Stryd – More Big Updates
Stryd has recently made some quite significant changes linked to its power calculations, coaching features and some of the features in the app.
Here are the summary points for what has changed and I’ll expand upon them in a minute
More: Detailed Stryd Review
- Single Athlete View – Coaches
- Adaptive 5k to marathon plans – All users
- Real-Time Environmental Power – Apple Watch, Stryd Members only, Open Beta
Single Athlete View – For Coaches
For coaches working with multiple athletes, PowerCenter now offers a single simple view of all athletes. Coaches can see when each athlete’s Critical Power was updated plus review the progress made in the last 3 workouts by looking at duration, intensity %CP and RSS. Finally, there is a new week-in-review chart as a widget that shows daily planned vs actual RSS.
Click images for more visual details
New Power Plans – free to all
All users get access to power-based training plans for the key race distances ie 5k, 10k, HM and marathon. These adaptive plans are personalised to your race day, your abilities and your progress. For 95% of runners, this is going to be all you need from a running plan.
There are more free plans than that to cater for some more advanced runners and for runners who simply want some general guidance without aiming for a specific race day. Like these…
- Build Plans: Specifically aimed to raise speed and volume capabilities, perhaps to improve your base-level abilities
- Maintenance Plans: do what they say on the tin.
- Testing Plans: These are designed to more precisely determine your current ability level as well as give concrete evidence that your abilities are progressing in the right direction
- Supplemental Training: covering non-running exercises to make you a more resilient all-around athlete.
Real-Time Environmental Power – Apple Watch, Stryd Members only, Open Beta
This initially seemed to be a weird change as, once again, Stryd has changed its algorithm. Cynics might quickly jump in and ask how a Very Accurate Pod can be improved but I’m not going to be cynical (comments below!).
To begin with, the regular running power remains unchanged. Essentially, Stryd is introducing a new ‘feels like’ power metric that shows a difference to your regular power if the current environmental conditions are atypical for you. Stryd accomplishes this by comparing the environments you have recently run in against today’s environment.
This new feature uses Stryd’s environmental sensors to record the conditions you’re running in. By analyzing your recent running history in your Stryd profile, it determines whether these conditions are typical for you and adjusts accordingly if they are not.
While the temperature and humidity both come from sensors in the latest-gen Stryd pod and are taken into account by the new metric, it is unclear what other factors, if any, are accounted for or how this works precisely. For instance, Stryd might be taking into account the science of temperature acclimation or just the fact that it gets harder for your body to function as the temperature rises (arguably, 16Celcius is optimal)
Resistance from air density is already considered by Stryd, but increased humidity could have an additional and negative impact on your body’s ability to work at normal power levels. An analogous example in cycling would be that 300w at sea level and 300w at 3000m a.s.l. are measured as the same power level, but the latter is more challenging – the Stryd has no way of internally knowing your absolute elevation so incorporating a similar factor for running will be trickier.
To reiterate, this new feature is Apple Watch for now and I know that some Garmin users will be chomping at the bit to get temperature and humidity. It IS planned…soon!
Take Out
Recently, I thought that the Stryd ecosystem was almost complete and didn’t require much more development. Even though the latest Stryd device was launched with environmental sensors, I was surprised now to see Stryd embark on a slightly new direction with an additional ‘environmental power’ metric. On reflection, I understand the rationale behind this decision, but I wonder where it will end. In the future, including the limited effects of altitude on runners will be challenging and niche as it will need to integrate with the watch’s current altitude reading. As the run progresses, does Stryd use its barometer to track altitude changes or rely on the watch’s reported altitude?
Now that all major sports watch companies offer their own versions of running power derived from on-watch technology, I believe that Stryd needs to make significant and innovative changes to maintain its market position. Otherwise, for example, other Apple Watch running apps might usurp Stryd and leverage Apple Running Power, while Garmin could further enhance its own running power capabilities and integrations. Given the constraints of Garmin CIQ, it’s challenging to see how Stryd can improve significantly in that market. Therefore, the larger Apple iOS/watchOS runner’s market should be the focus. Stryd has an excellent app, and I think they should open it up to Apple Running Power for a small subscription fee in order to ‘own’ Running Power. This decision could undercut its own hardware sales but lead to more users in the short term. Awareness of Stryd could leverage sales of Stryd pod sales in the future on the basis of it providing “greater accuracy and more features” than the basic subscription.
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I think the live adjustment for temp, humidity and elevation is using the same model they’re had in Powercentre race tool for a few years now.
Question from me is; how accurate is this generic data on the individual?
I know I perform poorly in warm weather but some runners in my club remain strong. Same training conditions, different biology.
It’s partially why I think Coros Effort Pace is a fudge.
So many tools trying to find answers to everything. But sometimes the half answer is worse than none at all.
Ps. The new training plans are superb. The level system really offers something new to Stryd.
I think COROS claimed their effort pace was built on your historical data taking into account your specific capability to run hills, run in heat, etc. For now it is too unstable on even a relatively flat terrain to be useful, sadly
it uses hear rate too I gather, which is variable, especially wrist based data
Here’s what I don’t get.
So, Garmin is effectively closed off to Stryd, with their native running power incompatible with Stryd and CIQ app too limited to be any real alternative. Given how stagnant that CIQ app is, falling further and further behind Apple Watch on features, Stryd understands that too.
It also appears COROS and Stryd are no longer BFFs… Air power support is patchy, and LBSS isn’t read or transferred to PowerCenter at all. No merge like for Polar or Suunto exists, so as a runner, you have to make a choice of either connecting COROS to PowerCenter and losing some of the stats, or syncing manually and losing all GPS pace/heart rate/environmental data.
But what about Suunto? It has native running power that nicely integrates with Stryd. Furthermore, they have S+ apps and guides now, which means Stryd, just like ActiveLook glasses, can deliver all of their advanced stats inside a native running mode *and* they can offer those fancy running plans of theirs as guides. I understand Suunto is small and struggling, but I’d imagine more people who buy Suunto also buy Stryd as opposed to Apple Watch where majority of people hardly know what a tempo run is, let alone what to do with running power.
I understand Stryd is banking on Apple Watch sales numbers and its owners’ wallets to buy more expensive accessories, but I’m not persuaded this is the right long term path for them, now that Garmin took its side and partnership with COROS fell through.
hi
some good questions there. i’ll do my best. here goes
1. the stryd ciq app is pretty well updated and always the first to support a new watch and has new features like those above. as you say, Garmin doesn’t seem to be doing too much on running power tho it’s the sort of thing they’ll slip new featurettes in relatively quietly. i don’t thin kgarmin is particularly interested in running power as it can’t make them any money
2. yeah i suspect coros and stryd are not bff.
3. merging – stryd definitely need to add that to power center, elsewhere it’s up to you/me to get our source data correct (there are ways to merge things but all too complex to do frequently eg ffrt)
4. suunto only has ‘power’ as do polar. (coros idk without looking up). Yes a similar thought had not escaped me that, in fact, Suunto’s ecosystem is actually pretty neat.
5. i don’t know if suunto is struggling per se. they are small tho.
6. apple vs suunto for stryd – the suunto market is irrelevant in contrast to Apple. world’s apart…universes apart!!
7. stryd+apple – yep i can’t necessarily argue with what you say. but what other choice is there? there is nowhere else left to go (WearOS is a red herring as would be other smart watch companies with proprietary OS’s). Apple is the only one where i can see them progressing and, as i say above, they could do that by putting more context around apple running power via a low cost subscription. but even then it would be a BIG jump in runner ability to get the person to buy stryd and understand what they are getting from the apod and its ecosystem
thoughts welcomed by anyone else who wants to chip in…we could try to brainstorm our way to stryd’s global domination
Suunto has the ability to show instant, 3 sec, 10 sec, etc power. Which is what you really want while training while the rest of Stryd’s advanced metrics get merged in via a separate upload from a Stryd app. It’s not perfect but it’s vastly better than missing some data altogether when using COROS or having a mix of Garmin and Stryd’s power stats when using Garmin that messes up TP reporting among other things…
I disagree re: Stryd updating their CIQ app. Changing an app manifest to make it “compatible” with a new watch 2-3 weeks after it hit the stores isn’t updating. Look at AMOLED based watches: the layout there is still broken with text often not fitting, selection weirdly styled on Forerunners, incorrect sizing of workout blocks chart relative to CP, etc. Also, many new features available on Apple Watch like a free run with a power target or environmental adjustments aren’t available.
And while Apple Watch market may be massive, I think a number of people who are using it for any half consistent running tracking is probably 10% of that market, and the amount of people who would buy Stryd because they run is like 5% of that 10%. Suddenly Suunto doesn’t look that small anymore by comparison!
I’m not saying this is an ideal option for Stryd, but then they are out of options.
“global domination”
It’s a relief so few runners use power. I’d place worse in my club races if everyone used it.
WearOS is definitely turning around so it’s not a dead end.
https://9to5google.com/2022/05/31/samsung-wear-os-switch-boosts-market-share/
The software and the hardware have improved a lot since Samsung and Google partnered on WearOS and launched WearOS 3.0. Google also just announced WearOS 4.0 at I/O 2023.
It also seems that the infrastructure is there for Stryd to record runs and power : https://developer.android.com/reference/kotlin/androidx/health/connect/client/records/PowerRecord
If Stryd is pushing hard on Apple Watch (which they do) while Garmin has stagnated (not entirely their fault), one wonder why they don’t go after the WearOS growing market? As someone mentioned the type of users they’re going after with Apple Watch is the same type of users of WearOS, after all Stryd is only for a small % of Apple Watch users.
Overall I’m quite sad that Garmin software is actually blocking innovation here, you can clearly see that Stryd is able to iterate faster in their Apple Watch app (including nice UX) while Garmin stuff is ancient.
thank you for that second link (and the first but i’d already seen that 🙂 I was thinking of writing something about WearOS 4 but decided against it as it will get very few reads. which i think partly addresses your wider point!
that said, I DO think that Wear OS will have a big part to play in years to come. it’s just got a long way to go to gain traction in the market AND to gain traction for athletes/athlete-type people. I just don’t think the market is there yet to warrant a lot of attention form stryd and stryd think the same, or at least they probably did a couple of years ago when i asked.
I agree wearOS is back to improving and is probably growing.
if you look at the SportyGo app on the Google Play store it has 5k downloads. part of its attrctiveness was support for stryd.
It’s borderline infuriating how Garmin has closed off their ecosystem to Stryd. I say this as a 15 year Garmin user (now on a 965) and a Stryd user since 2017. I can make it work because I am a) motivated and b) willing to tinker with datafields etc but it still annoys me that Garmin won’t see Stryd as a power meter just like they see other brands cycling power meters for cycling activities.
This!
Or like the fact that data pages can’t be apps, like how amazing it would be if we could just change the screen during a run and have a full dedicated UX from Stryd rather than stuck into the data field mindset. Garmin let the developers do what they do best and expose their data as they wish. I’m jealous when I see the pretty UX Stryd is showing in the Apple Watch app and it’s even more infuriating knowing that recent Garmin have the necessary screen capabilities to do the same, it’s just software limitations.
exactly so.
I think that would be great and have done for a few years. I was kinda hopeful it would be introduced last year…#MisPlacedHope