How accurate are HRM and Trainers for calories burned?

helocat
helocat Posts: 40 Member
edited November 13 in Fitness and Exercise
My Paloton trainer bike says I burned 560 Calories in a 45min training class. However my Apple watch only monitoring HR set to indoor cycling says almost 700 calories burned. (Hard class for me, with lots of intervals and hills HR was peaking allot! I was as sweaty mess by the end. GOOD CLASS!)

The bike keeps track of cadence, resistance, KW of output power and HR by the second to come up with the calories burned. Of course the Apple watch only does elapsed time and HR. I am going by the Trainer since it has more metrics measuring by the second but still how accurate are these things really?

Replies

  • deannalfisher
    deannalfisher Posts: 5,600 Member
    does the bike take age/weight into account or is it just the stats you mentioned
  • ajwcyclist2016
    ajwcyclist2016 Posts: 161 Member
    Not 100% sure but I guess fairly close as long as have been set up correctly with age , weight, height etc. Then I presume fairly close
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    helocat wrote: »
    The bike keeps track of cadence, resistance, KW of output power

    If the power measurement is legit and accurate, the calorie count from the machine will be within 95 % of the gospel truth. You cannot get the level of accuracy in a power meter outside of a laboratory setting.

    HR is irrelevant and not factored into the equation.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    deannalfisher wrote: »
    does the bike take age/weight into account or is it just the stats you mentioned

    Doesn't matter, it measures the physical work you're doing, and all humans have nearly identical metabolic efficiency on a bicycle.
  • MeanderingMammal
    MeanderingMammal Posts: 7,866 Member
    helocat wrote: »
    ...with lots of intervals and hills HR was peaking allot!

    So lots of sources of error in anything HR based. Leading and lagging generated error as does cardiac drift.
    KW of output power

    That's your meaningful data source.
  • helocat
    helocat Posts: 40 Member
    deannalfisher wrote: »
    does the bike take age/weight into account or is it just the stats you mentioned

    Yes the bike does take in Age, Weight and height in its calculations. Forgot about that since that's just in my user profile for my bike. The Apple watch also has age and weight too.

    @Meaderingm I was thinking the same thing, the KW output is the real data. OK cool I will keep going by what the bikes output is. I was surprised at the amount of calories burned in just 45min. But at the same time it was not easy and had to push myself to keep at it to the end.
  • BrianSharpe
    BrianSharpe Posts: 9,248 Member
    If it's measuring your watts I'd go with the bike, many HRMs correlate heart rate to caloric expenditure when there is not a linear relationship.
  • rileysowner
    rileysowner Posts: 8,336 Member
    helocat wrote: »
    My Paloton trainer bike says I burned 560 Calories in a 45min training class. However my Apple watch only monitoring HR set to indoor cycling says almost 700 calories burned. (Hard class for me, with lots of intervals and hills HR was peaking allot! I was as sweaty mess by the end. GOOD CLASS!)

    The bike keeps track of cadence, resistance, KW of output power and HR by the second to come up with the calories burned. Of course the Apple watch only does elapsed time and HR. I am going by the Trainer since it has more metrics measuring by the second but still how accurate are these things really?

    Does the bike have a power meter built in? If it does that will be far more accurate than HR.
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