Should I track each exercise individually or as one exercise?

[SunsetRunner]

I recently got a Charge HR and I'm planning on going to the gym with it soon. My plan was warm up, do some lifting on weight machines, then some sort of cardio. Is it best to track each exercise individually or as one exercise?

[trainer]

I personally would wear the device and not track anything at all for the first time. Then sync and check how your fitbit records each activity. For example, it is most likely going to record your cardio just fine. It might not record your weight lifting (depending on how/what you do). Next, sync and then check the dashboard. You can then manually record an activity and compare how the fitbit said you did from the manual log. If you end up agreeing that the fitbit did a good job on its own you can simply delete the manual recording and go back to what the fitbit said on its own. If you think the manual recording makes more sense you will know for the future.

[Heybales]

---

@SunsetRunner wrote:
I recently got a Charge HR and I'm planning on going to the gym with it soon. My plan was warm up, do some lifting on weight machines, then some sort of cardio. Is it best to track each exercise individually or as one exercise?

---

If your purpose is to be able to review those activity records to compare improvements in performance, sure, you need to.

So down the road you can see you used to do so many miles in so much time, but now you do better.

Plus, HR based calorie burn for anything not steady-state aerobic is going to be wrong, usually inflated. Like lifting, which if done right is anaerobic and no where near steady-state same HR for 2-4 min.

So for that record, use the time stamps to manually log the workout too using Weights or Circuit Training in the database, then delete the record unless just curious the steps taken during it and calorie burn Fitbit originally assigned it. It's not duplicate, but your manual logging just replaced the calorie burn the record is showing.