Logging other activities

[JOBench200]

I frequently use an indoor rowing machine (standard Concept 2). When I first tried to enter the information in activity log I entered it manually as rowing. However, more recently my Charge 2 has automatically logged the information as "Elliptical". I am wondering if there is any significant difference between "rowing" and "elliptical" in terms of how it would be reflected in the log concerning health benefits. It seems to be recording time spent and calories expended much the same as my Concept 2 shows. I am considering leaving that activity as "elliptical" but would like to know if anybody else with experience in both can tell me any compelling reason to make the change to my activity log so it shows "rowing" rather than "elliptical". Thanks for any input.

[Dominique · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the community, @JOBench200! You basically have three possibilities: 1) let your Charge 2 autodetect it (and it may well be recognize it as Elliptical), 2) specifically log it on your Charge (whether as Elliptical or Workout), 3) log it afterwards as Rowing in your Dashboard. I don’t think it really matters much. If it’s important for you to see the activity appear as Rowing in the activity list later on, then choose 3. If you prefer to have it as Workout rather than Elliptical, then choose 2. If you want to make sure the activity will always be detected as such, also use 2. Autodetection only works if the duration of the activity exceeds a certain threshold. Sometimes you may be interrupted in the middle of it (for instance, if you get an important phone call you must answer) and the activity won’t be autodetected because of the interruption. Regardless of what you end up doing, things like calories, active minutes etc. should be more or less the same (well, except if you manually log with your own calories, overridinf those estimated by Fitbit, which may also affect active minutes). Rowing and elliptical have a rather similar moving pattern: you may argue that rowing is like elliptical, but seated and with your arms moving synchronously, rather than asyncronously. Since your Fitbit is only on one arm, it has no way to "see" the other one moves in the opposite direction or not. It only see your arm regularly moving back and forth, just like on the elliptical.

[JOBench200]

With some experience in this I now have a related question: why is my Fitbit Charge 2 inconsistent in reporting step-equivalent when I use my indoor rower? Example: yesterday I did my indoor rowing for 7000 meters and my Fitbit Charge 2 showed that as equivalent to 3881 steps; today I did my indoor rowing for 10,000 meters and my Fitbit Charge 2 showed that as equivalent to only 49 steps; just seems to me that the step-equivalent for 10,000 meters should be something like 43% more than the step-equivalent for 7000 meters...

[Esya]

FitBit does not give step equivalents for exercises that are not step based. Did you track both times in the same way? If you let your FitBit autodetect it might think you are doing an exercise that includes steps (as it cannot see your feet) and count steps based on the movement of your arm. When you start tracking the exercise yourself telling it you are rowing, it won't add steps as rowing is not a step based activity. In both cases the active minutes and calories burned are very similar.

[Dominique]

I’m surprised there’s such a large difference in step count for the same activity, even though step counts are irrelevant anyway in the case of a non-step-based activity. I would rather look at the calories reported as burned during the activity you recorded: I would expect some proportionality in calories burned between the 7km and the 10km workout.