Can you log weight training on Strava?

Yes. Choose Weight Training as the activity type and it records duration, heart rate if a watch supplies it, and a Relative Effort score. It does not record exercises, sets, reps or load, so nothing about the session is queryable afterwards.

Does Strava count strength training toward fitness?

Only through Relative Effort, which is derived from heart rate. Heavy lifting produces a modest average heart rate and large mechanical and neural fatigue, so a hard strength session contributes almost nothing to Strava's Fitness score while costing you real recovery capacity.

Why does my lifting session show such low Relative Effort?

Because Relative Effort is a heart-rate-weighted measure of time in zones. Five sets of heavy squats with three minutes of rest between them spends most of its duration at a low heart rate. The metric is working correctly; it is measuring the wrong thing for resistance training.

What should I use to track lifting alongside Strava?

A dedicated lifting log — Hevy, Strong or Alpha Progression — if you only need a record. If you want your lifting and your running to inform each other, that requires a system holding both, because neither app will read the other.

Does Strava Premium add strength tracking?

No. Premium adds segment leaderboards, route planning, Fitness and Freshness charts and analysis of your endurance activities. Nothing in it records set-level lifting data.

Does Strava Track Weight Training?

What Strava records

Pick Weight Training as the activity type and you get:

Duration. Fifty minutes.
Heart rate, if a watch supplied it.
Relative Effort, derived from time in heart-rate zones.
A calorie estimate, derived from the same.
A map, which is your gym.

That is the complete list.

What it does not record

Which exercises you did.
How much weight.
How many reps.
How close to failure each set was.
Anything per-set at all.

This is the important part, because those four are the entire content of a strength session. A lift is a load, a rep count and a proximity to failure. Strip those out and what remains is "was in a building for fifty minutes at an elevated heart rate".

The practical consequence: you cannot ask Strava what your squat did over the last eight weeks, because it never held the numbers. It is not that the query is hidden — the data does not exist.

Why Relative Effort reads so low

This surprises people the first time. A brutal squat session produces a lower Relative Effort than an easy jog.

The metric is a heart-rate-weighted measure of time in zones. Five sets of five at RIR 1, with three minutes of rest between them, spends most of its forty minutes at a resting-ish heart rate with brief spikes. An easy 45-minute run holds a moderate heart rate the whole way.

The metric is working correctly and measuring the wrong thing. The fatigue from heavy lifting is mechanical — tension on muscle and connective tissue — and neural, from producing high forces. Neither appears in heart rate. Why heart-rate-derived load systematically misreads resistance training.

So Strava's Fitness score barely moves for your lifting, and your Freshness suggests you are recovered on exactly the days after your hardest strength work.

What this costs a hybrid athlete

If you lift and run, three decisions depend on information Strava does not hold:

Whether today's run should happen as planned. Tuesday's five heavy sets of squats is the main determinant of what Wednesday's intervals will feel like, and Strava's Freshness has no record of it. Session order and spacing matter more than people expect.

Whether to deload. The signal is lifting volume plus endurance load plus recovery markers. Strava has one of the three. When a deload is actually indicated.

How much lifting volume you can afford this week. That depends on your endurance load, and no lifting app knows your mileage while no running app knows your sets. Count what you are actually carrying.

What to do instead

Keep logging it on Strava if you like the record. There is no harm in it, and the training log has value as a diary. Just do not read Relative Effort or Fitness as though they reflect your total training stress, because they reflect your aerobic training stress.

Add a real lifting log — Hevy, Strong or Alpha Progression — for load, reps and progression. Which one, and why.

Accept the seam, or close it. With Strava plus a lifting app, you have two accurate records and no shared view. Every cross-discipline decision — deload, session order, calorie target — stays in your head or in a spreadsheet. What that reconciliation costs.

The comparison

	Strava	Base
Accepts a lifting activity	Yes	Yes
Exercise recorded	No	Yes
Load per set	No	Yes
Reps per set	No	Yes
Proximity to failure (RIR)	No	Yes
Estimated 1RM trend	No	Yes
Weekly hard sets per muscle	No	Yes, fractional
Lifting affects endurance advice	No	Yes
Load metric used	Relative Effort, from HR	Sets and RIR, plus endurance minutes
Social and segments	Best in class	No

Short version: Strava is an excellent endurance product with a placeholder for strength. If lifting is incidental, log it there and ignore the numbers. If lifting is a goal, you need something that holds the sets — and if you want the two halves to inform each other, you need something that holds both. That is the gap.