Exercise bike app

What metrics does your wife's bike record?
Power would be great (watts), "speed" needs to be treated with the utmost suspicion as stationary bikes don't move.

What connectivity does the bike have (bluetooth or ANT+ perhaps)?


Personally I link my Garmin to my indoor bike and it transfers the very accurate calorie estimates (based on power) to Strava but I choose not to link Strava to MyFitnessPal.

I can also use the bike's specific app (Wattbike Hub) to link to Strava which is great for analytics but tells whopping great lies about calorie burns.

stuarta99 wrote: »

It's a very basic bike so I think it just reports calories from the heart rate pressure monitors on the handles

Then suggest you just log direct to MyFitnessPal (but don't use the speed range outdoor cycling estimates).

Heartrate isn't a particulalrly great metric for calories, can be fine for some people doing some exercise but it can also be very poor for some people and is particulalry poor for very low HR exercise or intense interval training. But if that's all you have it's at least personal and might be proportional, rather than generic like the MFP database.

You can use Map My Run/Fitness app to record real time and have it sync back to MFP.

Steps?

Steps leads to distance leads to calories - so if on the bike - ignore anything to do with steps since it has nothing to do with bike exercise.

Of course the Pacer adjustment came down because it initially had those "steps" with walking formula for calories, which you know doesn't apply.

Upon entry of a real workout MFP now knows about, it's removing some of those Pacer calories that it figures was overlap.

I'll mention that if the workout didn't go through Pacer which has time on the step distance, MFP is attempting a rough estimate of guessing if there was overlap and removing the doubled up amounts.

Also when making adjustments like that live - expect delays and inaccurate info until a few more syncs down the road.

So don't sync - adjust - and then eat a huge meal based on MFP info right then. Things will change.

ETA - while the bike calorie count does seem low, that speed would be enormous if it was outside - hence the concept of distance on inside bike being way off.
And Strava estimate of calorie burn based on that distance would be also - you can't do that unless you just want incorrect info.

While the 61 cal from the bike seems low - if you didn't have much resistance it may be correct.
With that speed (25 mph) I'm wondering if you had much resistance.
Outside that would be huge resistance even flat, and hard workout.
Does it display watts as one of it's figures?

Out of curiosity, because the bike had such low calories, what did it say your average HR (pulse)
was? Just to get an idea of your exertion level...

If you weren't gripping the whole time, that is why the cal reading on the bike is so low. If 91 is what it climbed to, chances are you didn't burn the number of calories projected by Strava. I like Strava a lot, but use it with my Garmin and don't sync it to MFP. I use the cals for my Garmin as my output.

With no other data, I think I would work on holding the handle bars throughout the ride and use the calories given on the bike...

A Garmin or some other fitness tracker can be a great investment for both monitoring output and training. Good Luck!

stuarta99 wrote: »

Unfortunately it doesn't show wattage, just time, speed, distance, calories, pulse.

I just recorded it as 24mins and 10 miles, it them worked out the speed itself although speed was showing around 20mph figure. I was using a resistance of 5 I think out of 1-9

Ya - you can't tell Strava you did a 10 mile ride in 24 min - that's 25 mph and assumed outside and a huge calorie burn which isn't true at all.

If you wore a step tracker and it said you did 10 miles and burned 1200 calories - would you keep it if you knew you did 60 min and 4.5 miles?