“As far as I’m aware, no one is looking to purchase Stryd, but I could probably see an acquisition by Coros, Garmin, or even TrainingPeaks to try an acquire thier software or hardware tech.”
Transcript
Dr Will O’Connor 00:03
Stryd has recently released some major updates. One of them being the integration of training plans and structured workouts.
Dr Will O’Connor 00:14
The training plan function allows you to select your weekly distance, I used to be able to select greater than 50 Ks, but now I’m restricted to 50 ks per week. Minimum four weeks to a maximum of 20 weeks. Four to seven days per week, and Saturday, Sunday, long runs, whatever day you want to do your long run, and then it allows you to customize the plan which is really cool.
Dr Will O’Connor 00:43
You are going to need to customize your plan because one function that they really need to fix is the specificity of the structured workouts.
You can look at each training phase, which is just your generic phases, a base phase at build phase, preparation phase and a race-specific or taper phase. And you can look at each individual week and look at the workout.
Part of the problem with these structured workouts, as you can see, this warm-up here is limited to 70 – 80%, that’s quite low, and quite a finite range to operate.
Dr Will O’Connor 01:29
What you’ll end up needing to do, if you’re trying to complete these workouts you’ll note they’re very slow, or they’re very fast for your initial five minutes, you might not be at 70%. You might be more likely to be 65%, and you’ll build your way up to close to 90% of your threshold before you get into a workout.
Dr Will O’Connor 01:49
Now the other thing that can be a problem within the structured workouts, is when you have quite a small range to operate on. So, those ones are not too bad around the 10% range. Here’s a plan I was playing around with earlier. I noticed that there was some, some intervals and here we had the ranges were quite small around, don’t seem to be able to adjust these anymore. That’s another thing this app is very glitchy. I couldn’t do the 100 K’s per week, and now I can’t edit any of my workouts.
Dr Will O’Connor 02:55
One of the issues I have is when intervals are structured for 92 to 95%, when you’re a light person with a low threshold. Well, you know, an absolute threshold, say my wife is around 200 Watts, she’s about 50 kgs. Well, when you’re trying to operate within a 5% range, that ends up being 10 Watts and for anyone who’s run with power knows you can fluctuate 20 Watts across any kind of terrain, especially if you have some corners, or if you’re on a trail you can easily fluctuate within, 20 – 30 Watts.
You may be able to sit average power on your watch, but you may not want average power, you may want more real-time feedback to make adjustments for when you are running uphill or downhill.
Dr Will O’Connor 04:00
Stryd also has got a new analysis feature. So what you can do once you have applied a plan, you can analyze some of your data, like trends across ground contact time, vertical oscillation, heart rate per workout, running stress score, overall power per workout, mood.
if you’re using this for your predominant training tracker, which I think most people aren’t who are entering into the world of running power, they’re probably an already educated athlete, and they’ll already be operating off of a TrainingPeaks, Final Surge, maybe they’re exclusively using Strava, which now also has Stryd running power support.
They’re saying that they’ve got more updated feedback and estimations on your power outputs for goal races around which you can actually edit a little bit. And that’s something I would need to edit because I already know that I have run at 94% for a marathon, which puts that prediction more in line with my current personal base. Their default is 90%.
Dr Will O’Connor 05:35
The other update which I’m really stoked about is the support for coach view. So this is the ability to be able to tap into another athletes power data. If they have Stryd premium membership, and also I have to be an accredited coach. So what they’re doing there is, you know, for a company that sells a singular physical item for $200 that you don’t really need to replace for at least half a decade. How are you going to make money and so I think that’s a massive push for Stryd to move into the space of the membership, the coach accreditation and trying to develop some ongoing revenue streams, because at the moment, that they have a lot of competition from the likes of Polar and Coros, who are integrating power just straight within the devices and quite accurately at that, but they’re not providing this peripheral support to help you train and operate with power, like the structured workouts.
However, as far as I’m aware, structured workouts are only available to be completed through Garmin, which is third-party support through their Stryd connect IQ app. So, I mean, while we’re in the infancy of running power. I think there’s a big progression forward. And I could probably see an acquisition, from you know, Coros, Garmin, or even TrainingPeaks companies to try and acquire either the software or the hardware, because as a standalone company they have a lot of work to do in order to compete with Strava or TrainingPeaks. And then likewise as these other companies like the Garmins and the Coros and the Polars start to move into the space of running power, and potentially add a lot of these features. Then what does Stryd have in the long term? Yes, they’re first to market, and currently the gold standard, but clearly they are aware that one of the biggest limiting factors is a knowledge base and an application of the hardware.
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Dr Will
Big time running power guy.
