Elliptical machines

[Zonags]

I just did a very active half hour on an elliptical machine.  Recorded 800 minutes and no intense activity.  What gives?

[mlint007]

I had the same problem and this is what I noticed.

When it didn't register I was wearing the fitbit inside my pants pocket when I moved it to my bra area it counts all of my movements and I have no problems with adequate steps or very active minute counts.

...now I don't know how that would help a man, LOL but it sure helped me.

[Zonags]

Actually was wearing it on my wrist.  Will try some other places!

[KarenBures]

This is what is happenning during spin. It keeps callin it moderate activity and it's driving me bonkers!!! lol. I have a wrist one but maybe it's worth shoving it in my sports bra and see if that changes things at all.

[petey06]

I believe the tracker does not track effort like a heart rate monitor does, it tracks steps.  You are probably better off using a heart rate monitor during a stationary activity such as the eliptic or the bike. 

[pgard]

I just did 1/2 hour on the elliptical with the FITBIT one on a shoelace - it registered NO vigourous activity and only 2000 steps whereas my old original Fitbit was much more accurate.  What gives?

[dnourie]

I log my elliptical workouts on the Log < Acitivity  Then it changes depending on what I select in the ellitpical menu. Even though I log how many miles according to my elliptical machine, it doesn't add the miles on the fitbit site for distance. I do get the calorie burn, though, which is about the same as my ellitpical tells me.

I wish it would add the distance as well from what I enter.

[Algenon]

You have to log it in as an acitivity on the log tab.  Go on your eliptical and note how how the level, slope is you work out.  Then take careful note of the minutes and calories. ( I usually work out for at least 45 minutes level 6-8 at a 30% incline.  This is about 400 calories.)  Log in the activity with the calories and it will record your active minutes.   If you do the same activity, you can add the eliptical to your favorites and just use your mobile device.  

The fitbit does not take into account your slope or level so activities like hiking uphill, eliptical with a slope, have to be logged in separately.  

[josephz2va]

I don't log my entries in to avoid having Activity Minutes deleted.

Log activities only count Active Minutes if you're very aggressive. Running 5+ MPH or maxing out the intensity of the elliptical to reach 170+ BPM.

[SJSD18]

I  log in my elliptical activity on the exercise tab.  I do an hour on it at a relatively high resistance and wear the fitbit on my bra.   Normally it records 1 "flight of steps" which is ridiculous, although it does record the steps at about 5,500.  

According to the elliptical records I burn about 650 calories for the hour and that is not recorded on Fitbit.  If I enter the activity under exercise, it adds the values to my daily record.

[dnourie]

If you go to Log, then Activities, then scroll down to search, type in Elliptical, you'll then get fields you fill out: time, calories, etc. I wear my fitbit on my sock, and like you it records the steps. But if you specifially bring up elliptical in search and select it and fill in the fields, it does a decent job of calculating the calories burn.

What I don't like is that I also put in how many miles I went on the elllitpical, and it doesn't add it to my overall distance.

[Heybales]

HR doesn't matter since Fitbit can't read that, calorie burn matters.

Obviously your HR to accomplish that calorie burn will change too as you get more fit, lower to burn same calories.

If the manually entered calorie burn for non-walking/running activities is 6 x your resting calorie burn, it'll count as VAM time.

And since manually entered calorie burn is just averaged over the whole duration, you don't need to accomplish that per minute as with Fitbit logged activities.

So you can start out slow, say 4 x resting level, moving on up to 8 x for equal amount of time. That allows a warm-up and cool-down, and it all still counts as VAM.

So say 10 min 4 x, 10 min 6 x, 40 min 8 x, 10 min 6 x, 10 min 4 x.

Just increase the tension or incline until you see those calorie levels being hit.

And when you look at resting calorie burn per 5 min, confirm you divide by 5 first before x 4, x 6, x 8.

And since some machine will give a per hour burn at current settings, x 60 too.