Power Skills on Strava

Power Skills is a Strava feature that uses your cycling power meter data to identify your strengths and areas for improvement across different types of efforts. By analyzing your historical rides, we group your performance into three key Power Skills—Sprinting, Attacking, and Climbing—against benchmarks for your age, gender, and weight.

How Power Skills Works

1. Start with Your Data: Power Skills begin with your existing cycling activities, including power meter data.
2. Analyze and Benchmark: We evaluate your historical efforts and categorize them into Power Skills. You’ll see twelve specific Power Intervals that you can work on, each benchmarked against thresholds developed based on how athletes at different levels of the sport perform, adjusted by age, gender, and weight.
3. Personalized Adjustments: Each interval is benchmarked against athletes like you (based on your age, gender, and weight), so that progress is personalized and fair. If you update your profile details, your benchmarks automatically adjust to reflect your current information, giving you an up-to-date view of your performance and areas for improvement.
4. Comparing Recent and All-Time Efforts: You can compare your performance over the last 8 weeks with your all-time best efforts. The system evaluates your skill levels for both periods based on your age, gender, and weight. A spider chart allows for a visual comparison of your recent and all-time efforts.

Power Meter Requirements

To use Strava's Power Skills, you will need power meter data from your bicycle or indoor bike. If you do not have a power meter, we recommend getting one as your first major cycling upgrade. Learn more about the benefits of having a power meter on Strava here.

Power Skills and Power Intervals

A Power Skill represents a category of cycling performance. Each skill is made up of multiple Power Intervals—specific durations at which power output is measured. Power Intervals also align with intervals for which you can track your Power Best Efforts on Strava.

Sprinting - Short bursts of extremely high output. Reflects your ability to generate explosive power.

• Power Intervals:  15 sec, 30 sec, and 1 minute.

Attacking - Balanced efforts that combine sprinting power with climbing endurance. Useful for short climbs or race breakaways.

• Power Intervals:  2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and 10 minutes. 

Climbing - Long, sustained efforts on climbs, flats, or workouts requiring steady pacing and endurance.

• Power Intervals: 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and 60 minutes.

Improving Your Power Skills

To improve a Power Skill, you need to complete milestones across the various intervals within that skill group. For instance, the Attacking skill includes 2-minute, 3-minute, 5-minute, and 10-minute intervals, each with eight milestones. Your progress in any of these intervals contributes to your overall Attacking skill level. As your overall Attacking Power Skill level increases, more milestones are required to advance to the next tier in this group. This system encourages consistent improvement across multiple effort types, rather than just focusing on one interval within a Power Skill group..

FAQs

What is a milestone?

Intervals are structured with eight personalized milestones that make up your Power Skill level. These milestones, tailored to your age, gender, and weight, represent incremental wattage targets. Achieving them allows for small, attainable steps in improvement. Detailed wattage requirements for each milestone can be viewed by selecting an interval, which will display a progress chart.

How can I update my weight and age on my Strava profile?

You can change your profile settings and preferences from the Strava website. 

1. Log in to your account on the Strava website.
2. Hover over your profile picture in the upper right-hand corner.
3. Click on "Settings" from the drop-down menu.

Is the historical power data that I had on Strava uploaded to the Power Skills chart?

Yes, your historical power data in Strava has been reviewed to update the 12 Skill Intervals that form the Power Skills chart. As a result, athletes now have an expanded set of Power Best Efforts, which are derived from this historical data. This data is currently based on the weight, age, and gender you have entered today.

How do I remove incorrect or bad power data from my Power Chart?

You can manage and remove power data directly through the Best Efforts feature in the app. Here’s how:

1. From the "You" tab, then open the "Progress" section.
2. Scroll down to find "Best Efforts", then tap "View all your Best Efforts".
3. From the Sports dropdown, select "Ride".
4. Swipe the top row and tap the Power button.
5. Select the specific Power interval you’d like to remove.
6. Tap the Down Arrow button to reveal the Remove Effort option.

Once removed, your next-best effort for that interval will automatically update in the Power Skills Chart.