If you're an avid runner or cyclist, you may have heard of Strava Premium. Strava Premium is a subscription-based service that offers additional features to the free version of the app.
These features include personalized coaching, training plans, and more detailed performance analysis.
It's important to note that Strava occasionally changes its pricing, so it's always a good idea to check the official Strava website for the most up-to-date pricing information.
How Much Does Strava Premium Cost in the UK?
How much does Strava Premium cost in the UK? Currently, the price for Strava Premium in the UK is £7.99 per month or £47.99 per year. This is slightly more expensive than the US pricing of $7.99 per month or $59.99 per year.
If you're considering purchasing Strava Premium, it may be helpful to weigh the cost against the features you'll receive. Some of the most notable features of Strava Premium include:
Personalized coaching
Training plans
Advanced performance analysis
Beacon safety tracking
Live Segments
Goal setting and progress tracking
Ultimately, whether or not Strava Premium is worth the cost will depend on your individual needs and goals as an athlete. If you're looking to take your training to the next level and receive more detailed feedback on your performance, it may be worth the investment.
Overview
If you're into cycling or running, you've probably heard of Strava. The platform has become synonymous with these sports and has been a favourite of amateur athletes for several years. Strava Premium adds a degree of gamification to your rides that almost everybody involved in cycling is aware of.
The route planning is simple and effective, plus the quick synchronization with other devices is a really nice touch. The training elements are good, although not as in-depth as TrainingPeaks.
Strava made the decision to cut back the free version in May 2020 and remove segment leaderboards, effort analysis, and route creation. This has made Strava Premium more attractive to users who want to keep using these features. In this section, we will examine the key features of Strava Premium.
Routes and Maps
The routing feature is perhaps the most useful feature of Strava Premium. You can plot a route on your laptop, and as soon as it saves it uploads to all other devices with Strava on them, straight away.
This feature takes seconds to open the route and start following it, which is a great benefit compared to the kind of hoops you often jump through to get routes on your bike computer.
You can create the routes on a computer by finding the start point, then where you want to go to, then choosing the options you want for that route: whether you want to run, ride, or walk, whether to follow the most popular or most direct routes, the amount of elevation, and the surface type. From there, Strava creates the route for you and all you need to do is give it a name.
Another cool feature is the heatmaps, where you can see the most popular routes on the map, either from your own rides or for all Strava users. This is really useful when you want to explore new areas.
Segments
Segments is the feature that originally drew many people to Strava and is the one that keeps people coming back. Segments allow you to judge yourself against others and against your previous efforts. Non-premium users still show up on the leaderboards and can see whether they've beaten their own records, but are unable to compare themselves to others.
A relatively new element of Segments that we really like is that you can 'star' specific segments that you're targeting on a ride, and if you're using a compatible computer or phone it gives you a heads up that you're approaching it, and then tracks your progress against your best time and against the KOM. It works seamlessly, and means you can prepare yourself to really attack the targeted segment.
Social
One of the features that sets Strava apart from other online fitness platforms is that it acts and feels more like a social media platform than something you're using to improve your fitness or performance. Strava has definitely chosen to go down this route with things like group challenges, where you set goals and timeframes then challenge a group of friends to see who can achieve the goal first, and the Kudos function, which is essentially liking an activity. Strava has recently added the 'Kudos bomb' where you can give kudos to everybody who's taken part in a group activity.
Another feature is Beacon (which is available for all users, not exclusively premium subscribers), which allows you to share your location with specific people so they can see where you are during a ride or run. This is predominantly a safety feature that can be used via your phone or a compatible bike computer.
Training
Strava isn't designed around improving performance or fitness directly. It helps to get you out on your bike, ride harder, and challenge yourself, but in terms of personalised training for specific gains, other dedicated platforms do this better. Strava has 12 four-week plans that you can choose from for a cyclist, or four if you're a runner. These are all focused around specific goals within three areas: sprinting, climbing, and indoor. This will be good enough for most people, but if you wanted to specialise in something (for instance a certain type of TT course), you would need to devise a plan yourself.
One thing that Strava does particularly well, which helps with this, is recording and displaying data in a way that makes it easy to track progress. For instance, if you have a particular route that you ride a lot, you can track your progress on it over time, with performance metrics overlaid with one another so you can compare them.
Even if you don't use a power meter on your rides, you can track your power through Strava's power estimations; these will never be as accurate as if you were using a power meter, but it gives you the ability to do some basic power analysis.
If you do use a power meter then you can get even more data with Weighted Average Power, Training Load, Ride Intensity, and Power Curve all being shown and compared
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