Don’t get me wrong: I love lifting weights, but an hour’s run has a different therapeutic effect than a session at the gym downstairs, especially when the sun’s out. Running is a source of stress relief, an escape from the notifications and blue light sources that constantly encroach on my life.
give me a pair of best shoes And Turn on the headphones I can find a straight path, preferably by the river, and I’m usually at my happiest.
But as the new Fitness and Wellness Editor at TechRadar, I’ve changed my workouts to become less holistic and more analytic or data-driven, and one of the easiest ways to share all of that data is via Strava, the athletes’ social network.
In addition to enabling you to record and share your running, riding, swimming and other workouts, Strava functions like group challenges can be very useful when it comes to encouraging people to exercise. researchers from Flinders University, Australiawhich examined nearly 1,500 active adults, found that receiving and offering in-app encouragement from close friends was associated with increased exercise participation.
As a late adopter with a lot of friends already on the net, I was curious to see if Strava could take my training to the next level. It’s my duty, I sign up, plug my Strava details into my Polar Flow app to sync my activities, and start adding my friends.
I use the Polar Vantage V2 as my favorite daily watch, but the best Garmin, Fitbits, AmazFit sports watches, and any big brand fitness tracker will also allow you to sync your data to the network. None of this is news for seasoned Strava users, but for newcomers, it’s good to know that the app’s functionality spans a wide range of devices.
Every run is now a race
Soon, my home timeline filled with runs, courses, surf sessions, and other workouts from my friends, and I got invited to a group of friends to share our stats for a “friendly” contest.
This is where my workouts started to change. Strava is best used for outdoor exercise, where you see GPS maps of your routes (with speeds for each segment) along with your speed, calories burned, and photos taken on the way. Although I like to take things slow, I am a competitive person in my heart, and that slow evening on the riverbanks of 5 km quickly turned into 10 km so brutal that I began to think that a gentle jog was not exactly worth any ‘glory’ (version Strava for the ‘Like’ or ‘Upvote’ button).
I also briefly considered canceling my yoga class the evening after another demanding tour, just so I could continue to log the miles in order to keep up with the package.
In Strava’s view, playing games the same way other social media sites have played the rest of our lives is a stroke of genius — it’s just as addictive to see those Kudos notifications as if you see yourself retweeting them. For the user, it’s not all bad: It’s a little fun, and this technique is a proven way to encourage people to exercise more, according to research published in the journal. Frontiers in Computer Science.
However, I now feel like every time I run, I’m being watched. My Polar isn’t just a passive observer anymore, quietly recording my stats, other than chirping after every kilometer; It’s now a lens through which the Strava community spies on me, to make sure I’m running enough miles or not taking breaks. It’s the classic Observer Paradox phenomenon in full effect: I run harder and faster because I know people will see the end result.
It would be great for my cardio, but probably not so much for my mental health. So every now and then I’ll take the advice of my colleague Tom Bedford, Get rid of my smart watch And back to a more comprehensive running experience.