new Stryd Features Hinted At by Recent Research

More: Stryd detailed Review

Stryd sent several customers a survey a month or so ago asking what new features we’d like to see.

The company must now be at a point where nearly all of the essential features are included, so developments from here on will be to encourage subscribers to stay, attract new subscribers and, of course, attract new footpod buyers. There’s a nice mix of features being considered as shown on this screen grab:

Here is a quick run-through of those grouped together for a quick explanation

Footpath-related Features

Stryd Footpath features are the ones that are most needed to take advantage of the pods’ latest abilities. So recommending drills and quantifying changes to gait during runs or between runs seems a sensible idea. As might allowing FOOTPATH to work from one pod, it’s a subscriber feature after all so Stryd would make money from doing that.

I’m not sure how much market demand there is for this sort of thing. Just about every running gait company I’ve come across in the last decade has stopped trading, SHFT, Kinematix, and Incus to name a few. I’m at the point now where I wouldn’t review a startup’s product if it only focused on running gait.

That said, gait metrics aren’t Stryd’s core business in the traditional sense and some of these stats ARE nice to have and nice to add to the Stryd ecosystem just as Garmin and others add gait metrics to their ecosystems.

shoe-related Metrics

This is one area that never appeals to me as I can’t be bothered to log the shoes I used for each run. However, there are a good chunk of people out there who religiously do just that. There must be some interesting correlations that arise and I recall from many years ago that Runscribe aimed to do something similar at the population level before data privacy laws hit home and stopped it.

Pace-to-Power Conversion

I know Stryd wants us to think in terms of power and not pace. But sometimes pace is highly useful. If you are targeting a specific time you can’t do it based on power alone if you think about it.

The new and excellent Stryd CIQ data field does show pace but I suppose asking it to show GAP would be a request too far! It being too close to what power represents

Adaptive Training, Daily Suggested Workouts, General Recommendations

Stryd would benefit from the features it is asking for feedback on here.

However, I would argue that it needs to plan carefully its way forward. There can be dangers in playing feature catch-up (for that is what this is) when there might be alternative approaches to leapfrog forward instead.

• Adaptive Training – Yes this needs to be included, for sure. But Stryd perhaps needs to think beyond tinkering with a relatively straightforward TSB/CTL/ATL model to also incorporate internal response metrics like HRV plus subjective ones. Those two area give important data points to readiness. Garmin doesn’t yet do the latter AFAIK although it gathers the data from your to a degree.
• Daily suggested Workouts – Yes! this is probably what most people want most of the time. Or is that just my bias?
• Machine Learning (AI if you like) – Stryd should look at how AI Endurance recommends workouts. In a nutshell, it recommends workouts that it knows from your history will have the best impact. That’s a superior approach because we all have subtly different responses to exercise stimuli.
• General Recommendation – Again this is a good idea. I very strongly suspect that the vast majority of people do not follow a formal training plan. That majority can be given the most useful help by telling them what specific workouts work for them and how the balance of their workouts should be adjusted based on their preferences, responses and race targets.

My 2cents

My other 2cents, I’ve said before.

Own-brand running power is now on all major sports watch platforms. Stryd is the only flavour of running power that doesn’t have a same-branded watch. That’s a risk. A risk of being squeezed out of each market if conditions change in the future.

Stryd should aim to own running power on the platforms with the largest future potential. ie Apple and Garmin. I think Stryd is doing as well as it can with Garmin. For watchOS, a cut-down Stryd app should be made to work for free with Apple Running Power. Stryd should play the numbers game based on mass ownership of apple Watches, get more people using its free app and boost brand awareness. Then encourage people to upgrade to the more accurate Stryd Pod or pay for subscriptions for plans and advanced features.

Take Out

A re-assuring insight that Stryd continues to develop the product.