Strava gets adaptive training and can be integrated with Garmin and Amazfit smartwatches

Strava, which may be known to some athletes, is a platform for recording athletic activities and is now offering a new feature called Instant Workouts. This new feature is behind a paywall and thus only available to paying customers, although there is a free trial period. The monthly fee is $11.99 for one person with annual billing, making the subscription not exactly cheap.

Ideally, Instant Workouts aims to relieve athletes almost entirely of the burden of training planning. Users can choose between four different training modes: Build, Maintain, Explore and Recover. Build likely encompasses more intense training sessions to improve endurance. Maintain is designed to maintain performance, while Recover is an option for users who are already heavily exerted or fatigued but still want to do a light (regenerative) training session. Explore is intended for discovering new sports or routes in order to overcome plateaus or break out of a potentially stagnant training routine.

Upon selecting a mode, five training suggestions are presented. A workout/ route is then automatically generated from the suggestions chosen. According to Strava, these training suggestions are tailored to the user's training history and ultimately their performance level. Ideally, this should prevent overtraining without sacrificing potential for performance improvement through insufficient training intensity. Such adaptive training planning is not entirely new; Garmin offers daily training suggestions, and users of Amazfit wearables can also access adaptive training plans. Strava integrates with both Garmin Connect and the Zepp app for Amazfit wearables.