What do I categorize my exercise as on the fitbit?

OneTwentyThree

My gym offers the following classes, what should I pick for exercise on my fitbit? And does it actually matter if I categorize it correctly ?

Class Name- Description
Butt & Gutt- Target Training
All In One Cross- Training & Total Body
H.I.F.T- Target Training
Core & More- Target Training
Drenched Cross- Training & Total Body
Body Shred- Cross Training & Total Body
Body Box- Boot Camp & Kickboxing

SusanMFindlay

It mostly doesn't matter if you categorize it correctly (especially if you have one with a heart rate monitor). My FitBit tends to call my circuit class "aerobics"; occasionally "sport". Changing the name to "circuit" or "intervals" doesn't change any of the calorie info. (Nor does correcting "outdoor bike ride" to "walking" when I'm walking with the stroller.)

heybales

Pick whatever text label allows you to review your workouts later with ease.

It has no bearing on calories burned - merely for your benefit.

You can even go back and manually edit the title of the Activity Record to be more meaningful - give it exactly what the class name was.

That way a month away you can look back and see if you are doing better in that workout - is HR higher because you can go harder, or is HR lower because you can't go harder and time to switch class.

nhowell1

Fit it website states the following:

"For trackers that support heart rate monitoring, you would probably only want to log an activity manually if you forgot to wear your tracker or forgot to track the exercise. These trackers take heart rate into account when calculating calories burned, so even if an activity doesn't count steps, you still get calorie count information"

heybales

nhowell1 wrote: »

Fit it website states the following:

"For trackers that support heart rate monitoring, you would probably only want to log an activity manually if you forgot to wear your tracker or forgot to track the exercise. These trackers take heart rate into account when calculating calories burned, so even if an activity doesn't count steps, you still get calorie count information"

The problem is - there is ONLY a correlation between HR and calories burned for steady-state (same HR for 2-4 min) aerobic (requires oxygen for glucose/fat metabolism) exercise.
And if your stat's are not right for what it's assuming/estimating (VO2 max and HR max), that correlation isn't even very good.

The closer the exercise is to the outside edges of that range, the more inaccurate it's going to be.

Lifting and resistance training is non-steady-state, and usually anaerobic - totally opposite of what is needed for a decent estimate of calories burned.
Intervals same problem.

Any of those should be manually log if exercise calories is of importance. Running intervals would even be better via steps in that case, but time and total distance done is close enough and at least better.

Of course if you do 3 x weekly of 15 min, the amount of inaccuracy in the scheme of things is minor if you are otherwise pretty active.
If you do 5 x 45 min weekly and are otherwise NOT active - then that is meaningful.

Now, after all that explanation, what was being discussed in thread so far was actually about labeling, or editing, the activity name to something meaningful since it has no bearing on calculating calories.