Adding a sport/activity...PICKLEBALL

[Justdar826]

Hello Fitbit.  Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in America.  I'd sure love to see it added to the list of sports/activities.  It's not tennis, it's not table tennis, it's not badminton, it's not racquetball.  I play just about everyday, when I'm not playing I'm teaching it to new players.  I think it's well past time for it to be added to the lexicon of available options.  Pickleball to the People!!

[Richie2260]

Do you choose "workout" as your activity when you play with your Fitbit?

[WendyB]

@Richie2260  Is correct. Add workout to the list of activities for your device.

Then set up a custom record named pickleball and once it syncs you can rename it.

You will find create custom activity at the bottom of the activity tracker.

It would be impossible to list all the different activities out there.

[Justdar826]

I choose tennis because I can’t find pickleball

[Justdar826]

I don’t understand your instruction. How do I create a custom activity? 

[Heybales · Accepted solution]

In the forum stickies.

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Get-Moving/Video-How-to-Customize-Exercise-Shortcuts/td-p/4158748/ju...

[Justdar826]

Thanks for this link. However this video does not show me how to add an activity that is not already part of the selections. I am asking how to add something new.

[Heybales]

Correct, that is for after you have made your custom name as given above from Workout.

But you haven't mentioned what device you have for more exact instructions.

[Justdar826]

Thanks. I thought I was in the Charge 4 section, that’s why I didn’t specify.
So, if I understand correctly, I choose Workout on my FitBit and then afterwards I go into the app and change the category by typing in Pickleball, and since I created it as a custom exercise it comes up.
Thanks! It worked. My error was that I assumed that once I had created the custom exercise (which I did when I had my previous FitBit), I expected it to automatically show up. I didn’t realize I had to start typing it in. Sure would be nice if those instructions were in the manual. Thanks to everyone who contributed. It literally took a village.

[Justdar826]

Now I'm finding that once I recategorize the exercise as pickleball, I lose the calorie info. It is replaced with pace.  I have to tap into the details to find the calories.  How can I get calories to be one of the first things I see?  It's there until I recategorize.

[keysa71]

Of course it would be hard to add every exercise.  But if people are playing Pickleball daily in SPARTA TENNESSEE (An entire County of less than 22,000 people TOTAL!), I would think it might merit an activity of value.

[keysa71]

One can create a custom activity.  Unfortunately it has no correlation with actual calories burned.  

[Heybales]

Many sports would have terrible calorie burn estimates and are best estimated using HR-based calculations.

Create the activity Pickleball using methods above, select it when starting a game, and let Fitbit estimate calories from HR.

The database entries that have a calorie burn come from studies trying to measure an intensity. I could see this being a sport with a terrible avg calorie burn that someone would have no clue if they played as hard or harder than the people in the study actually measured.

And I'm doubting such a study will ever be done.

[Michelle-Realto]

Can you be more specific? I don't understand your instructions. Thanks

[MrColor]

So true - Pickleball burns a lot of calories.  Worthless if you can't correlate it to the calories burned.

[MamaKGN]

I have the Inspire2 and  I cannot type in the exercise. Workout remains workout. Please help. I want Pickleball too !!

[FrankHW]

I don’t think this works with the Charge 6?

[OGRed]

Four years later and Pickleball still isn’t a standard option. It is the fastest growing sport in the nation. Come on Fitbit, get with it!! 

[Heybales]

Ogred - the standard activity options have a calorie burn rate on them that
can be estimated out per weight, based on studies.
You'll need to complain to research institutes and universities to spend
the $1000's it would take to get some good data, then have the database
updated that Fitbit uses.
Or maybe there has been, and the range of calorie burn is so wide depending
on how you play it's useless to even attempt.

Otherwise just create your own called Pickleball as an activity you can
select when doing it, and just used the HR-based calorie burn method.

Because behind the scenes it is a lot more difficult than merely entering a
text label and saying Push. If they did that then they would probably have
more complaints as to why there was no calorie burn associated with their
workout, or it's so wrong.

Heybales

[asifmah0]

Thanks for the information!