Strava keeps walking deeper into the weight room.

In May it fixed how you log a lift and now it wants to tell you what to lift in the first place. And that is a much bigger ask.

Hear me out.

Logging is a utility and coaching is a relationship, and it’s one Strava has to earn from athletes who already have a strength app, a coach, or a barbell and a plan scribbled in their notes app.

So the real question isn’t whether Strava can build strength workouts. It’s whether anyone will treat the app they open for miles and watts as the place they get coached too.

What Strava Just Launched

Strava announced coach-designed strength workouts, and they want to remove that “I don’t know what to do in the gym” problem off the table.

Athletes get guided, animated instruction from workouts built by experienced strength coaches, with live set and rep tracking as they go.

Tap into any exercise and you get form cues, tips, and the exact muscles it targets. When the session ends, every exercise, set, and rep lands in your activity and your Workout Log, and your muscle map updates to show where the work went.

The rollout starts with subscribers over the next few weeks and if you want to use it, you gotta pay.

The coach-designed series is a subscriber feature at $11.99 a month or $79.99 a year, though free users can try one sample workout.

Customization isn’t available yet, but each workout shows its duration upfront so you know the time commitment before you start. The update also adds new running workouts to the guided library.

And more is coming before the end of the year; like additional workout series, a build-your-own workout feature, and the ability to screenshot sets and reps from a training plan or notes app and upload them instantly. Strava also says new partner integrations keep rolling out so strength data can flow in from wherever you already train.

Part of the Next Step

If this feels familiar, it should. Back in May we covered Strava’s first big push into strength, when it rebuilt the experience with a dedicated Workout Log, auto-populated muscle maps, new shareables, and 14 partner integrations at launch. At the time, that was Strava fixing the plumbing, to build the house.

Today’s update is Strava having an open house. The Workout Log we praised in May is now the destination for guided sessions, and the muscle map is the scoreboard.

Plumbing first, product second.

It’s a smart order of operations, and something they seem dedicated to.

Strava is kind of like Amazon. They can see all the trends happening in real-time and they clearly see strength is becoming one of its fastest-growing activity types and decided to own the whole loop: what to do, how to do it, and where it gets recorded.

We said in May that the problem was never convincing endurance athletes that strength matters. It was making it easy enough to stick. Coach-designed workouts go straight at that but its still an unknown.

The Field Is Already Crowded

Here’s where we get skeptical. Strava isn’t walking into an empty gym. TrainHeroic built its reputation on coach-programmed strength training. Peloton has spent years selling instructor-led strength classes. And a long list of lifting apps, from Hevy to Fitbod to JEFIT, already do set-and-rep tracking and programming as their entire job.

There’s an awkward wrinkle too. Several of those apps, along with Caliber, were among Strava’s launch partners in May, which means they currently feed strength data into Strava.

Now Strava is building the thing that could make an athlete stop opening them. Partners today, competitors tomorrow is a tricky line to walk but fitness is cut throat.

Strava does have something none of them can match: a huge audience. With more than 200 million users in over 185 countries, it already owns the daily habit for runners, cyclists, and triathletes. If your training log lives there, adding strength to it is a lot less friction than adding a second app. But will they? Outside of run clubs and looking at friends workouts, will their 200 million users use Strava to lift? I guess, even if you get a fraction of them, that’s still a win.

But habit isn’t the same as trust. A coach-designed series is only as good as the coaching, and the announcement doesn’t tell us who those coaches are, what the programming philosophy is, or how it will adapt for an athlete lifting around a marathon block.

A generic workout series is easy to find. Programming that understands endurance training is not, and with no customization available yet, these workouts can’t bend around your training block. The upfront duration is a practical touch for busy athletes, but it’s not the same as a plan built around your week.

Our Thoughts

Strava has the audience, the data, and now the content. What it hasn’t proven yet is credibility. Can it coach? Athletes will try the sample workout, and the muscle map and automatic logging are nice touches we enjoy.

But for us, we need to know who the coaches are, whether the programming fits an endurance athlete’s week, and whether the subscription feels like one app replacing three.

We’re looking to test it out and will report back.

Until then, if you’re an endurance athlete who is lifting already, no need to change yet, but if you pay for Strava already, give it a go.

Just don’t get hurt.