Fitness trackers for weight lifting

To @HaibaneReki , how is your Fitbit? I've heard middle-of-the-road reviews on it, like its calorie tracking isn't good (with cardio and steady-state activity) and that it can actually burn the wrist and leave a scar. So I've been hesitant to get it, even though I've had my eye on the Surge? What would you say about it? Or, to open it up to anybody, is there a product you'd recommend? I wanted to get one for calorie tracking and sleep tracking. I have sleep issues and I'm wondering if Fitbit or any other product can shed some light on what's going on at night. A bonus would be if it interfaces with your phone so you can skip tracks for music or anything I've seen those fancy gadgets do in the photos. It should be able to hook up to Android and Windows.

Also, is there a fitness tracker than can keep track of your rests? What I mean is, if I take a minute rest between sets, can I program my fitness tracker to beep when I need to get back to work? I program it for a minute, tap it when I'm done a set, and then in 50 seconds, it warns me to get back to work soon? Something like that. Sometimes there's no clock where I'm at or I forget to watch the time. Not that I'm one of those people that counts every second, but when your mind wanders, it's hard to even ballpark your rests.

I'm a bit perplexed with these devices tracking (in some of the described cases) more calories than one would expect to have burned. It's usually the opposite since there is barely any time for the heart rate to go up and that doesn't register as anything strenuous.

It must be said though, that for some types of weights training, it can match expenditure reasonably well, and those are the circuit/lighter-weights activities where there's quite a bit of cardio.

For heavy lifting HRM is hopeless, not only because it won't measure much, but also because a huge part of the calories burned are burned by tissue rebuild later on, not during the lifting itself.

lostinwebspace wrote: »

To @HaibaneReki , how is your Fitbit? I've heard middle-of-the-road reviews on it, like its calorie tracking isn't good (with cardio and steady-state activity) and that it can actually burn the wrist and leave a scar. So I've been hesitant to get it, even though I've had my eye on the Surge? What would you say about it? Or, to open it up to anybody, is there a product you'd recommend? I wanted to get one for calorie tracking and sleep tracking. I have sleep issues and I'm wondering if Fitbit or any other product can shed some light on what's going on at night. A bonus would be if it interfaces with your phone so you can skip tracks for music or anything I've seen those fancy gadgets do in the photos. It should be able to hook up to Android and Windows.

Also, is there a fitness tracker than can keep track of your rests? What I mean is, if I take a minute rest between sets, can I program my fitness tracker to beep when I need to get back to work? I program it for a minute, tap it when I'm done a set, and then in 50 seconds, it warns me to get back to work soon? Something like that. Sometimes there's no clock where I'm at or I forget to watch the time. Not that I'm one of those people that counts every second, but when your mind wanders, it's hard to even ballpark your rests.

Hi @lostinwebspace ad first question - I swear by it before, I had a Flex and I lived by it's estimations for almost a year never straying from my goal weight for more than a kilo both ways. Make sure You have Your profile setup with correct data and the MFP-FitBit sync properly.

Recently got the Charge HR - which for me is the perfect size/features ratio. The Surge is a little too big for my taste. The Charge HR also turns the sleep mode on automatically and so far is pretty accurate about it. There's a discussion about HR monitors and strength training - but I'm on the "use it" side, at least regarding FitBit, because unlike the stand-alone HRMs it also knows that I'm not running so the cal. exp. equation is different than when doing cardio.

Ad second question - there's Microsoft Band that I know of - it's a proper smart wear (not just watch) - Bing (or Google ) it. But that's a little pricey, somewhere along the Surge, which itself seemed little overpriced to me.


Anyway, I'm extremely happy with my Charge HR and would call it the perfect fitness tracker from what choice is now on the market. See You there http://www.fitbit.com/user/2Q8G5Z

Have fun.

I can't remember exactly where I found the following information but I have been using the formula below for over a year to calculate calorie burns for my lifting sessions. It seems to be accurate, for me atleast.

your weight x how long your session was
Then take that and multiply it by a number between 0.020 and 0.030 with 0.020 being a very light effort lifting session and 0.030 being a really strenuous one.

So for example for me yesterday (shoulders and abs) 143lbs x 25 minutes = 3575 x 0.022 (wasn't very strenuous like a leg day would be) = 78.65 calories burned.

Hope this helps.

Edited to add, I only count minutes of actual lifting, not rest.