Strava Guide: Set Goals to Power Your Next PR

Setting goals is not only associated with greater levels of success in everything from sports to business, but can also contribute to self-confidence and self-esteem. This is how to use Strava to set your performance goals.

What do qualifying for the Olympics, buying your first house, and getting accepted to university all have in common? 

I’d bet that each one of those impressive accomplishments started out as a goal. Of course, the setting of the goal doesn’t guarantee anything, but it acts as a catalyst for action. And thanks to some combination of hard work, planning, and discipline, along with a dose of luck, those goals can become a reality. In today’s article, I’m going to be helping you tap into the magic of goals for yourself.

While not everyone is entirely goal-driven, countless studies have shown that setting goals is not only associated with greater levels of success in everything from sports to business but setting goals can also contribute to self-confidence and self-esteem. 

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So, are you ready to set some goals? I hope so. In today’s article, I’ll be walking you through Strava’s goal-setting features and how you can utilize goals to get faster and more motivated. You’ll need to be a subscriber to set a goal on Strava but it’s worth it, trust me. 

How To Set a Goal on Strava

To get started with setting your goals, navigate to the “You” tab in the app and then select “Progress” at the top of your screen. Scroll down until you see the Goals module and then click “Add Goal”. 

The first choice you’ll have is which sport you want to focus on – you can set a goal in anything from rowing to ice skating, and Strava just added the option to add a combined goal, meaning you could choose that all sports contribute toward your goal.

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Next up, you can choose a timeframe for your goal – I’d recommend choosing weekly. While longer-term goals are great, it’s all too easy, if you set a monthly goal, to let exercise slip for just a few days and before you know it you’re halfway through the month and find yourself behind and unmotivated. 

Finally, you have four types of goals to choose from – number of activities completed, time spent exercising, elevation gained and distance logged. Power and segment goals can be set from the Strava website.

How to set goals that motivate you

Now you know how to set a goal, let’s talk a bit about what makes a “good” goal because not all goals are created equal. The study of effective goal setting can be traced back to American psychologist Dr. Edwin A. Locke who studied, for one of the first times, the relationship between conscious goals and task performance. Locke’s key finding was that specific hard goals produce a higher level of output than a goal of “do your best”. 

In 1990, Locke partnered with three other researchers to publish A Theory of Goal Setting and Task Performance. The book outlined five key principles that contribute toward effective and motivating goals: clarity, challenge, commitment, feedback and complexity.

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Let’s take a closer look at each of these principles and how we can apply them to our goals on Strava.

Clarity

Imagine you want to break 20 minutes in the 5K. That seems like a pretty clear goal, right? Sort of. 

Outcome or performance goals like this can be really motivating, but they don’t provide an actionable path for achieving them. The question is how do you break 20 minutes for 5K? For this, you’ll need some process goals too. Instead of setting out to break 20 minutes in the 5K, a process goal like running 20 miles per week will give you a much clearer focus. 

Challenge

While goals can, and should, be motivating, setting a goal that’s too hard can have the opposite effect. As can setting a goal that’s too easy. If you’re not sure where to pitch your goal, let your data guide you. Have you been consistently setting PRs on segments? Are you easily exceeding your pace zones on workouts? This article from Chris Case includes loads of helpful information on how to pitch your goals just right. 

Commitment

In my mind, this is probably the most important factor when it comes to setting effective goal setting – you’ve got to care about it. If everyone is running a marathon, that doesn’t mean that you should. Maybe you’re more excited about a trail race or chasing a mile PR. Choose a goal that gets you excited to train and you’re already halfway there. 

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Feedback

Clear and regular feedback is a key component of effective goal setting. For professional athletes, that often comes in the form of a coach, but Strava can be your accountability buddy. At the top of your home feed, you’ll see a weekly snapshot of your training – this is a quick and simple way to check in with your progress daily. And if you tap “See More”, you’ll be taken to the “You” tab where you can see more information on how you’re progressing toward your goal. 

Complexity

Achieving a big goal is rarely simple, which is why it’s important to set specific, smaller goals to act as stepping stones toward your big goal. Let’s imagine you want to run your first trail marathon this year. That can feel overwhelming, but it becomes more manageable once you work through the smaller goals you need to hit to get there. 

In this case that might mean increasing your mileage, getting more elevation, and taking your recovery seriously. Set a simple, clear goal for each of these and from a big scary goal like a trail marathon, you now have three manageable goals. Hitting those goals won’t be easy, because running is hard, but you’ve put yourself in the best possible position to succeed.

MORE ON GOAL-SETTING: The Goal Behind All Goals

Staying On Track

If you’re reading this, you’re definitely ready to set some goals. My final piece of advice would simply be: don’t stress. Ultimately, goals are meant to be fun and motivating, so take the time to think about what sort of challenge is really going to get you fired up, and then go for it. Once your goals are recorded, it’s time to get down to the business of achieving them. You can view progress on the activity details page of your corresponding activity – so if you’ve set a run goal, progress toward that will show on your activity. And you can always head to the “Progress” tab for an overview of all your goals.