Strava Summit
Reviews

Strava – Top Fitness Apps Review

Is Strava really the go-to app for fitness tracking and analysis?

A favorite among runners and cyclists alike, Strava is a fitness app with a mission to get people fit. But does it hold up against it’s competitors? Let’s take a look at all of the features you can expect from the free version, as well as their premium version, Summit.

TLDR: skip to the end if you can’t wait to see our rating.

Strava – Standard Features

Segments

One of the core features of Strava are their Segments. These are user created pieces of roads or trails that are designated for competition against other Strava members. Fight for the top spot, compete against friends, or make a new segment and challenge other local athletes! We absolutely love segments because it’s just another way to stay motivated and focused during a workout, plus it feels pretty good to have a KOM (King of the Mountain) or QOM (Queen of the Mountain) when you make it to the top of the list.

Activity Analysis

Completed activities will appear on your feed page where you’ll find an ‘Analysis’ per activity. Here you’ll find detailed information about your activity so you can analyze your performance.

In the standard version, you can expect to find graphs on Elevation, Pace, Heart Rate and Heart Rate Zones.

Strava Analysis - Elevation
Strava Analysis – Elevation
Strava Analysis - Pace
Strava Analysis – Pace
Strava Analysis - Heart Rate
Strava Analysis – Heart Rate
Strava Analysis - Heart Rate Zones
Strava Analysis – Heart Rate Zones

Training Calendar

Visualize your efforts with the Strava Training calendar which can show you your weekly, monthly, or yearly progress. Use appropriate tags on your activities so you can group them by type. This feature is very useful if you want to see your workout volume.

Strava Training Calendar
Strava Training Calendar

Clubs

For those of you who like running or cycling with groups of people, you’ll find that Strava Clubs are for you. Find already existing local clubs or create your own brand new club and invite people to join. Clubs will track progress as a team, and also display individual top performers on a leaderboard.

Challenges

Looking for more ways to keep motivated? Try a Strava hosted challenge! Simply “Join” a challenge, and the Strava app will notify you when you’ve met the requirements of the challenge. Completing challenges earns trophies on your achievements list so everyone will know how great you’re doing!

Strava – Premium Features

Strava’s premium upgrade, referred to as Summit offers three individual “packs” you can use to improve your Strava experience. At the time of this writing, each pack costs $2/month billed annually. If you purchase all three packs, you save an additional 17% off. Is it worth the upgrade? Here’s a breakdown of their features directly from their site:

Strava Summit Packs
Strava Summit offers three packs, Training, Safety, and Analysis to enhance your experience.

In addition, every pack comes with Summit Perks – discounts to fitness merchants on the web, and Summit Support – expedited support from the Strava team.

Strava Summit

Training Pack

Getting ready for your next race? The training pack offers Custom Goals, Training Plans, Race Analysis, and Filtered Leaderboards. This is great if you’re preparing for a race or event. Essentially, Strava Summit acts as your own personal coach, and provides you with a training plan with the analysis you need to keep improving up until race day.

Strava Custom Goals
Strava Custom Goals

Safety Pack

Seeking peace of mind? The safety pack offers Beacon – a way to notify your loved ones where you are when you’re out training, and personal heatmaps – a way to see where you’ve been on the map. Very useful for trail runners, night owls, or anyone who wants to take precautions before going out on the next session.

Analysis Pack

Are you a data nut? The analysis pack gives you even more in depth analysis than the training pack. With this upgrade, Strava introduces Relative Effort, Fitness & Freshness, Workout Analysis, Live Segments, and Power Analysis(requires a power meter). Preventing injury is an important part of any training program, and managing your output is important along the way to make sure you’re recovered before your next workout.

Strava Analysis - Relative Effort
Strava Analysis – Relative Effort

Strava – Top Fitness Apps Review Result

We absolutely love Strava. After using it for both cycling and running, we can see why this app is one of the best out there. The app is extremely motivating, whether you are pursuing a segment KOM/QOM, or owning a club leaderboard, there’s plenty to keep you focused. In other words, it’s a winning app in our book.

But is Strava Summit worth the premium price? This was a tough call for us because it completely depends on which pack(s) you need. For instance, the Safety pack does a wonderful job at notifying your loved ones about your whereabouts during a training session. However, the same can’t be said about all of the packs.

Oppositely, many users online have complained that the Relative Effort metric is inaccurate, and/or too sensitive to heart rate zones being configured incorrectly. This is a potential problem if you only rely on one metric for your workout analysis.

Our thoughts

Most importantly, here’s our take on the matter. In order for Relative Effort to work, you have to make sure your heart rate zones are configured correctly. That much we know. As far as treating it like an ultimate solve-it-all metric, we wouldn’t advise doing that. It is certainly a useful indicator for over-training, or under-training, but you shouldn’t put all your eggs into that basket. We believe it’s a useful tool if used to compare your efforts, with the understanding that it will NOT be a 100% fool-proof metric.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest disappointments with the Training pack is that the training plans and fitness & freshness graphs offered are not integrated into the app. You can only access these features on the web version of Strava. With training plans, they send you daily emails to let you know what the next training session looks like.

For a premium price, we would have loved to see these features integrated and available through the app itself.

With all considerations made, Top Fitness Apps is awarding Strava with our highest Top Fitness Apps rating of 5 HEARTS for fitness and health benefits.

5 Heart Rating
5 Heart Rating
Download the App on Google Play
Download the App on the App Store

In conclusion, even though the premium version leaves some things to be desired from a user perspective, we believe Strava is great for motivation, keeping you accountable and informed, and making fitness fun. They are also pushing new updates very often to their app, which leaves us hopeful that we’ll get those missing features integrated in the near future. Way to go Strava!

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