Strava Form

I’ve had a search on here for discussions on the Strava training graphs but couldn’t see anything recent, so apologies if there is already a thread on this.

I normally pretty much only use the phone app of Strava and use the fitness graph on the app, I found it a decent way to show trends of my fitness and see how much riding I’m doing compared to previous weeks/months/years.

Recently I discovered the desktop version of Strava differs to the app with the addition of ‘Freshness’ & ‘Form’ to the ‘Fitness’ element. Although interesting, I didn’t really think that it added much to the app graph. Until last week when my on bike performance felt like it had fell off a cliff and my legs were feeling like they were full of cement. When I looked at the graph on Strava my ‘Form’ was -100 which would explain the heavy legs, despite my ‘Fitness’ being decent (+100) and my ‘Fatigue’ looking ok too (+50 but coming down quickly). The graph projected my form to return over the next couple of weeks so I backed off the efforts on the bike for a week, and low and behold by legs felt a lot better, also reflected in my performance.

I’m glad I backed off for a week because in years gone by, I have a habit of overdoing it a bit over the summer due to decent weather and light nights, resulting in back and glute issues, and the odd summer cold.

I’m looking forward to when my form reaches the forecasted numbers from Strava, going by how my legs felt last night.

What’s other people’s experience of using it, do you find it’s useful?

Same but different; I use intervals.icu.for that sort of exercise analysis. It’s particularly useful if I’ve an event or big outing planned so that I can see how much “tapering” is required to ensure I have good form when it’s necessary.

Fitness-Fatigue=Form. So if your Fitness is 100 and Fatigue is 50 your Form should be 50.

Form is very indicative of whether you are over/under doing it. As scotroutes says if you are training for an event it’s Form you need to look at. What I would like to know is what Strava’s figures actually represent as although they follow a similar trend to intervals.icu to Trainingpeaks the actual values are totally different and nothing like TSS.

Never found it all that useful except that if form is right down then I will not be at my best for a race. Problem is there is more to it than simply not riding in the run up. If you are doing short hard intense races (XCO, CX, Hills) then I find it ok to carry some fatigue and stay sharp with some top end work in the taper.

I wish they would do a rolling relative effort graph as that is a better indicator for me. Tell me what the training load has been. Bit annoying that it is a fixed week though as I’d rather adjust it to my normal riding days.

Use similar in TrainingPeaks although not so much for looking at stuff historically, not really found that of much use besides occasionally interesting.

It does become useful when you populate your TP calendar with scheduled workouts/rides etc. as it will help predict fatigue, form and subsequent fitness leading up to any events you may have…a nice steady upwards trend with a taper at the end.

I’ve not used the Strava one but assume it’s based on a similar principle.

IIRC having form more negative than -30 day after day will make you prone to overtraining.

-10 to -30 considered good form range for improvements.

+10 or more positive considered good to ahead of a planned event/race.

Thanks for the insight, there is so much info on training now (some conflicting) it’s hard to do research. I’d obviously learn more from a coach but don’t think my meagre cycling fitness is worthy, nor do I have the funds.

Thanks again.