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Posted by Meredith Dietz

https://lifehacker.com/health/stravas-new-power-skills-feature-gives-cyclists-even-more-training-insights?utm_medium=RSS

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Strava's latest Power Skills feature is a nice addition for data-driven cyclists. Built on technology from The Breakaway (which Strava acquired earlier this year), this tool transforms your power meter data into actionable training insights. Here's everything you need to know about using it to improve your riding.

How does Strava's Power Skills work

Power Skills uses your cycling power meter data to identify your strengths and areas for improvement across different types of efforts. Think of it as a fitness report card that analyzes your cycling performance across multiple disciplines. You’ll see twelve specific Power Intervals that you can work on, each benchmarked against thresholds adjusted for age, gender, weight, and so on. Then, each skill is made up of different combinations of these Power Intervals.

From here, Power Skills breaks down cycling performance into three main categories, each targeting different aspects of cycling fitness. Here's how Strava describes them:

• Sprinting: Short bursts of extremely high output. Reflects your ability to generate explosive power. Power Intervals: 15 sec, 30 sec, and 1 minute.

• Attacking: Balanced efforts that combine sprinting power with climbing endurance. Useful for short climbs or race breakaways. Power Intervals: 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and 10 minutes.

• Climbing: Long, sustained efforts on climbs, flats, or workouts requiring steady pacing and endurance. Power Intervals: 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and 60 minutes.

Before going any further, I should clarify that to use Strava's Power Skills, you do need a Strava subscription and actual power meter data from your bicycle or indoor bike. If you're interested in making this serious biking upgrade (which Strava historically recommends), Garmin offers trusted options here.

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What makes this special?

For cyclists, power meters measure the actual watts of energy they're producing while pedaling; it's like having a direct measurement of your engine's output. The tool breaks down a rider's personal power records across those 12 intervals and highlights strengths and weaknesses, with the option to compare recent efforts against lifetime bests.

What's particularly helpful is that it ranks your performances against a standard that adjusts for age and body weight, showing where they stand relative to "what's possible" (your potential) across eight levels. This means a 50-year-old cyclist isn't being compared to 20-year-old pros, which is huge for Strava's famously competitive social media ecosystem.

Understanding your Power Skills profile

Power Skills compares your recent efforts against lifetime bests, so you can see if your training is moving you in the right direction across different intervals. Here's what else to know to really make the most of it.

The visual breakdown

Your Power Skills profile shows a visual representation of your 12 key power intervals, from 5-second sprints to 60-minute efforts. Each interval is color-coded to show your relative strength in that area.

Skill rankings

Like I describe above, this system ranks your performance across eight levels, adjusting for age and weight. This means you're being compared to realistic benchmarks for your demographic, not just elite riders. These rankings help you understand where you sit in the broader cycling population.

Strength and growth areas

The main point of Power Skills is to identify your natural strengths and highlights areas with the most room for improvement. This is crucial for targeted training. Instead of generic "ride more," you get specific guidance on which energy systems need work.

Limitations to keep in mind

Elephant in the room: This feature only works for cyclists, not runners. So as a runner myself, I'm holding out hope that Strava finds a way to make this feature work even without a physical power meter on a bike. For now, Garmin seems to have figured it out.

Some other limitations to keep in mind are that this sort of feature requires consistent power meter data to be meaningful. Plus, it's historical analysis only; it doesn't prescribe specific workouts. It's probably best used as one tool in a broader training approach, not the only metric you look toward for guidance. Still, Power Skills is a cool way to use data-driven insights to train smarter, not just harder.

https://lifehacker.com/health/stravas-new-power-skills-feature-gives-cyclists-even-more-training-insights?utm_medium=RSS

Posted by Lindsey Ellefson

https://lifehacker.com/health/the-best-bathroom-scales?utm_medium=RSS

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Keeping track of what you weigh is important (although there are reasonable arguments against keeping track of it too much). I am really into tracking all of all my health-related data and organizing it on my phone so I can monitor trends and changes, so weighing myself consistently is just part of that larger mission. For me, that involves using a smart scale, which syncs with all my other health apps and creates a full picture of how I'm doing, fitness-wise—but if you don't want to get that tech-y with it, you have other options, too. Here are the best smart and dumb scales.

The best bathroom scales with cool features

These have additional or cool features like body fat measurement—though you should probably take those figures with a grain of salt—that go beyond just telling you your weight.

• I have this iHealth Nexus Smart Scale ($35) and love it so much I bought another one for my boyfriend. We've been using them for about two years with no problems. I weigh myself every other morning or so and the batteries lasted about 18 months before needing to be replaced. The price is accessible, but it still comes with a ton of features. It connects to your phone via Bluetooth, then it assesses your weight, BMI, and even makes some estimates of things like muscle mass and bone mass, importing all of that information to your device, making it downloadable, and creating graphs of changes over time. Because it syncs so easily with your phone's native health app, it also, technically, syncs with any other apps that are also tied in there. For instance, I use a nutrient-tracking app called Lifesum. My weight is automatically updated and inputted there when I weigh myself on the iHealth Nexus and Lifesum adjusts my calorie and nutrient suggestions for the day to keep me on track with my goals.

• I'm an Apple Watch girl, so I'm a fan of my scale for its easy integration with Apple Health. Generally, if you're using a specific product or suite of products, I think you should stay in the same family as much as you can. The easier tracking is, the more likely you are to do it and stick with it. If you're a Fitbit user, grab the Fitbit Aria Air ($50), which syncs directly with your Fitbit dashboard, not Apple Health. It's relatively simple, only showing your weight and BMI, but really, that might be all you need. It's lightweight, "sleek," and "minimalist," according to reviewers, so it's not a bulky addition to the bathroom, either.

Fitbit Aria Air

$49.95 at Amazon

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• The Shapa scale ($120) is an innovative smart scale that shows you colors, not numbers, so you don't get too caught up monitoring your exact weight. I have a friend who is a big fan of this approach and this device. The colors refer to your average weight over time and if you see blue on your app, you're losing weight. Teal means you're starting to lose weight, green means you're maintaining it, light gray means you're starting to gain, and dark gray means you are gaining weight. That's it. It's popular on Reddit, too, where users praise it for helping them get over scale anxiety. It's not helpful to use a device if it's going to stress you out or, worse, demoralize you to the point that you stop using it. This simple, color-based approach helps you ignore numbers (which fluctuate over the course of an average day) and think more long-term.

• This Renpho smart scale ($43) is cool because it lights up, either to remind you periodically to weigh yourself or to serve as a nightlight, depending on your preferences and needs. It's a versatile option that's great for small bathrooms. For its low price, it also packs quite a few punches: It syncs with Google Fit, Samsung Health, Fitbit, and MyFitnessPal, estimates metrics like body fat percentage and muscle mass, and even has baby- and pet-weighing modes, plus specialized modes for athletes.

The best cheap scales

Don't need the bells and whistles? That's fine. You can pick up an inexpensive one that just shows you your weight, easy peasy. You might still want to track this somewhere, like an Excel spreadsheet, so you can do half the work the smart scales do on your own, but if you're someone who gets a little too into weighing yourself or number-crunching, you can also just use these on their own for periodic check-ins.

• The basic scale I use when I'm not using my iNexus isn't available on Amazon anymore, but this HomeBuds digital scale ($13) is very similar: There's an easy-to-read, bright LED display and the machine turns on automatically when you step on it. There isn't much else to say—and for a lot of people, that's the point!

• This GE digital scale ($30) displays your body weight and BMI. I'll be real with you: This one has gone up in price (while the rest of the ones have gone down) over the past year, so now that it's inching into the $30+ range, it might be worth considering spending an extra $10 on a smart scale, or at least doing so down the line. You can use this as a bridge between the classic way and the more modern way, as it comes from a trusted brand and displays more measurements than the standard scale without diving into phone-connected territory.

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https://lifehacker.com/health/the-best-bathroom-scales?utm_medium=RSS

Posted by Jake Peterson

https://lifehacker.com/tech/make-old-iphone-feel-new-again?utm_medium=RSS

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Okay, I'll admit, the new iPhone Air is really cool. Not to mention, the battery life on the 17 Pro Max is legitimately impressive. And even the base model iPhone 17 is a great deal, offering pro-features and 256GB of storage at that same $799. Once again, Apple is tempting me with new iPhones.

It's normal to want the latest and greatest device, especially when Apple is behind it. But if you're like me, you really don't need a new iPhone. To be honest, had it not meant an accidental untimely end, I'd still be rocking with my pacific blue iPhone 12 Pro Max (RIP). My 15 Pro Max is alive and well, however, though it is looking a bit vintage against Apple's fresh slate of devices.

Rather than shell out a significant amount of money on an iPhone 17 and unnecessarily retire a perfectly working device, I suggest many of us try to breathe some life back into our aging iPhones.

Replace the battery

If your phone is a few years old, you’re likely not getting the same power-on time as you did when you first bought it. A new battery usually costs a fraction the price of even a mid-range phone, but it can do more than just extend your time away from the charger.

Some phones—especially iPhones—slow themselves down automatically when the battery gets too old. (Apple got in some hot water years ago for not disclosing this practice.) The operating system system does this to prevent your phone from shutting down unexpectedly, and while you can turn this feature off, you probably won’t see nearly the same performance you would with a new battery. Even if it did, you run the risk of your iPhone crashing at a moment's notice. A fresh battery can change all that.

To see whether your battery might be due for an upgrade, open Settings > Battery > Battery Health. Here, check your "Maximum Capacity," which is the amount of charge the battery can hold relative to when it was new. When this number reaches 80% or below, it's likely a good idea to replace the battery. Take note of any warnings that your battery has degraded. These are also excellent clues that you probably need a replacement.

Clear up some storage space

Storage management isn’t fun, but it’s essential no matter your device. If you have apps, photos, videos, and more filling your phone to the brim, it’s going to cause problems. That’s because all computers need some extra storage space to function properly. If your phone keeps screaming at you that’s it’s nearly full, believe it.

The good news is, if it's time to clear some storage, you don’t need to clear a whole lot—just at least 5–10% of your total memory. These days, iOS makes it easy to see what’s taking up the most storage on your device. Head to Settings > General > iPhone Storage. Here, iOS will offer tips for deleting large files to free up room. For example, when I head to this page, I see suggestions to "Review Large Attachments" in Messages, which would save me up to 40.55 GB, apparently; and "Offload Unused Apps," which would clear out 16.31 GB. Whittle things down until you see that you have at least a small chunk of free space available.

Clean out your charging port

If you find that charging your phone is impossible, or that it charges slowly or inconsistently, you don’t necessarily need to buy a whole new device. Instead, try cleaning out the charging port. You wouldn’t believe how clogged these things get; lint and debris from your pockets can get trapped and packed down into the port, blocking the charger’s ability to properly connect.

To clean it, use a thin piece of wire (like a SIM tool or an untwisted paperclip) to carefully scoop any obstructions out of the port. The key word here is carefully; this port is fragile, and if you scrape the connections too hard, you could damage them irrevocably.

If your port still won't charge after a good cleaning, all hope isn't lost. If your iPhone supports wireless charging, consider using one of these chargers instead of a wired connection. Even better, use MagSafe, if your iPhone supports it, so you can hold your iPhone while its charging.

Swap out your wallpaper

Every time you look at your phone, you’re probably looking at the same Lock Screen wallpaper. If you’ve gotten bored of it, that sameness could be influencing your desire to upgrade.

It’s a small change, but see if you feel different after replacing the wallpaper, preferably to something totally different from what you had before. Pick something with an opposite color scheme, subject, art style, etc. If you haven't changed your wallpaper in a while, you might be surprised by the amount of customization Apple allows for now. You can choose to match your Home Screen's wallpaper to your Lock Screen, or have a different option altogether.

Change up your app and widget arrangements

Your Home Screen layout is likely getting stale as well. As with the new wallpaper options, Apple has made some significant changes to the way you can customize your Home Screen in recent years. Try adding new widgets that you haven’t used before and mix up the order of the apps you use on a daily basis. You can even put them anywhere you want now, a la Android.

Get a new case

Part of the appeal of a new phone is the new look; instead of buying a new device just for a new color or because your old one is dinged up, trying slapping a new case on your existing phone instead. You’d be surprised how transformative this can be. A leather case can make your device feel a bit more premium, while a colorful silicone one can brighten up its appearance. You can even find one that will replace your wallet.

Or, if you're feeling daring, try going caseless for a bit. You'll put your iPhone at risk of damage, sure, but it's nice to be reminded of how these devices really look and feel from time to time.

Replace your screen or screen protector

Stop living with that beat-up screen protector. A good one can be a bit pricey, but a cracked and scratched piece of plastic or glass is likely taking its toll on your perception of your phone. Similarly, if your phone’s display has taken a beating, think about getting it fixed, too. Depending on the phone, that can get really expensive (for newer devices, Apple charges up to $379 for the favor), but if it’s between that or a $1,000 iPhone 17 Pro, there’s a clear winner for your wallet. (It’s also worth noting that you typically can’t trade in a phone with a broken screen.)

Upgrade to iOS 26

iOS 26 is just about to drop, and it marks arguably the biggest design change for iPhones since iOS 7. That's in large part due to the new Liquid Glass design, and while it may not be for everyone, I think a lot of people are going to find it refreshing. You can even choose to see your apps and widgets in clear mode, going back to Home Screen customization.

The thing about iOS 26 is, it doesn't require a new iPhone to run. In fact, it works with iPhones as old as the iPhone 11, which dropped back in 2019. While you need an iPhone 15 Pro or newer to run Apple Intelligence features, I'd wager most of us don't need these. Instead, the visual refresh of iOS 26, coupled with the new features that everyone gets, should make even an iPhone 11 feel a bit newer.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/make-old-iphone-feel-new-again?utm_medium=RSS