Strava, the social network for athletes that recently tapped Instagram executive James Quarles to serve as its chief executive officer, announced a number of partnerships with gyms and fitness apps this week as it seeks to widen the scope of its service and allow users to track workouts from select exercise machines.
The company announced an integration within the Strava app called Gym and Studio Sync, which lets athletes record and share all of their workouts in one place on a Facebook-like newsfeed, while discovering new gyms, studios and fitness routines.
The feature will allow Strava users to link their profile to select gyms and apps so that workouts automatically upload to their Strava feed.
Launch partners include Flywheel Sports, an indoor cycling studio; Life Time, a chain of 127 fitness centers across the U.S. that offers cycling machines and classes; LiveRowing, a mobile app for the Concept2 rowing machine; Expresso, a brand of indoor bikes spanning 3,000 gyms; and Fitbod, an app that provides personalized strength training workouts with more than 200,000 subscribers.
This follows Strava’s partnership in 2016 with Peloton, a consumer indoor bike that enables athletes to tap professional cycling classes from a screen on the equipment and easily share their workouts through the Strava platform. Peloton now draws more than 14,000 activities to Strava per week.
“Sports and exercise are integral to the lives of Strava community members, with 76% of them doing activities beyond running or cycling more than 3 times per week,” Quarles said in a statement. “Whether you’re sweating inside or outdoors, it’s more fun and motivating when you share your progress with a community who is also active.”
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Prior to the launch of Gym and Studio Sync, athletes could log 31 different activities on Strava, including a range of sports such as running, cycling, skiing, rowing and rock climbing. As more partners join the integration, Strava expects the social network to expand into more studios and across more disciplines.
Strava’s announcement is the latest that seeks to integrate third-party fitness equipment with an app in order to provide a more complete picture of a person’s workout regimen.
Earlier this year, Apple announced an integration for Apple Watch with global fitness equipment makers Life Fitness and Technogym, which together represent roughly 80% of the machines in gyms.
Apple’s integration, which is set to officially roll out this fall with Apple’s newest operating system for the watch, includes sending information calories, distance, speed, floors climbed, incline pace from treadmills, ellipticals, stairs steppers and indoor bikes, to Apple Watch.