Getting the Best out of Stryd: A Comparative Analysis of Apple Watch and Garmin

Let’s say that you want to prepare for a running race…you have a Stryd device (have a long history with their footpads) and like it’s accuracy/consistency in measuring distance/pace and power so you decide that Stryd’s training plans are good for you.

This assessment may need another post in itself, but briefly this preference for using Stryd is related to the fact that power is a good denominator when preparing for hilly races and training in different places (home I enjoy only flat terrain, of power could be replaced by pace training, but during my vacation I run in hilly areas and all plans based on pace or HR are affected by the terrain and heat) and also when you need support from different sport watches manufacturers.

You may argue that, considering the fact that most (all?) of the manufacturers added in the recent years support for their running power – including Apple, Polar, Coros, Garmin, Suunto – Stryd will be deprecated soonish and there is little reason to invest into yet another device with proprietary charger. The reality is a bit more nuanced, because in terms of responsiveness and consistency Stryd still has the lead compared with all the others and since there is not yet a standard regarding the running power, each value is a good value – so you can’t say that Apple or Garmin measure running power better than Stryd (or viceversa). DCRainmaker has a good post here, comparing running power across multiple devices – if you want to dig more into the topic – but basically, for me it’s clear that running power is for some of the sport watches manufacturers just a tick in the box and not the focus area – for example, it took years for Polar to add power based structured workouts .. but they didn’t add anything like a running plan based on anything else than heart rate. The same applies to the others, you can now create your running power based workouts but nobody adapts their training philosophy to running power.

Stryd has a decent package and with the recent addition of Steve Palladino’s plans in the “free” area of their offering, they are a good solution for people who want to train and not only to run with running power.

Since I’m a gadget enthusiast, you have several watches you could use in conjunction with your Stryd, but basically, after reading a lot of articles and based on my experience, I decided on using Apple Watch Ultra and Garmin Fenix 7X to execute the workouts, while analysis is done using Stryd’s Power Center or the Stryd mobile iOS app.

Both apps are developed by Stryd’s team and are well integrated with the Stryd training plans, meaning that they get their workouts from the “Stryd cloud” and allow you to execute them, saving the results in the “native” format of the watch and sending data to be reviewed in Power Center.

I’ve seen a lot of positive comments from people using their Apple Watch (and Ultra) with the Stryd app, sometimes people seeing this particular app as being a reason to pick AW over Garmin. Sure, this kind of debates will always be heated, but when starting the Apple Watch version I definitely seen the “more polished”. Just have a look at the pictures below, after starting the app, you can select the workout to execute and the details of the Day 7 workout.

It’s clear that the Apple Watch version looks nicer, using the nice screen and the Garmin one has visual limitations, but does that mean that the Apple Watch app is better?

Well, to my surprise, the usability (based on my needs) of the Garmin surpass the Apple Watch one .. for example, when you start a new interval, the Garmin app let’s you know in advance what’s the target range in the last 5 seconds before the interval starts, while displaying the average of the one you end .. and that’s for me more useful than being count down from 5 to 1 in my headphones and not having the target unless I remember the description of the steps. The alternative is to wait the interval to start, have a look at the screen and adjust.

The second aspect I noticed is related to the display of the workout steps during the workout execution – let’s say that you have a more complex workout with 14 steps, but the area you’re really interested is the 4 times repeats in the middle.

If your Apple Watch says that you’re executing step 11/14, that doesn’t say much unless you do the math and realise that’s the 3rd step in those 4 repeats. The Garmin app implementation says on the screen “Work 3/4” besides guiding your in the power interval, which makes your life easier (a bit .. not much, since the intensity of the interval is the same ;))

Sure, those kind of small adjustments could be implemented in the Apple Watch version (if those make sense for Stryd’s product management team) since they are not constraints of Apple’s platform, but this demonstrates that usability comes from analysing the process more than just taking advantage of the platform capabilities. Garmin CIQ platform is less “friendly” than Watch OS, but that doesn’t stop the app from being (more) usable in some areas.

There are certainly other differences in using the apps which are inherited from the platforms – Garmin uses buttons and Apple the touch screen, but those can’t be changed within the apps, but are the result of a platform choice.

I’ll keep using them alternatively, depending on what watch will be on my hand and document my impressions. It feels like Stryd will continue to be a niche product as the incentive for the players like Garmin and Apple to create native support within their platforms is limited and not likely to change soon, but the someone will dedicate time/resources to running power and move it to first citizen position (with proper training plans and analysis) things will change dramatically. For example, Watch OS 10 will bring integration with other 3rd party platforms like TrainingPeaks (but you could extend that to others obviously) and you’ll be able to execute the workouts planned in TP on your Apple Watch, Steve Palladino’s plans are available on TP .. but Apple Watch doesn’t “see” the Stryd footpod from the default Workout app.

With that, enjoy your workouts and happy running!