Strava for Beginners: Your First Steps and Key Metrics to Track
- Written by: Thryve
- 11 minutes
Strava is not just a fitness tracker—it’s a dynamic social performance platform used by more than 100 million athletes across the globe to log, analyze, and share workouts. It blends GPS tracking with community-driven features, making it uniquely positioned to engage both beginners and elite athletes. Whether it’s a quick morning jog or structured interval training, Strava empowers users to visualize their progress, benchmark personal records, and stay accountable through social interactions.
Digital health platforms can use this data to model training consistency, detect motivational relapses, or measure adherence to prescribed fitness programs. It is important to understand which wearables are the best for health data storing and analyzing. Insurers and corporate wellness providers benefit from visibility into physical activity trends, enabling incentive design, premium adjustments, or health risk modeling.
This guide introduces Strava’s user-facing functionality and lays out how Thryve’s API stack enables seamless integration for enterprise use, streamlining ingestion, applying normalization protocols, and surfacing enriched health insights in client-facing dashboards or automated coaching systems.
Strava Implementation Guide
1. Setting Up Your Strava Account
To get started on Strava, users must go through a brief but essential onboarding process that ensures accurate tracking and personalized recommendations:
- Begin by visiting strava.com in a web browser or downloading the official Strava mobile app from the App Store or Google Play.
- Register for an account using your preferred method—email address, Google login, or Facebook credentials. If signing up on mobile, users can also enable biometric login (Face ID or fingerprint) for secure and quick access.
- After registering, you’ll be prompted to complete your profile. This includes entering your full name, choosing your primary sport (running, cycling, hiking, etc.), adding body metrics like height and weight (used to estimate calories burned), and configuring privacy settings such as whether activities are public, private, or visible to followers only.
- Next, enable location access for real-time GPS tracking. On iOS and Android devices, this means granting permission for the app to access location services “Always” or “While Using the App” to ensure full route capture during workouts.
By completing this setup, users unlock Strava’s ability to recommend relevant segments based on location, suggest challenges that match their activity style, and improve data accuracy for pacing, elevation gain, and performance insights. For digital health platforms onboarding users into a larger ecosystem, this early-stage data capture establishes the foundation for personalized goal tracking, behavioral analytics, and dynamic coaching interventions.
2. Recording Your First Activity
GPS-Based Activity
To record an activity with real-time GPS tracking, you can use either your smartphone or a compatible wearable device connected to your Strava account:
- Open the Strava mobile app and tap “Record” from the home screen.
- Select your activity type—such as Run, Ride, Hike, Walk, or others—from the scrollable list of options. This helps Strava categorize metrics correctly.
- For enhanced accuracy, ensure your phone or watch has a strong GPS signal and avoid locations with dense tree cover or buildings.
- Tap Start to begin recording your workout. During your session, you’ll see live updates for time, distance, pace, and other live metrics.
- When you’re done, tap Stop, review your workout summary, and press Save to upload it to your Strava profile.
Strava will automatically calculate elevation gain, estimated calories burned (based on your body metrics), average speed or pace, and compare your results to past efforts or local segments.
Manual Entry
For users who forget to track their session or use unsupported devices, Strava allows manual activity logging:
- Tap the “+” icon in the Strava app or log in to your account on the website.
- Select Manual Activity and choose your workout type.
- Input the duration, distance, start time, and optionally add metrics like elevation, average heart rate, gear used, and effort level.
- Add a title, any notes, and whether the activity was a commute, training session, or race.
- Tap Save Activity to post it to your training log.
Manual entries still contribute to your fitness stats and can be included in weekly and monthly summaries, providing a complete picture of your routine, even if GPS wasn’t enabled.
3. Exploring Strava’s Core Features
Strava offers a rich toolbox for both casual users and performance-minded athletes, combining competitive engagement with data-driven tools:
- Segments: User-defined sections of road, trail, or route—such as a popular hill climb or neighborhood loop—where performance is tracked and ranked. Strava automatically compares users’ times to past efforts and to others in the community, assigning rankings via leaderboards.
- Challenges: These are predefined goals (e.g., run 50 km in a month or complete five rides in a week) issued by Strava or by user-created clubs. Challenges motivate users with digital badges, milestone tracking, and social recognition. Organizations can sponsor branded challenges to drive engagement and generate custom datasets around goal setting and achievement trends.
- Training Plans: Strava offers structured training plans—some free, others under its premium tier—geared toward goal-specific progress like 5K improvement, marathon prep, or cycling endurance. These plans offer scheduled workouts and adaptive progress indicators, making them ideal anchors for coaching services, rehabilitation programs, or health plan incentives.
- Heatmaps: Strava compiles users’ GPS data to generate personal and global heatmaps, showcasing the most frequently traveled paths. These visualizations aid users in route discovery, while for B2B operators, heatmaps can inform urban planning, risk assessment for outdoor activity, or identify safe exercise zones for vulnerable populations.
4. Integrating Devices & Apps
Strava and Apple Watch
The Strava Apple Watch app allows users to record runs, rides, and other outdoor workouts directly from their wrist, eliminating the need to carry a phone. The app supports key metrics like distance, time, pace, heart rate (if enabled), and GPS-based route tracking. After completing a workout, the data syncs with the user’s Strava profile automatically.
Alternatively, users who prefer Apple’s native Workout app can integrate their Apple Health account with Strava. This setup ensures that any workout recorded in Apple Health (such as indoor runs or elliptical sessions) is shared with Strava, even if the Strava app wasn’t used to initiate the activity. To enable this, users must authorize Strava to read workout data from Apple Health in the iOS Health settings.
Strava API & Third-Party Apps
Strava’s developer API allows third-party platforms, such as digital coaching apps, telehealth services, and health research platforms, to access a wide range of athlete data. This includes GPS traces, elapsed time, pace, elevation, heart rate series, cadence, and power output. The API also supports real-time activity uploads and webhook notifications, which make it easier to integrate Strava data into dashboards, alerts, or progress reporting tools. For developers, Strava’s OAuth-based authentication model ensures secure and compliant user consent for data sharing.
Compatible Watches
Strava integrates with a broad range of fitness wearables and smartwatches, including:
- Garmin: Syncs automatically via Garmin Connect, providing detailed performance data and advanced metrics like VO2 max and training effect.
- Wahoo: Supports cycling and running metrics, including power and cadence sensors.
- Polar: Offers detailed heart rate, sleep, and recovery insights, which flow into Strava via Polar Flow.
- COROS: Popular with trail runners and ultra-endurance athletes, COROS watches sync structured workouts and environmental context.
- Suunto & Bryton: Additional brands supported through direct or middleware integrations.
These device partnerships enrich the user experience by increasing data accuracy and depth. For health platforms, leveraging Strava’s integrations ensures consistent, cross-device user tracking and high-fidelity workout records that can be standardized and enriched by platforms like Thryve.
5. What to Track and Why It Matters
Each metric logged on Strava provides critical insights into user effort, physiological adaptation, and long-term training trends. These metrics not only inform individual goal setting and progress tracking but also serve as foundational signals for health and performance analytics at scale:
- Distance & Pace: These foundational metrics track how far and how fast a user moves. For runners and cyclists, changes in pace over time reflect endurance improvements and aerobic conditioning. This data can be aggregated to identify population-level training consistency or inactivity patterns.
- Elevation Gain: This metric quantifies the vertical climb during an activity and is particularly meaningful for trail runners, hikers, and cyclists tackling hilly routes. It offers insight into muscle load and cardiovascular intensity that flat-surface metrics may overlook. When tracked longitudinally, elevation trends can indicate user progression toward specific terrain-based goals.
- Heart Rate & Training Zones: Captured through chest straps or optical wrist sensors, heart rate data enables classification of training intensity using zones (e.g., recovery, aerobic, anaerobic thresholds). These zones inform training load, stress levels, and recovery needs.
- Cadence (Steps or Pedals): A high cadence typically correlates with efficient biomechanics and reduced injury risk. Runners aim for a cadence of 170–180 steps per minute, while cyclists optimize revolutions per minute (RPM) to match power output and terrain. Health and fitness platforms can use cadence data to screen for irregular movement patterns or inefficiencies.
- Power (Watts): Power meters measure real-time output in watts, offering an objective lens into cycling performance. This allows for precise interval training and energy expenditure tracking. Health providers working in athletic coaching or sports science use this to inform performance benchmarks, fatigue models, and race readiness.
6. Community & Social Motivation
Strava transforms solitary fitness routines into shared experiences, fostering long-term commitment and emotional connection to movement. These features are not just motivational—they build user stickiness, deepen engagement, and generate higher-quality behavioral data.
- Kudos: Users can give a quick thumbs-up on others’ workouts—a frictionless way to deliver encouragement. Kudos often reinforce consistency and make users more likely to return to the app after receiving recognition from peers.
- Comments: Beyond simple reactions, comments create conversation. Athletes share tips, congratulate milestones, or inquire about training strategies, turning data logs into interactive stories. From a B2B standpoint, comments represent user sentiment and qualitative insight around effort or perceived exertion.
- Clubs: Users can join or create clubs based on geography, brand affiliation, interests, or training goals. These micro-communities often organize in-app events and external meetups, strengthening belonging and retention. For organizations, branded Strava clubs provide a channel for direct engagement, campaign promotion, and grassroots marketing.
- Group Challenges: These are time-bound competitions among groups of friends or club members, such as “most miles in May” or “fastest 5K this week.” They spark healthy competition and shared accountability. For digital health providers, group challenges can be used to reinforce habit loops and reward positive behavior changes over time.
7. Troubleshooting Strava Issues
Common syncing or accuracy issues can significantly disrupt user trust and affect downstream data quality. Here’s how users—and B2B platforms—can address the most frequent pain points:
- GPS Drift: This occurs when the GPS signal is weak or bouncing between cell towers. To reduce drift, ensure the device has a clear view of the sky, particularly at the start of the workout. Users should disable battery optimization settings, enable high-accuracy location services, and avoid tall buildings or dense foliage during the initial GPS lock.
- Data Not Syncing: Sometimes, integrations with services like Apple Health, Garmin Connect, or Google Fit stop syncing due to expired tokens, background data restrictions, or OS-level permissions being revoked. Users should reauthorize access by logging out and back in, confirming data-sharing permissions in the device settings, and allowing the app to run unrestricted in the background.
- Missing Activities: In cases where a session fails to sync due to network loss or crashes, users can export their workout data.GPX, .TCX, or.FIT format from their wearable provider’s dashboard and manually upload it to Strava via the web. This ensures the activity is still part of performance logs and analytic models.
Why Strava Is a Go-To App for Fitness Enthusiasts
Strava offers more than a logging tool—it’s a foundation for behavior-aware, community-driven, and performance-informed health data. For digital health platforms, syncing with Strava unlocks a goldmine of insight on user engagement, activity patterns, and training outcomes.
With Thryve’s API, these insights become standardized, enriched, and ready for use across remote care, wellness programs, and performance analytics. Thryve serves as the bridge between raw Strava activity logs and actionable health data:
- Data Ingestion: Thryve’s unified API pulls workout sessions, heart rate, elevation, and time-series data from Strava.
- Normalization: Converts all metrics into standardized, cross-platform formats, resolving differences in timestamp formats, units, and sensor fidelity.
- Enrichment: Combines Strava data with other sources (e.g., nutrition, sleep, HRV) to build a full health context.
- Analytics & Dashboards: Thryve enables digital health platforms to present unified activity insights, detect anomalies, and recommend next-best actions.
Ready to activate Strava data for your digital health product?
Book a demo with Thryve!
Source
Strava. (n.d.). Strava guide: How to get started on Strava. https://stories.strava.com/articles/strava-guide-how-to-get-started-on-strava
