Bowling

[LanieK]

I started bowling in a league yesterday.  I bowled for two hours and when I checked my "dashboard" it gave me 11 minutes of activity. What am I doing wrong?

[GraceX660]

Were you constantly moving? Bowling wont get the heart rate up much and I believe this is what triggers the 'activity' on a Fitbit.

[Dominique]

I checked the Compendium of Physical Activities and it rates bowling at a METs of 3.0. This is the same as "walking the dog", or "walking at 2.5 mph on a level surface". I think the reason why you’re not getting many active minutes from it is each bout of activity is not sustained for long enough. In other words, you’re alternating between short bouts of activity (when throwing the bowl) and longer bouts of resting (when standing/sitting around and waiting for your turn). If you were continuously walking the dog for two hours, you would likely get more active minutes, even though the overall intensity of the activity is the same. You could walk your bowl around the bowling hall while waiting for your turn .

[BruceBu]

If you are in general activity tracking mode (not a specific timed exercise), (pre)active minutes are determined by step count within that given minute. To be considered an active minute it must have registered 70 steps, and to be safe you should shoot for greater than 90 step/min. Second, you need to accumulate 10 of these (pre)active minutes in a row before they actually register as active. Then, if you keep stepping, new active minutes will be added as they occur. If you don't make it to 10, you have to start over again, and won't get any credit for shorter spurts of (pre)active minutes. It doesn't have to be fast or hard, continuity is the most important thing. From what I've seen of bowling (not a bowler myself), it wouldn't surprise me if there were enough breaks in continuity to prevent effective accumulation of active minutes.

[MarciM]

If you walk in place or walk around the bowling alley you'll get more minutes and steps. If you bowl in a place with music, you can dance. I had a group doing this two months ago. Work group went bowling and we were in middle of a step challenge, so anytime one of us wasn't bowling we were moving. Good thing we did this in the middle of the day when the rest of the bowlers where children celebrating birthdays, so we fit right in with our constant movement. LOL

Remember your tracker is to help guide you, if you are moving and having fun doing it, don't worry too much about what shows up on your dashboard. Don't let what is being recorded dictate how much you enjoy an activity.

[emili]

Hey @LanieK you are doing nothing wrong. you are being active, social and hopefully having a blast. I would say you are doing everything right! keep doing it - part of being healthy is being healthy emotionally and mentally. you may not have racked up active minutes, but I am pretty sure you racked up some laughs and bowling stories that will be retold again and again. just think about the calorie burn on that!

[NyghtSyren]

Just adding to what everyone has already said

- You are doing nothing wrong

- Fitbit Tracker only activates after a certain heart rate is reached I presume

Bowling is anaerobic exercise. This means you do high intensity for very short periods of time. Most other activities are aerobic, so they have pretty consistant movement to keep your heartrate elevated. Bowling is not cardio, but is great for strengthening your muscles, so if you need to manually enter it in, I would go for recording it as strength training. Depending on the level of bowler you are (constant strikes vs bowling for your spare), you throw the ball anywhere between 12 and 21 times. You could say 1 set is one game. If you are bowling on a four person team vs another four person team, you will definitely want to remain standing, walking, stretching, or moving around in some type of capacity to keep your muscles warmed up, which can also help trigger your fitbit to record more activity.

I am also a league bowler. I throw a 13lb ball so I can definitely tell I have had a workout by the last game!