Climbing Stairs as a Work Out

[Cecilia87]

I have a surge, and I have the option of selecting "workout" under exercise for any physical activity. Does anyone else select "workout" when climbing stairs for more accurate detail? when it comes to heart rate and calories burn while climbing stairs or do you simply climb stairs without selcting it as a work out? I'm trying to see what I should do. 

I live in a 15 story building so I tend to do stairs for about 20min every week. I'm curious to see what others are doing when climbing. 

[Julia_G]

Hi, @Cecilia87 , because your Surge is detecting your heartrate, it should give you a good idea of your calorie burn when you climb stairs (the floor counter alone does not give extra calories without the HR data).  So you could choose a workout on your Surge, or, if you will be doing your stair climb for at least 10 minutes, you could let SmartTrack do its magic -- it should detect your activity as an "aerobic workout".  Here's some more info about SmartTrack in case you haven't seen it: https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/SmartTrack-FAQs

[Tave · Accepted solution]

Yep, I typically select Workout when I do lots of stairs.  That way, you will be sure to also get them captured in your total active minutes for the day.

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@Cecilia87 wrote:

I have a surge, and I have the option of selecting "workout" under exercise for any physical activity. Does anyone else select "workout" when climbing stairs for more accurate detail? when it comes to heart rate and calories burn while climbing stairs or do you simply climb stairs without selcting it as a work out? I'm trying to see what I should do. 

I live in a 15 story building so I tend to do stairs for about 20min every week. I'm curious to see what others are doing when climbing. 

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[Baltoscott]

I love the idea of using the stairs in your building as part of your workouts.  You get more HR sampling when you select "workout" so that should allow your surge to get a better idea of your calorie burn, but I usually don't bother because I just work stairs in throughout the day instead of doing them all at once.  I've got 7 floors where I work and do the full set pretty much anytime I need to go to any other floor.  If I need to go to the floor just below mine, I go to the basement first and then come back up to it.  Usually works out to 10 or more full trips every day.  

[Colinm39]

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@Cecilia87 wrote:

I have a surge, and I have the option of selecting "workout" under exercise for any physical activity. Does anyone else select "workout" when climbing stairs for more accurate detail? when it comes to heart rate and calories burn while climbing stairs or do you simply climb stairs without selcting it as a work out? I'm trying to see what I should do. 

I live in a 15 story building so I tend to do stairs for about 20min every week. I'm curious to see what others are doing when climbing. 

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@Cecilia87 I select Workout for my sleep analysis, and any non GPS activity like walking. I don't need to use the GPS for everything.

[Cecilia87]

Thank you all for your suggestions, I think I will simply select workout when I climb stairs longer than 10min, Im interested to see an estimate of how many calories are burned and of course count them as active minutes. 🙂

[mlaccs]

I do a lot of stairs and trust the HR to be close enough to balance. For me it is about making my numbers for the stairs and so that is what matters most.  I like some of the others logic if the HR is better tracked in workout mode.

[Colinm39]

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@mlaccs wrote:

I do a lot of stairs and trust the HR to be close enough to balance. For me it is about making my numbers for the stairs and so that is what matters most.  I like some of the others logic if the HR is better tracked in workout mode.

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@mlaccs I use the Workout mode to analyse my HR while asleep and I have found the plot points on the graph are about every 2.5 seconds, only 10 seconds if I don't use Workout. But I need more testing because last nights sleep I created the graph using a custom activity and it plotted at 2.5 seconds. (23 plot points in 60 seconds)