Strava Relative Effort

harringtonp

Since going premium I see this exists and don't remember it from being premium a few years back. They describe it as:

"Relative Effort is an analysis of your heart rate data. By tracking your heart rate through your workout and its level relative to your maximum heart rate, we attach a value to show exactly how hard you worked. The more time you spend going full gas and the longer your activity, the higher the score. Compare your Relative Effort with friends and pros, see if you can do a truly epic workout and motivate yourself to push that extra bit harder! Relative Effort was inspired by the concept of TRIMP (TRaining IMPulse) coined by Dr. Eric Bannister."

My gut feeling from looking at assigned values over the past few weeks is that it is quite an accurate indicator of how much a session has taken out of you and how much recovery time is needed. It seems to be a lot more reflective of the effort involved than the corresponding power based impulse figure that Strava also produces. Will have to look into how it is calculated.

Anyone else find it useful ?

Seth Brundle

harringtonp wrote: »

Since going premium I see this exists and don't remember it from being premium a few years back.

A lot of normal stuff is now only available to paid up subscribers since they rejigged it just over a week ago.

harringtonp wrote: »

Anyone else find it useful ?

To be honest, not really!

G1032

harringtonp wrote: »

Anyone else find it useful ?

Not really to be honest.

It looks like their version of the TSS and I'd find the TSS and Training Peaks fatigue and form scores more useful than Strava Relative Effort. TSS does have its flaws too though.

But if you really want to see what training or a block of training is taking out of you and want to monitor whether you're recovering properly etc etc you should start checking and tracking your HRV.

Form on TP and HRV usually marry up quite nicely I find..

mhiggy09

Weepsie wrote: »

It's alright, but it's not as good as Garmin's in built version which is often a good indicator of when I'm over doing it.

Elevate is a chrome plugin that's good though. I've to see if it still works since the Strava changes though

I use elevate and it's pretty handy keeping track of fitness form and fatigue when used with a power meter. Still working fine atm but not sure if the Strava api changes have been implemented yet.

JimmiesRustled

With it being based on heart rate it's not really a great indication of the effort or work that's been done in my opinion.

For instance, I did 5 hours on Saturday with 2x20 min sweet spot efforts in the last hour. It was a tough enough session. On Sunday I did 3 hours at the same effort more or less with 1 sweet spot effort but because I was fatigued from the day before, my HR was way down during the same efforts.

On Saturday sweet spot was around 170bpm at 270-290 watts. On Sunday sweet spot was around 160bpm at 300 watts.


Even just taking that portion of the ride from both days would result in a completely different relative effort as measured by Strava, even though they were both physically as demanding.

harringtonp

Yes, looking back over Strava's fitness and freshness and see some big inconsistencies even though some sessions relate well to each other. Vo2Max intervals in particular don't score right. You can trash yourself doing several maximal 5-6 min intervals but it doesn't really show using this model.

Yet for some sessions it scores better than just power alone.

A model combining both in the right way (whatever that is) could work well

lennymc

intervals.icu does a much better job (imho) of graphing relative effort over time, including fatigue, form and fitness.