Strava review part 2

Welcome to 5.14 fitness,

This is part 2 of the review that I posted yesterday on the fitness app Strava. Strava is an app on both android and IOS that tracks your exercise and presents it to you and your friends in a simple yet beneficial way. The first part of the review has already been posted, so if you haven't seen that, I recommend go checking it out before reading this.

Strava is an app that is based on the website, which has a few more features on it. The website has the usual activity feed and goals, however has a great feature called segments. These are very good for if you are going running. Segments are either big or small routes that other people run or cycle in that particular area.
For each segment, there are times of how other people have done, how quick they went and so on. In my opinion, this is a great way to challenge and give meaning to your run or cycle, This is because with each segment you can try to get the quickest times, and beat other around you. This is also a good way of meeting people and gaining support from other like you.
There are plenty of segments, and I was really surprised to see that there are hundreds of people challenging and racing them. This is, for me, is a brilliant feature and I know of someone who has got top in a segment- something that is very hard to do! There are lots of segments to do, I can spot loads a short distance away from where I live. Some are on streets right next to mine.

Another feature on the website is the route maker. This lets you make routes for your run or cycle, which is then automatically put on your phone ready to start whenever you want.. The route maker is good at giving you the right information, as it tells you things like distance and elevation. It is a good to feature to have, as it gives  you  set goals when doing your exercise, so you know that at the end of it you have achieved what you want. Despite this, I grew very frustrated with the route maker, as it was very hard and slow to do, As I was trying to navigate the map, it would not let me move around, instead plotting new points that I did not want. After what felt like an eternity, I finally managed to get the hang of it, though it meant the process was quite slow. Despite this, the finished product is good and effective, especially on the app.

The premium version of Strava, costing 59 dollars in  US, is not owned myself therefore I can not give my personal opinion on it, yet I can tell you about the features.
Firstly, your goals is vastly improved and you can customise them and set different time scales. You can set goals on segments, which help you to get there sooner , by setting deadlines.
With premium, you can have access to a range of training videos, which may or not be helpful for yourself. The videos give helpful insight on how to do exercise properly.
Premium includes more advanced analysis of everything you do , and it gives you so much data that you'll feel stuffed.  It gives you real-time segments , and even a personal heat map.
Premium includes lots of other things, so go to www.strava.com to find more details.

My final point is on the settings and compatible apps. As you may know, plenty of fitness apps have support for each other, and Strava is one of these. Despite this, Strava only links with a disappointing three other apps, These apps are Instagram, my fitness pal and Google fit. Now Instagram is not a sport app, so really there is only two, My fitness pal and Google fit are both apps which I will be reviewing in future posts, and they are both one of my favourite fitness apps, so at least Strava is linking with some good ones. As for how they link up, there are not many ways in which they do. For more information about this, I will explain when I review the individual apps.

Now for the Conclusion, and here are my Pro's and Cons.

Pro's:

• Great tracking of Runs and Cycles , with good data feedback and precise tracking.
• Great social integration, with a great feed layout and plenty of data to compare to yours. 
• Good reward and accomplishment system. 
• Nice website with good features on it.
• Great segments feature, which gives you great motivation to exercise. 
• Lots of features 
• App partnerships

Cons

• Bad support for exercise other than running or cycling.
• Weak goals system for free app
• Have to pay a lot for premium version, which is not that different to standard. 
• Slow and annoying route builder 
• Not many compatible apps to link with 

Overall, I think that Strava is a great app for running and cycling, arguably the best out there. It is great from a social point of view, and has lots of features to make it great. If you are more of a circuit training or weight lifting person, then this is probably not the best for you. If I were to rank it out of ten, I would give it a ;

7/10

Be sure to stay tuned for new app reviews, The next app being reviewed is myfitnesspal- a personal favourite. Thank you very much for reading , hope you liked this review, and please hit like or subscribe to this blog. Thanks again, and peace!

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Strava review part 1

Welcome to 5.14 Fitness,

In today's post I will be writing about a fitness app that is ,in my opinion, highly effective and fun. If you like this, then I will add more posts about other top apps that are great for fitness and health. There are many, however I will pick the ones that I feel are best for a wide range of people and interests.

Now,the app I am going to be writing about is called Strava, and you may have heard about it. When it comes to fitness apps, it is one of the most popular out there. It has over a million downloads on Google play, and has a 4.6 star rating.

Strava is an app for mainly the Cardio activities of running and cycling, however it can be used for workouts as well. Strava records when you run or cycle and tracks exactly what you do and when you did it. It then gives you all the Statistics you want about your activity: how fast you went, how long you took, how many calories burned and so on... It gives information that is very useful, and can portray it all in a graph for you. And now the best part, with a simple click your data is uploaded to your feed, available for all your friends on Strava and  people round the world to see and compare to their own.

Just like Facebook or twitter, Strava has an activity feed page, which shows all your friends recent activity, how they did, and gives you the option to like or comment on it. This is great for morale, as not only friend but those like you can give you praise and support through this. This can be a really good boost for morale. This links to a great feature that makes Strava a really great app for running and cycling. For every route you run or cycle, there is an accomplishment and reward scheme that gives you prestigious rankings like 'king of the mountain'. This means of all those following the route, you were the quickest. Things like these make going for a run or cycle competitive and gives you more energy to go outside and attack your exercise. There are many accomplishments that gives you rewards for great work and commitment, all of which make Strava an app that is different from others.The activity feed page is good, and easy to navigate and see everything you want.

Away from the social aspect, Strava sets goals for you based on your information and these are a basis for when you run or cycle. Of course, you can change these goals at any time. The goals aspect of the app is quite weak compared to other apps I have used , and it is not prominent on the app- it doesn't come up at any point on the home screen. Then again,this is improved when you go premium;however, this costs 37 pounds ( 59 dollars ) and therefore may put you off. For more information, Premium will be discussed more in the next post.

Going back to recording activity, as soon as you open Strava you are presented with a button. Hit this button, and Strava starts tracking your location with Gps and internet ( if wanted to use ). Strava tracks how long you have been , your distance , you split pace and where you are instantly, so whilst you are out you can see all this information. Once you are done, you press the button again and it stops tracking you, ready to publish your run or cycle and give you all the data about it.  The layout of all this is quite simple, so will not confuse . Due to this, the information displayed during your run or cycle is quite simple and not much data is shown. Afterwards, there is lots of data to look at.
As soon as you finish, it gives you options on what to call your exercise, what to tag it as and what to describe it as.  You can choose who you want to see this, and it can be all your friends to just yourself.
Running and cycling is not the only things that you can add to your log. You can , with a click of a button,, add a variety of sports including workouts and weight training. You can add how long you did this for and add a description. Despite this being a good feature, logging in activity's other than running and cycling is not as satisfactory, as no data is produced. You can not specify what you did in the workout , therefore there is not much use in logging it in . If this is improved, and made more prominent, then Strava will be a lot better for those who do more circuit training and weight lifting.

In the next post, I will explain about the Strava website, the other features the app offers, the premium version, and the overall conclusion- including the pros and cons of Strava.
Hope you enjoyed this review, thank you very much for reading, and please check out all the other posts. Thank you again !

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