What is Stryd's Running Stress Balance?

Running Stress Balance tells you how productive your recent training has been.

This graph helps you quickly identify which training state you are in. If you can align your training state with your fitness goals, you are in a sweet spot that is giving you the best chance at achieving your running goals.

Running Stress Balance breaks your training state into six different categories.

If you are in the Overreaching category, you have placed a tremendous amount of stress on your body in a short amount of time. If you do find yourself in this state, we recommend that you allow your body sufficient rest so you do not risk injury from overtraining.

If you are in the Cautionary category, your training volume has considerably ramped up. You should be careful not to remain in this category for an extended amount of time or push your way into the Overreaching category because you will likely see diminishing returns from your efforts. Ideally, you should allow for some extra recovery in order to move to a Productive status.

If you are in the Productive or Maintenance category, you are in the sweet spot between stress and recovery. Your fitness is steadily improving because you are stressing your body and then letting your body adapt and improve from that stress. Ideally, you want to be regularly shifting between the Productive category and Maintenance categories to establish a rhythm of steady improvement.

If you are in the Performance category, you are race-day ready. You have allowed your body to fully adapt from the recent training so you will be fresh for the race. This is the perfect status to be in if you want to give yourself the best chance of setting a new personal record on race day.

If you are in the N/A category, your recent training has not been enough to contribute to your fitness. You will soon reach a state of detraining. We recommend to ramp up your training to move back to a Productive or Maintenance state in order to achieve beneficial training.