Officiating Calories

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pepsidude1
pepsidude1 Posts: 2 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
There are only two categories for Officiating - Basketball and Softball. Is there any way this application would be able to add more? Football, soccer come to mind as two popular ones that would burn a lot of calories. I would like to know as I am a football referee and I don't do fitbits, trackers etc...

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  • SueInAz
    SueInAz Posts: 6,592 Member
    edited August 2015
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    The problem with this is that there's no way to truly judge how much energy you are expending during a game without using a heart rate monitor or activity tracker. Every game is different. Are you refereeing 8 year olds or professional players? Which position are you in? How much running did you actually do during the game and how much standing? Were you jogging alongside the players or running flat out trying to keep up? MFP doesn't know these things so it'll just give you some kind of average based on who knows what.

    So while MFP can make some kind of guess, that's all it will ever be, and it'll be a wild one at that. One I know that I wouldn't trust. If you really want to know, use a tracker. Otherwise, just use the basketball one. It'll be as good as any other guess.
  • pepsidude1
    pepsidude1 Posts: 2 Member
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    Thanks for the reply. I guess that is what I am looking for, a ball park guess. All the other sport activities you can say the same thing...playing football for instance, are you a lineman, FB, QB, WR etc... all will expend a different amount of energy throughout the game - yet you have one general number for those...so I was seeking a similar level of confidence for officiating a game (High School).
  • SueInAz
    SueInAz Posts: 6,592 Member
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    pepsidude1 wrote: »
    Thanks for the reply. I guess that is what I am looking for, a ball park guess. All the other sport activities you can say the same thing...playing football for instance, are you a lineman, FB, QB, WR etc... all will expend a different amount of energy throughout the game - yet you have one general number for those...so I was seeking a similar level of confidence for officiating a game (High School).
    I don't work for MFP, just a user like you. You posted this in the general fitness area so I responded. :)

    Most of us who have been using MFP for awhile know better than to trust the calories this application spits out for activities where the level of effort is unknown. Many people choose to simply halve them to stay on the safe side. I bought myself a heart rate monitor years ago.

    Your choices at this point, if you don't plan to obtain a tracker would be to:

    * use the basketball number
    * use a running entry at the speed you figure you were running and the total number of minutes you guess you ran during the game
    * create your own entry for your football refereeing activities and calculate the number on another website which has a calculation for it
  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
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    MFP use published METs (metabolic equivalent for tasks) to estimate Calories burned. The majority of MFP METs seem to be based on the 2011 values found in the Compendium of Physical Activities.

    The only two published METs values found for officiating sports are for basketball and softball.
    Reference:
    https://sites.google.com/site/compendiumofphysicalactivities/Activity-Categories/sports
  • sjohnson__1
    sjohnson__1 Posts: 405 Member
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    If I were you I would try using TDEE. Simple solution, IMO.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    I'd say basketball is closer to soccer and football in aspect of moving around a lot more than softball.

    And ditto's to above METS database - if they haven't done a study on it (which those are based on), then nothing to go on unless someone that uses an activity tracker shares some data.

    They'd have to make a workout record that shows calorie burn for the chunk of time of just the game with hopefully average time-outs, ect. No half-time.
    They'd need to share their resting calorie burn per minute normally, which the trackers show.

    Total calorie burn / minutes = activity cal burn/min.

    Activity cal burn / resting cal burn (per min both) = METS

    METS x your resting calorie burn x minutes = calorie burn.

    For purpose of eatback on MFP, might as well apply the difference up front by subtracting 1 from that METS value before doing your math.
    MFP already accounted for your resting metabolism, really no need to include it.
  • iplayoutside19
    iplayoutside19 Posts: 2,304 Member
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    I'm not a referee but I do "The Box" on the chain gang for the local HS Team. I really think you need an HRM or some other tracker because each game is different. I remember some games it was so up and down I felt really worn out and tired after the game...probably ran 10 or 11 90 yard sprints that game. Other games, forget it, it wasn't worth logging.
  • MeanderingMammal
    MeanderingMammal Posts: 7,866 Member
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    iplayoutside19 wrote: »
    ....probably ran 10 or 11 90 yard sprints that game. Other games, forget it, it wasn't worth logging.

    In which case a figure derived from an HRM would be meaningless.

    Suspect something like a simple fitbit might give the least inaccurate assessment
  • Hornsby
    Hornsby Posts: 10,322 Member
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    Honestly, I would just add it to my "activity level" instead of trying to one off it every time.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    MeanderingMammal wrote: »
    iplayoutside19 wrote: »
    ....probably ran 10 or 11 90 yard sprints that game. Other games, forget it, it wasn't worth logging.

    In which case a figure derived from an HRM would be meaningless.

    Suspect something like a simple fitbit might give the least inaccurate assessment

    This.

    If it's going to be a part of your life, then a cheap Fitbit Zip will handle that activity just fine.

    In addition, any non-step based workouts you do that you manually log now - can use the Fitbit database which does better math to get a calorie value than say MFP or other sites that only get your weight.

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