Simplify Activity Types

[CreakyCrank]

There are nearly 50 types of activities to choose from in Strava, and from looking at the ideas here, requests to add many more. (I admit, I'm guilty of this - as I asked for Football(soccer) to be added).  I'm starting to think this isn't sustainable, and is starting to make it too cumbersome to record activities that are 'outside the norm'.  [hub members: please read the entire idea before you lose your sh*t about this 😀]

Proposal:

Instead of adding activities, what if Strava actually simplified and removed activities... condense into a set of core activities, based around the specificity of data required.

• Cycling (has Heart Rate, Cadence, Power, GPS data, etc.)
• Running (has Heart Rate, GPS, steps, etc.)
• Swimming (has stroke, GPS, HR, etc.)
• Rowing (has stroke, HR, GPS, etc)
• Cardio (activities with HR only - focused on aerobic activity)
• Strength (activities with HR only - focused mainly on strength/lifting)
• HIIT (activities with HR only - combination of strength/lifting)
• Field Sports (cardio focused activity, with HR data, potentially GPS with heatmaps - soccer, tennis, basketball outdoors, etc)
• Indoor Sports (similar to field sports, without GPS - basketball, badminton, indoor soccer, volleyball, etc.)
• Water Sports (may have HR and GPS - windsurfing, surfing, sailing, paddleboard, kayak, canoe, etc)
• Winter Sports (may have HR and GPS - downhill skiing, snowboarding, nordic skiing, skate skiing, outdoor skating, outdoor hockey)
• ... (very limited others)

Everything that then is unique to the activity can become a tag on the activity.

Format would be [Activity > Tag > Tag >...]

• Cycling > Indoor (Peloton, Soul Cycle, trainer, etc.)
• Cycling > Indoor > Virtual (Zwift, Ruby, etc.) [note: this tag could auto apply from upload]
• Cycling > MTB 
• Cycling > Road
• Cycling > Unicycle
• Cycling ...
• Field Sports > Football(soccer)
• Field Sports > Baseball
• Field Sports ...
• Running > Trail
• Running > Road
• Running > Indoor > Track
• Running > Indoor > Treadmill
• Indoor Sports > Roller Derby
• etc.

Then, update the reporting capabilities (My Activities, etc) such that you can filter/search/aggregate based on the combination of activity and tags, and also base the leaderboards around the combinations of activity/tag.

While this would be a large change, and likely very difficult to implement - the end result would be a much cleaner interface for the athletes.  The tagging could be done in a multi-tiered approach, where there are 'core tags' provided by Strava (would be used for leaderboards), but also, the ability for each user to have their own custom tags (which would save to the user profile, and be used for filtering activity/reports).

Maybe this is too complex, and maybe the majority of Strava Athletes would rather have an endless list of activities, and I'm out to lunch... if you have read this far, now I invite you to comment and/or lose your sh*t! 😀

Closing notes:

Really, I'm just trying to come up with some way to simplify the activities and reporting... there could be other ways, I'm certainly not the holder of the best/only way to do this... would love to hear the thoughts of others on here (well - read, not hear - unless I'm using a screen reader... I digress).

signed.... 

C. Crank.

[Bryant]

​​Thanks for submitting your idea. It has been reviewed by our moderation team and is now open to voting.

[LandonE]

I agree, its starting to be too much. At its core, Strava is for Running, Cycling and Swimming. I get that they want to appeal to a wider audience with all the extra sports options, but I do agree, it’s beginning to feel a bit cumbersome.

[Simon]

I thought that Strava was about recording data for an activity and have it recorded on a map. Surely Yoga and Pilates and Field/Court sports only require the need for the data and not the GPS. Why use a map app to record Yoga?

[CreakyCrank]

@Simon I would say that Strava isn't strictly about recording activities on a map with GPS, but about recording activities with various data points (HR, power, reps, etc.), so you can track activity & fitness, and potentially analyze your performance and recovery over time.  I appreciate the ability to record indoor activities (treadmill run, indoor cycling, indoor soccer), but find the sheer number of activities to select from are starting to get in the way of simplicity.  I'm not married to my particular idea, but more to the idea of injecting simplicity into the activities in some way... if things continue as they are, we'll soon have 100 activities to select from, which would just become an annoyance.

[CraigP17]

nope. I want the activity I record on my Apple Watch or my Garmin or my Wahoo to sync as the same activity in Strava. Plain and simple. 

[brownej]

@CreakyCrank I have commented and upvoted for unicycling activities, but I like the simplicity of the kind of thing you are suggesting. I think your idea deserves good thought and discussion. Hopefully some software architect at Strava will pay attention to this. I suspect Strava has built algorithms to map activity and sensor inputs to power, calories, and the rest. One thing I like about your scheme is there's a basic hierarchy, so even specific activities that don't yet have an algorithm can simply use a more generic form of the algorithm. In the case of unicycling, I suspect an algorithm is difficult to estimate because it probably has a high dependency on skill level. As your skill level increases you become way more efficient.

@CraigP17 I think there's probably a simple one to one mapping between those activities and the scheme envisioned here. There seems to be a simple way to resolve your objections.

[TrueDisciple]

As a programmer (not with Strava), I can attest that there is a fairly simple way to implement this, without upsetting the whole apple cart.

Each existing activity can stay just like it is, and be mapped directly from Garmin, Apple Watch, Wahoo, etc.

Instead of tags for each activity, new Categories would be created.

Each activity would be assigned to be under a certain category. And each category could be assigned to be under another category. This would be for Strava's programmers, not for users to change them. 

The current setup is:
Foot Sports > Run
Foot Sports > Trail Run
Foot Sports > Virtual Run
Foot Sports > Walk
Foot Sports > Hike
Foot Sports > Wheelchair
Cycle Sports > Ride
Cycle Sports > Mountain Bike Ride
Cycle Sports > Gravel Ride
Cycle Sports > Virtual Ride
Cycle Sports > E-Bike Ride
Cycle Sports > E-Mountain Bike Ride
Cycle Sports > Handcycle
Cycle Sports > Velomobile
etc....

This could be changed to:
Foot Sports > Run > Road Run
Foot Sports > Run > Trail Run
Foot Sports > Run > Treadmill Run
Foot Sports > Walk > Outdoor Walk
Foot Sports > Walk > Treadmill Walk
Foot Sports > Hike
Foot Sports > Wheelchair
Cycle Sports > Outdoor > Road Ride
Cycle Sports > Outdoor > Mountain Bike Ride
Cycle Sports > Outdoor > Gravel Ride
Cycle Sports > Virtual Ride
Cycle Sports > E-Bike > E-Bike Ride
Cycle Sports > E-Bike > E-Mountain Bike Ride
Cycle Sports > Handcycle
Cycle Sports > Velomobile
etc....

Note: Some of the proposals in previous comments are to have more specific activities than are currently available. Such as breaking down Indoor Running into Track and Treadmill. That would take more engineering than I am proposing here. I just wanted to demonstrate that the interface could be simplified without a major change.

P.S. I am also a person who has proposed more activities. I would love to see them add Disc Golf, for example. But in looking at the current list of activities again, I'm beginning to understand the simplicity of it. Multiple sports can be recorded with the same activity, since the method of actually moving is the same. 

For example, when you play Tennis, Football, Soccer, Ultimate Frisbee, and similar sports, the method of moving your body through space is Running. 

So the more I look at this, the more I like the system the way it is. It's simple enough to cover all the main ways of moving through space, without listing every sport that people play while moving through space. 🙂

[CreakyCrank]

@TrueDisciple Great discussion (which is what I was going for).  At the end of the day, it is really up to Strava's development team to decide the best way to move forward - as long as they can find a way to simplify this.  I suggested tags since they were a mechanism that already existed in Strava, and would be a light lift to implement - Categories is (in my opinion) a better solution, but depending on the implementation behind the scenes (and the data structure), it may be a heavier lift than tags.  

Thanks for adding your input to this - I think it helps to articulate options from our (athletes) perspective to the Strava team.  I'd be happy with any approach so long as I don't have to scroll through 100+ activities to find what I'm looking for.

Bonus: If using categories, it would make it easier from a reporting perspective, you can create reports from any level of depth in the category tree, tags would be a bit trickier.

[Zax]

Why you always miss Martial Arts, which is very huge group of sports: Wrestling, Boxing, Karate, Kung Fu, Judo, Jiu Jitsu, Tai Chi, Taekwondo, Muay Thai, MMA, etc.

[CreakyCrank]

@Zax This isn't meant to represent an exhaustive list, and you are right - Martial Arts should be one of the categories, then it could encompass all that you list above (I actually take part in several martial arts myself, and often lament that there isn't a category for that).  Hopefully you have upvoted this - so we can add the 10+ types of Martial Arts into a single category/tag scheme vs. adding 10+ additional activity types.

Thanks for bringing it up!

[andrewrendle]

Some kind of hierarchy implemented using an activity tag management process would allow subdivisions of activities. How would the tags be agreed upon and validated? I suggest the tags or categories would need to be requested in the case of my sport I would like: 

• rowing - fixed seat
• rowing - sliding seat
• rowing - indoor

[CreakyCrank]

@andrewrendle - I think also, it would need to take into account the type of data that would be created - for instance, rowing indoor wouldn't have GPS data (but could have stroke rate, heart rate, distance), where if you are outdoors, you would have GPS data (but may or may not have stroke rate). 

There would need to be a way to ensure the proper data synchronization occurs per type as well.

[kaczmar4]

Or it could be as simple as when you set up your account you choose a few default activities that pop up first and then the non-favorited activities would show up after?

[gbiv]

Yes, +1 to @kaczmar4 — seems like a simple user pref to pick your default pick list from the larger set for easy access.

[hmook]

Actually Inwas searching for disabling activity types I never use. So +1 for @kaczmar4 !