Walking briskly in place.

beulah81

I posted this in the Fitbit forum but decided to post it here as well. I need feedback from those who own any type of activity tracker.
When the weather changes I like to walk "briskly" in place for cardio. My Fitbit Zip counts steps when I do that but I know that the distance is mostly likely significantly off. Is there a way to log this activity to get a more accurate adjustment? I was thinking maybe taking the device off during the workout and logging it as a light aerobic exercise.

nicsflyingcircus

I think I am missing something here. You are walking in place for exercise, your fitbit is counting your steps... What's the problem?

Unless your fitbit has a constantly on GPS in it, the distance is just a ballpark calculation it takes from the average stride length (or custom, if you set that) for your height multiplied by how many steps you took.. Not super accurate anyway.

Personally, if the weather is bad, I walk circles in my house for activity, lol. I do them fairly briskly and my garmin counts the steps. I've never worried about the distance.

beulah81

nicsflyingcircus wrote: »

I think I am missing something here. You are walking in place for exercise, your fitbit is counting your steps... What's the problem?

Unless your fitbit has a constantly on GPS in it, the distance is just a ballpark calculation it takes from the average stride length (or custom, if you set that) for your height multiplied by how many steps you took.. Not super accurate anyway.

Personally, if the weather is bad, I walk circles in my house for activity, lol. I do them fairly briskly and my garmin counts the steps. I've never worried about the distance.

Thank you for your reply @nicsflyingcircus ! I do have my stride length custom set and no, GPS is not always on. I do house walk as well but also step in place while watching a show and such. I was under the impression that if I marched in place(I believe @heybales mentioned it in another thread), distance picked up from steps will be inaccurate and the adjustment from it will be off as well.

lorrpb

To log walking, log the pace and time. You don’t need distance. I would pick a slow pace.

riffraff2112

I am pretty sure the fitbit bases calories burned on steps (which is then converted to distance via a stride length). Unless there is a way to set the actual distance traveled but I haven't encountered this.

heybales

riffraff2112 wrote: »

I am pretty sure the fitbit bases calories burned on steps (which is then converted to distance via a stride length). Unless there is a way to set the actual distance traveled but I haven't encountered this.

You can manually enter a run/walk Workout Record, give the pace and time, or distance and time, and it'll overwrite whatever stats Fitbit had in the daily totals.
You can even compare that to the Activity Record snapshot created for the workout, since those steps/distance/calories will have been replaced.

@beulah81 - it is true that the odds your impacts from marching in place would cause a calculated distance to be correct for calorie burn done - you never know!

The one gal that was doing running in place did her 5 min session and noted her HR (finger pulse) at the end, had the distance Fitbit thought was done.
She then did treadmill and caught the pace where the HR matched, did 5 min, and distance matched.
So in her case right on.
Anything within 5% if you tested would be close enough.

beulah81

heybales wrote: »

@beulah81 - it is true that the odds your impacts from marching in place would cause a calculated distance to be correct for calorie burn done - you never know!

The one gal that was doing running in place did her 5 min session and noted her HR (finger pulse) at the end, had the distance Fitbit thought was done.
She then did treadmill and caught the pace where the HR matched, did 5 min, and distance matched.
So in her case right on.
Anything within 5% if you tested would be close enough.

Thank you @heybales!