’s free to Coros watch users when it goes live on 31 December 2021.

Garmin very much limits the number of features on the pro end of its web platform and leaves athletes to find the special features they need elsewhere. Similarly with Wahoo who do not have a web platform in the same vein (SYSTM).

We shall see in a minute that the end game for Coros could well be that of a complete end-to-end sports platform for all levels of athletes, fitness devotees and coaches.

I have had access to the beta platform for a couple of weeks but my own Coros data is somewhat patchy, so the images here are provided by Coros.

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COROS Training Hub

There is little that is special or innovative about the Training Hub. The interest comes for existing and future Coros watch users who will now be able to dive into their metrics on the web platform rather than the app.

Better than that, there are rich new features for following training plans and creating & calendarizing complex, structured workouts. It’s also interesting to see that Coros has already jumped in with Coach access and allows us to create teams. Those are the kinds of features that usually get delayed for long periods as they are hard to implement and which usually appeal only to a relatively small percentage of athletes.

Source Media: Coros

COROS Training Hub – First Impressions

It’s good.

Sure you can always add more but there are many and varied features on offer here.

The great thing is the amount of customizability that will be available to you on day 1. You can choose and order charts on your dashboard, drag and drop workouts on your training calendar, and change the data columns on your workout log view. The Hub can do more than that of course but those give you a flavour of the richness.

Let’s look at some of the key features in more detail

Calendar View

The phrase ‘Calendar View’ doesn’t sound glamorous. However, take a look at this. It’s pretty cool that there is a wealth of information on this one page.

The small tabs to the right of the screen let you choose a training plan or create a complex structured workout. In each case, scheduled workouts can be dragged and re-arranged on the calendar. Naturally, the workouts sync to your watch for you to execute them there. (I might add some more content on this later in the week)

You can see, above, how the historic workouts are kept on the calendar and how the ‘scores’ from the completed workouts are added in the training load chart. You can see how your readiness, freshness and fatigue fluctuate with the difficulty of your sessions and the amount of rest you enjoyed. Even better, when you add future workouts, their impact on future training load is also plotted! #Sweet. So, you can model the effects of your future training on your body. Likey, Likey.

Workout Log & Analysis

Again, nothing earth-shattering or novel here just solid features.

A few tweaks and you can change the columns of data on the workout list. then click through for more details of the workout, the routes and the splits. Plus the nice bonus of a pretty data chart that also allows zooming in to selections. Of course, you can customise the workout data shown. #Nice

Teams

Create a team photo and group up with some friends. Why not?

EvoLab Metrics

EvoLab from Coros contains similar information to that found in Garmin’s Firstbeat physiology. A particularly nice part of what Coros has done here is to allow you to re-arrange the screen layout to prioritise the physiology metrics you find important.

Dashboard

A good dashboard should consider past trends as well as future projections. It should perhaps cover those time-related aspects over health metrics as well as performance metrics. So as athletes we might be interested in VO2max trends, marathon level, race day information, recent workouts, performance predictions and so on.

The Coros dashboard still needs to add more but its scope is pretty good as it already is.

Take Out

There’s lots of great stuff here and I generally like what I see.

There’s more to add and more to improve but, at the same time, there’s already more here than offered by some of the competition.

It seems that the coach features are free. Thus adding an incentive for coaches to save money and get their athletes all to use Coros watches. A nice financial move by Coros if it works out as planned. The issue here will be athletes who don’t want to change from, say, Garmin when the coach wants them to. There’s currently no way to easily sync in their data from sources other than Coros.

My longstanding criticism has been that the Coros app is OK but a little on the weak side. The new web Training Hub goes a very long way to allaying my concerns about the app. But, set against that, must be the realisation that the trend amongst athletes is to view data in the apps and not on their PCs and MACs.