Garmin is capitalizing on a new sports trend. Strava, on the other hand, is focusing on safety with a new feature.
With the Fenix and Enduro, Garmin has a number of smartwatches that are very popular among athletes, who in turn share their data via Strava. The brand therefore knows better than anyone what is going on in the sports world. It therefore also brings one of the latest sports to its smart watches.
You probably haven’t heard of rucking. No, this is not an 18+ sport, but the latest fitness trend. Many people are going out with their backpacks.
Garmin is going to focus on rucking
The trend of late 2024/early 2025 seems to be rucking. Rucking is walking or hiking with a backpack containing a certain weight. You can actually compare it to what soldiers often do. It puts less pressure on your knees and ankles, but the extra weight on your back allows you to burn just as much fat.
Anyway, how exactly do you properly measure your efforts? Normal hiking is of course different from carrying a heavy backpack. Fortunately, Garmin has a special solution for this.
A leaker reports that Garmin is going to bring this option to its smartwatches. Moreover, this will also allow you to manually enter how much weight you have on your back. Once you’ve done this, your watch can display distance, speed, impact of exercise and VO2 Max. If all goes well, this feature should be live by the end of the year.
Strava focuses on safety
For athletes, good news is also coming from Strava. The world’s best-known running and cycling app lets you exercise even more safely. It does so by expanding its Heatmaps. This makes it easier to see where many people are running. Useful in winter, when it gets dark quickly and you might feel a little unsafe. You can then see that again on your Garmin.
(Image: Strava)
The new feature is available to all Strava members. Dark, thick lines show where many people are walking, while light, thin lines show where not many people are.
Strava now has four different heatmaps. Global and Personal already existed, but Night and Weekly are new. Night focuses only on people running between sunset and sunrise, while Weekly shows only the last week. The latter is ideal for finding out if a road is open, for example.
So you can exercise optimally with both Strava and Garmin. Will you go for a ruck or opt for an evening run?
