18 Emerging Fitness Trends You’ll Definitely Want to Know About

• Updated on: 2019-12-14
• Read original article here

Strava, the community-based tracking app for fitness, has dropped their 2019 report: which has got WHquite hyped. Why? Because it reveals a whole load of emerging health trends sourced from data collected from the platform's 48 million members in 195 countries – meaning a whole lot of insight into where we're headed in 2020, from a sweat sesh point of view.

Now in its 10th year, Strava has seen a million new athletes join the platform every month (the data shows what this means, IRL – half the peloton at the Tour de France and nearly half of all runners from the London Marathon shared their race on the social network in 2019.)

From the rise of the ultramarathon to the piece of cycling tech that's getting people excited, scroll on to see what they mined from all that info.

In a study analysing the 7.5% of Strava users who are in the UK, the brand found that 308.5 million km was covered by running and 937.2 million km was covered by cycling. That’s equivalent to 31,084 times the circumference of the earth.

There has been a global 7.6% increase in the share of runners who have run a marathon or an ultramarathon – and 3.9% rise in the UK.

The Hoka One One Carbon X is the fastest growing training shoe, in terms of sales. With:

The Polar Vantage M was the fastest growth piece of new tech in 2019. With:

The Garmin Edge 530 was the fastest growing new cycling device. With:

The Nike Pegasus were the most popular shoes at the London marathon. With:

The fasted growing workout app was Aaptiv. With:

The results showed that most runners and riders head out between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. on the weekdays – and, more often than not, take a friend with them. And good news is, having a pal by your side isn't a distraction, it's actually pretty beneficial. People that get out cycling or running with their friends are said to cover twice the distance they would on their own.

Although individuals are pushing themselves harder, taking on challenges like ultramarathons, the number of people taking part in parkruns are on the rise. 2019 saw the parkrun celebrating its 15th anniversary.

Strava data shows that the days of putting a workout off because of the cold are long gone. Their results are showing that Platforms such as Zwift and TrainerRoad are enhancing indoor training, whilst the increased number of classes are making working out more accessible. January 2019 saw 15.2% of Strava users running and cycling indoors, compared to 2018's 12.7% and 2017's 9.3%.

The dark art of motivation has always been a hard one to crack. But, according to Strava's research, these are the magic trio.

Athletes aiming for three activities a week instead of two tend to be more consistent, resulting in two times as many activities over the year.

Marathoners who improved their PBs increased their non-run activity by 13%.

In their first six months on Strava Summit (a premium, focused membership platform) athletes upload an average of two more activities a month.

Among cyclists globally, women are less likely to commute than men (though this is not true in cycle-friendly Denmark.)

Activities like yoga, weight training and walking are among the fastest growing activity types for runners and cyclists.

Single-sport athletes have been on a steady decline year after year – check out the specifics, below.

Buddy up to not only hold yourself accountable to attending that morning cycle sesh, but because you'll end up getting much more out of your training. The data shows that group riders cover twice the distance than if they were to go on their own.

Time to brush up on your Vinyasa for 2020, because yoga is seeing a massive rise – assumedly as a way to improve mobility, as well as for the mind-calming benefits. There has been a 74% increase in the number of people getting their zen on this year.

We've all heard about the many benefits weight training has, so it's no surprise this form of exercise has gone up by a whopping +289% over 2019

Start planning your New Year's resolution now. Strava's data shows that those who set goals in January are increasingly like to stick to it throughout the year.

Like this article? SIGN UP TO OUR NEWSLETTER to get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox.