Strava's Orange Indicator: Understanding Relative Effort and Training Load

What Does Orange Mean on Strava?

On Strava, the color orange predominantly signifies a "Relative Effort" score, indicating the physiological challenge and cardiovascular load of your activity. It's a key metric designed to help athletes understand the intensity of their workouts beyond just pace or power.

Understanding Strava's Relative Effort

Strava's "Relative Effort" is a proprietary metric designed to quantify the physiological cost of your training sessions. Unlike metrics that only measure output (like pace or power), Relative Effort considers your individual heart rate data to gauge how hard your body worked. The orange color associated with this metric is used to visually represent the intensity spectrum, with deeper or more prominent orange indicating a higher relative effort.

This score is particularly valuable because it:

• Normalizes Effort Across Activities: A high Relative Effort score for a long, easy run might be similar to a shorter, high-intensity cycling session, allowing for a more accurate comparison of overall training load.
• Accounts for Individual Physiology: It’s personalized to your unique heart rate zones, ensuring that the effort score reflects your body's response, not just a generic output.
• Prevents Overtraining or Undertraining: By tracking your cumulative Relative Effort, you can better manage your training load, preventing excessive fatigue or ensuring you're pushing hard enough to make progress.

The Science Behind Relative Effort

The calculation of Strava's Relative Effort is rooted in exercise physiology principles, similar to metrics like Training Impulse (TRIMP) or Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC). It leverages your heart rate data throughout an activity to determine the duration spent in various heart rate zones.

• Heart Rate Zones: Your maximum heart rate (MHR) is foundational. Strava typically uses age-predicted maximums or allows users to set their own. Time spent in higher heart rate zones (e.g., Zone 4: Threshold, Zone 5: Max Effort) contributes disproportionately more to the Relative Effort score than time spent in lower zones (e.g., Zone 1: Recovery, Zone 2: Endurance).
• Cumulative Load: The algorithm sums the "cost" of each minute (or even second) spent in different heart rate zones. This cumulative sum then translates into your Relative Effort score, which is represented by the intensity of the orange indicator. A higher, more intense orange indicates a greater physiological demand.
• Activity Type Considerations: While primarily heart rate-based, Strava also applies specific algorithms for different activity types (e.g., running, cycling, swimming, strength training) to provide a more accurate and context-aware effort score.

Interpreting Your Relative Effort Scores

When you see the orange Relative Effort indicator on your Strava activity, understanding its implications is key to informed training:

• Low Relative Effort (Light Orange/No Orange): Indicates an easy, recovery-focused, or low-intensity session. These are crucial for building aerobic base and facilitating recovery.
• Moderate Relative Effort (Medium Orange): Represents a steady, aerobic workout. These sessions build endurance and improve cardiovascular fitness without excessive strain.
• High Relative Effort (Deep Orange): Signifies a challenging workout, often involving high-intensity intervals, tempo runs, or long, sustained efforts near your threshold. These are essential for improving performance and pushing physiological limits, but require adequate recovery.

It's important to look at your Relative Effort over time. Strava provides weekly and monthly Relative Effort charts, allowing you to visualize trends in your training load. Spikes in orange over a short period might signal a need for more rest, while consistently low orange might indicate insufficient training stimulus for progress.

How to Maximize Your Use of Relative Effort

To get the most out of Strava's Relative Effort feature and the insights provided by the orange indicator:

• Wear a Heart Rate Monitor: For accurate Relative Effort scores, connecting a chest strap or optical wrist heart rate monitor to your device (and ensuring it syncs with Strava) is essential. Without heart rate data, Strava cannot calculate Relative Effort.
• Set Accurate Heart Rate Zones: Review your heart rate zone settings in Strava. If you know your actual maximum heart rate or lactate threshold heart rate, inputting these values will make your Relative Effort calculations more precise.
• Understand Your Baseline: Over several weeks, observe what "normal" Relative Effort scores look like for your typical training. This baseline helps you identify when you're pushing harder or taking it easier than usual.
• Integrate into Training Planning: Use your weekly Relative Effort total to guide your training. For example, if you have a high-intensity workout planned, you might aim for a lower Relative Effort on subsequent days to facilitate recovery. Conversely, if you're aiming for a peak performance, you might strategically reduce your Relative Effort in the week leading up to an event (tapering).

Beyond Relative Effort: Other Orange Indicators

While Relative Effort is the primary meaning of orange on Strava, minor or context-specific instances might also appear:

• Live Segments: During an activity, if you are attempting a Strava Live Segment and are ahead of your personal record (PR), the progress bar might turn orange or green, with orange often indicating a strong, potentially record-breaking pace.
• Challenge Progress: Occasionally, specific Strava challenges may use orange to highlight progress towards a goal or a particular achievement within the challenge.

However, the most significant and scientifically-backed use of orange on Strava is unequivocally tied to the Relative Effort metric, providing a crucial window into your physiological training load.

Conclusion: Leveraging Data for Smarter Training

The orange indicator for Relative Effort on Strava is more than just a color; it's a powerful data point that translates complex physiological responses into an easily digestible metric. By understanding what the orange means – a measure of your body's true effort during exercise – you can make more informed decisions about your training, optimize your load, reduce injury risk, and ultimately, achieve your fitness goals more effectively and sustainably. Embrace this data to train smarter, not just harder.