Exercise recognition

[ajv174]

Hi there, I'm new to the Fitbit community, having just gotten the FitBit yesterday.  This morning, I did a moderate 30 minute workout that included some resistance training, situps, and jumping jacks with brief periods of rest in between.  I can see where I have credit for 30 zone minutes; however, this doesn't show up under exercise.  I did have a workout last night that auto-detected a continuous aerobic workout just fine.  Is there any reason that this shouldn't be auto detected by my exercise app?

[JohnnyRow · Accepted solution]

This is not a short simple explanation.  I hope you will bear with me to try to follow.

First, know that whether or not your activity gets credited or recognized as a workout, you are still getting the calorie burn, steps, and active minutes included in daily totals.

Now, for exercise sessions, there are a limited number of activities that can be auto-recognized based solely on the movement pattern of your wrist.  You can see these by tapping the tile on phone app titled either "track your exercise" or "days of exercise", then tap the gear icon near top right and it will list the 7 activities it ideally can recognize, though some find these are not consistently recognized, and sometimes some are recognized by mistake, though walk, and I suppose run seem quite accurate.  And note with each activity you can set a minimum time required for it to count as a workout (default is 15 minutes).  And any you never use, you can set to "ignore" to prevent it from incorrectly recognizing.

So your exercise time this morning did not get recognized for at least 15 continuous minutes in one of those categories.  But you can still get Zone Minutes as they are based only on heart rate.  So in that sense, Zone Minutes are perhaps a more accurate workout measure, except that if exercising at lower heart rate, you might not get Zone Minutes but could still get auto-recognized workout.

If not confused enough, the other, and I think preferred, option beside auto-recognized exercise, is to use the Exercise App on your Charge 5.  Anything you record with the Exercise App will be recorded as a Workout so you don't have to wonder whether it will get recognized.  And you assign it the category as you begin, Workout is a good option for anything that doesn't fit exactly.

P.S.  Getting started with Fitbit Charge 5 

Charge 5 Manual (pdf) 

[ajv174]

thanks, Johnny. very helpful.  i think given that my workout was a combo on resistence and aerobic and other, it likely did not fit into a neat category and hence, was not auto detected for the exercise app.  i do see the calories are there and the zone minutes though.  i appreciate the help