Why is my cardio fitness so low?

[Arabella95]

Hi all, I'm wondering if someone can help me out. I'm new to the fitbit community and was shocked to see my cardio fitness level was ranked on the lower end of poor. I'm a distance runner who trains at least 5 days a week (have for years now), as well as attends weekly high intensity bootcamp classes. And between work and school my days are very active, spent largely on my feet. I'm in my early 20's and have no underlying health issues I'm aware of, so what gives? Should I be concerned? It also might be worth noting I have a rather slow resting heart rate (usually around 58 bpm) and lower than average blood pressure. 

[weasellyone]

Do you have a tracker with GPS? I'm surprised it is giving you a low score with that RHR (which is good), blood pressure shouldn't affect the measurement.

If you have a tracker with GPS, wear your tracker one notch tighter and go out for a tempo run - try and run at threshold pace. In theory this should make the estimate more accurate. 

Other thing is if you haven't had your tracker for long it does take a few days to calibrate so you may see substantial improvement anyway. 

[RLJ1905]

How long have you had your fitbit? It took mine a few weeks of wearing it before it started to give me accurate readings. Other than that, I'm not sure what could be causing that reading because it sounds inaccurate.

[Arabella95]

I do have a tracker with GPS but unfortunately outdoor running isn't really an option for me right now given the weather where I live, and the GPS doesn't seem to work very well in my gym. I've only had the fitbit for about a week though, so that could be the problem! Thank you, I'll try waiting a bit longer and see if it changes 🙂

[weasellyone]

I would avoid using the GPS indoors, it won't track distance properly and if it's showing lots of effort/high HR for minimal distance that could also confuse the cardio fitness score 🙂

[Baltoscott]

Hi @Arabella95 -- mine seems to improve over time, so that may be part of it.  Here is what fitbit says:

Your cardio fitness score is determined by your resting heart rate, age, gender, weight, and other personal information. For best results, make sure your weight is correct in your Fitbit profile. Also, wear your tracker or watch to sleep for a better resting heart rate estimate. Your cardio fitness score will be shown as a range unless you use GPS for runs.

Read more about it here.

Hope that answers your questions.  Let use know.

[Arabella95 · Accepted solution]

I was advised to factory reset my Charge 2, and that seemed to do the trick! My cardio fitness was immediately bumped up to midway through the "good" range. Must have just been some kind of glitch I suppose 

[Wool_]

Although this is solved, I will add my experience with this anyway.

My cardio score had dropped to poor a short while ago.

I reviewed all recorded exercises over the previous month and discovered that there were two gps recorded run exercises with an unusually high pace.

Deleting these restored my previous cardio fitness score.

For me, it seemed like the gps was turned on for the fitbit while i was running on a treadmill. My fitbit then recorded the run (giving a strange gps heat map) along with the treadmill exercise. I only needed to keep the treadmill exercise that i was specifically recording, and so deleted the poorly auto recorded run exercise.

Hope this helps anyone experiencing similar issues 🙂

[Baltoscott]

I’ll bet that was a weird heat map @Wool_ !  Especially if the treadmill is inside I would expect the GPS track to be loaded with random errors.  And I would guess it calculated an unusually low mileage for the activity.  I’ve done a gps record of mowing the lawn before — Unsurprisingly creates a big green scribble, but I’ve not tried it since Fitbit came up with  cardio fitness scores.

[dreamydoris]

Hi, 

I am also experiencing the same problem.

On the Fitbit help article, it was stated that "a factory reset deletes any stored data, which includes all data that hasn't synced to your Fitbit account and your alarms, goals, and notifications. After a factory reset you must set up your tracker again." 

I am wondering if by doing this ALL of the data that has been stored under your account all this time will be deleted, or is it just deleting the temporary data stored in your Fitbit (if there is any at all)? After doing the factory reset, if I log back on to Fitbit dashboard, will all the data be gone?

Thanks!

[Wool_]

@dreamydoris 

It will just be the data stored on your Fitbit that is deleted.

The data within your Fitbit app will not be deleted by doing a factory reset of your Fitbit device

[D4vids0n1987]

Don't worry, it's just a glitch. I had the same problem, but it got fixed really fast

[BeeJavaid]

Hello! How? I already re-set the Fitbit