How Many 'Steps' Do You Get Riding a Bicycle?

[Wombat]

As those of us you also ride a bike know, there's not many 'steps' to be gained by using a FB in its conventional position while riding a bike. Not enough hip movement/foot impact occurs to trigger the counter.

I used to be a pretty handy bike rider, I qualified to ride with an AUS team in the Paris-Brest-Paris Audax ride in 1988. I didn't ride, I had an workplace accident just before I should have left. But I still have my team jersey. One of the things I spent lots of time/energy/money on was being taught and learning to pedal very smoothly - turning circles!

The common place to put a FB whilst riding is on the leg of your knicks or on your sock/shoes. It seemed to me that this would/should give you 'steps' on one leg only as there wouldn't not be enough movement through your body to register the movement of the other leg.

So it seemed logical to me that the number of 'steps' I got should be roughly the same as the number of leg turns I did during my ride. The movement registered I suspect is the slight jerk to lift the pedal from dead centre - bottom (remember I'm wearing cleats - my shoes are locked to the pedals)

A lot of bike trip computers register cadence (similar to a tacho in a car) in revolutions of the pedal per minute.

So my hypothesis is that using the Activity setting on the One and the cadence counter on my trip meter and cycling for a specific time, both 'step' counts should be the same.

[Wombat]

OK - the first cab off the rank was my indoor spin bike.

This is a direct drive - the wheel only goes around while you pedal, if you try to coast it will try to rip your legs off! Good training and a way to use up some calories and raise a sweat really easily.

Because it's indoors it is in a stable environment. No wind, no cars, no bumpy roads etc.

I cycled for 30 minutes. My average cadence was 86 rpm.

Thus I had a calculated' step' count of 86 x 30 = 2,580 'steps'.

Therefore for my hypothesis to hold up I needed to have about the same number of 'step's on the activity setting on the One.

I synched the One and checked.

The number of 'steps' was 2,558. 

The bar chart for 'steps' on the activity also showed from 78 to 89 'steps' per minute.

Minus twenty two (22) 'steps' between calculated and the One. Looking Good!

[Wombat]

So what will happen when I go 'on road'?

I expected a few more 'steps' on the One. My pedalling might not be quite as smooth and some road noise, such as bumps etc might feed back to the sensor.

I cycled for 31.1 minutes. My average cadence was 80 rpm.

So calculated steps are 31.1 x 80 = 2,488.

So what did the One give me?

The return was 2,491 'steps' a difference of + 3 steps over my theoretical number. Pretty damm close.

So for me at least with the One clipped to my knicks, it looks like the most number of 'steps' I can hope for on the bike, is cadence multiplied by the ride time.

As a matter of interest I walk at a speed of between 5 kph (6,000 steps per hour) and 6 kph (7,200 steps per hour). Based on today's ride and an average cadence of 80 rpm, that's 4,800 'steps' per hour.

So if gaining steps is my only criteria then I should walk (or learn to run) rather than cycle! But steps aren't my only criteria so I'll continue to do both.

Anyone else like to add their observations?

[Dominique]

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@Wombat wrote:

As a matter of interest I walk at a speed of between 5 kph (6,000 steps per hour) and 6 kph (7,200 steps per hour). Based on today's ride and an average cadence of 80 rpm, that's 4,800 'steps' per hour.

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Very interesting, thanks for your detailed post! How fast do you ride on a flat road at 80 rpm? My impression is that one hour of walking at 5-6 km/h is more tiring than one hour of riding a bike on a flat road at normal speed (15-20 km/h). The higher step count obtained when walking would therefore make sense.

[Mary]

If you look at calories at all, it could be pretty off if you're wearing a Fitbit on your leg while cycling for any significant time.  

[Baltoscott]

Thanks for sharing your results. A lot of my exercise comes from bike commuting. My experience is similar in that I get more steps/hr walking than biking. I don't know what my cadence is, but I go about 4x farther on my bike for the same amount of steps.

[Baltoscott]

Yep. For a while I had two FB ones and I put one in my pocket and the other in my sock while doing a bike ride and I got about 50% more credit for calories and VAM from the FB in the sock.

[Heybales]

I've been getting some decent "steps" even with it on my side, but I don't have step goals anyway, so didn't matter.

But I was curious about the math, more so for calories since it should be off.

Tue ride 1:47, hills and wind. 29.02 mile, 1593 calories by way of tested VO2max and formula from it, so as accurate as I'll get.

Avg cadence for 1:25 pedaling (more downhill than I thought looking at it that way) - 86.8.

Which for steps would be 86.8 x 85 min = 7378 x 2 = 14756

Fitbit Zip had me down for 10914 steps, so I guess not bad for being on side, not shoe/sock.

Calories for that time was 963.

So steps was 3842 off, or 26.0%.

Calories was 630 off, or 39.5%.

But, actual was 1593 / 14756 = 0.10796 cal / step

Fitbit was 963 / 10914 = 0.08824 cal / step

So that difference of 0.01972 is 18.3% off for calories / step.

So still a need to replace the calorie count with a much better estimate, though I guess it might be nice to get credit for the steps.

And that math would not apply to anyone else, because my avgHR was only 66% of HRR, so rather low for me. The margin of error would normally be greater, because my average cadence would stay the same, but calorie burn would normally be even higher.

And I'm sure at some point you could hit a riding speed where you are burning as much as your steps would indicate if they were the walking/running steps Fitbit thinks it's dealing with.

I would have to go so slow on the bike I'd never do it. I do the bike for speed, I can't use it for recovery cardio. That's what I use jogging for.

Just thought I'd throw in more fun with numbers. That might be useful to compare.

[Recumbentgirl]

I do fine when riding my single bike and get a step equivalent of about 4 miles of biking equalling one mile of walking but while riding the tadem recumbent my fitbit doesn't think I am doing anything.  I liked it to Strava and got credit but I want steps!  I did a 26 mile ride and didn't even get my 10000.  Any advice?

[Fittman5]

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[Argali]

In theory, the best place to wear a Fitbit (so pedaling = steps) would be on one's thigh, close to their knee.

That motion is very close to the arm-swing monitored during walking, and one thigh would count both steps.

The lower pockets in cargo shorts might be close enough, if a heart rate is not required.

For hand-triking (and similar), the ideal place to wear the Fitbit would be on one's upper arm, near their elbow (for the same reasons).

[mamazebra]

Actually... wearing Charge 4 on my wrist I get about 1000 steps/15 minutes of cycling (typically, on road).  More if very energetic offroad.

Well I do...and I don't.  Under Activity it says no steps counted during the auto-detected ride, but in the step graph, about 1000 get counted each 15 minutes on bike. 

Fairly funny that I have 2 different indications, but the step chart tally DOES counted towards stated daily total.

Seems I can't turn it off directly?

i read that if I purposely set the activity before I ride off, then steps won't be counted, but that's a faff.  I'm on/off the bike all the time.  The activity is correctly recognised automatically otherwise.

I do not want steps to be counted at all when cycling.

It just matters to me on days when I have 20,000+ counted and I wonder how real that count is... is that the usual fitbit-over-estimates-by-5-10% estimate, or ...?.  Aug 13 is good example, I drove to edge of London, took train in, walked around a bit for some errands, reverse journey... then an offroad cycle ride in afternoon - the ride comprised at least 15,000 of my final 28,000 daily total.

I would insert image of my Aug 13 step counting in 15 minute chunks but can't figure out how to select local file for upload, ho hum.