how to track weight training

[traci68]

Does anyone track weight lifting? How do you do this?

[SteveH · Accepted solution]

The problem with fitbits is that they are pedometers and are designed to track steps. They assume that anything we do is either walking or running and assign calories, active minutes etc accordingly. If it does track some steps from your weights the calories and active minutes are likely to be inaccurate.

The way round this is to tell fitbit that you are not just walking or running and you do this by manually logging the activity. 

http://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/How-do-I-log-or-record-an-activity/

[Lithial]

I've been wondering this all day. would be awesome if it had set aprox bmr increases for weights

[JanH64]

Hi,

I was wondering similar about how to log exercise.  I'm not a runner or a cyclist.  Usually when I'm at the gym I either do 3 minutes of cardio, or 500m or 1km, then I move onto squats, push ups, crunches, shoulder presses, etc.  How do I record these?

Any help and advice would be appreciated here guys.

Thanks

Jan

[Heybales]

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@JanH64 wrote:

Hi,

I was wondering similar about how to log exercise.  I'm not a runner or a cyclist.  Usually when I'm at the gym I either do 3 minutes of cardio, or 500m or 1km, then I move onto squats, push ups, crunches, shoulder presses, etc.  How do I record these?

Any help and advice would be appreciated here guys.

Thanks

Jan

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If those are body weight or lighter weight higher reps - it's listed in the database as calisthentics.

If it's heavy for you with only 5-15 reps and sets and rests - that's listed as Weight Lifting power lifting.

If light for you 20 over reps and minimal rests - that's Weight Lifting light or circuit training.

[Heybales]

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@Lithial wrote:

I've been wondering this all day. would be awesome if it had set aprox bmr increases for weights

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But how would a device measuring impacts from steps be able to tell you were doing weights and therefore apply a different formula for calorie burn?

[Malpeg]

When I logged an hour of weight training for this morning from 530 to 630, the app substituted an estimated calorie burn for that time frame in place of the calories based on the steps.

[LDGourmet]

The link doesn't actually provide a solution though I appreciate your trying.

The UI forces one to enter times. I want to enter sets/reps not a duration of time. It's really frustrating

I understand it's a pedometer but the whole site setup, community thing is designed to encourage total fitness. We SHOULD be able to track other things besides walking/running. I keep asking for this functionality and instead we get Tory Burch bling. PFFT.

[Heybales]

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@LDGourmet wrote:

The link doesn't actually provide a solution though I appreciate your trying.

The UI forces one to enter times. I want to enter sets/reps not a duration of time. It's really frustrating

I understand it's a pedometer but the whole site setup, community thing is designed to encourage total fitness. We SHOULD be able to track other things besides walking/running. I keep asking for this functionality and instead we get Tory Burch bling. PFFT.

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I'd rather have a specific app for a specific purpose (like tracking weight lifting progress) and it do it well.

Then Fitbit try to add all these minor things under the sun and not do them well and not really that convenient anyway.

Just like why spend resources trying to improve the food logging ability when there are already several sites that do that focus really well that they can sync with.

And then those sites have very standard exercise databases and estimates of daily burn, but if you want better they sync with Fitbit.

There are several apps intended for weight lifting, that provide great functionality and progress graphs, ect.

Me, a cut out piece of paper with routine and current weights on it. Simple. Progress tracked in SportTracks, which isn't even going to do what I mentioned better apps do. I just don't care that much about it. I increase weight lifted, I've made progress. Takes 3 or 4 weeks, doesn't really matter to me.

[LDGourmet]

Congrats on your progress! 

I'm just frustrated none of these programs with all the incentives to join challenges, be a part of the community, track your progress,etc. actually do what they say. For instance, I just joined the MapMyFitness challenge. We have to log X number of days of workouts between now and February - you know to encourage our working out through the winter. They say you can do calisthenics at home,  yoga, weights, or running, walking, whatever. 

To participate I have to log it somehow!~ 

I also can track on my own calendar or spreadsheet but the point of all these sites is to build a community of users and to give us a site that's "sticky" but the UI is inflexible.

Feels like I'm beating a dead horse - wonder how many calories that burns?

[Heybales]

Wouldn't you log it in MMF and then let it sync to Fitbit? If you want to use the calorie count that Fitbit came up with for that activity, you'll need to be using a model that allows starting/stopping an activity to look at just those stats. Not sure, may even be able to sync manually logged workouts from Fitbit back to MMF.

[slysam]

Why is the UI inflexible when you can log pretty much anything (and you can use any number of connecting apps to log)? No one device tracks every activity well, so I value that i can log if I need to or connect other apps that specialize in that type of workout. For Jan's question, I have played with a lot of tracking options. This is time consuming but what I found best for mixes/circuit type workouts... I use the exercise tracker on Spark people. You can choose the specific exercise and log the sets, weights, reps and time doing the exercise. For activities in their database, it will estimate a calorie burn for that exercise. For exercises I enter, I save them as a favorite and I manually log a calorie burn similar to a similar intensity workout. During my non strength time I log what I was doing during the rest in minutes. If I was doign cardio drills I log that. If I were doing mobility exercises or yoga (I often do on my stregnth training rests) I log yoga. This results in a total calorie burn estimate for the entire workout (and you can save the workouts) and gives me a record of what I did that day. How accurate? Well, in my case if circuit training the result was always within 10 calories of my heart rate monitor and if not circuit training the result is higher than my heart rate monitor calorie burn. Okay, HRMS are not accurate for stregnth because they are not set up that way, but I use to just use my HRM burn and had no bad consequences (others may have inflated calorei burn though, my heart rate typically recovers quickly so my average stays low unless circuit training with no rests). Compared to Fitbit's exercise database the result was always higher than strength training light-to-moderate effort but lower than "strength training vigorous effort". This makes sense because my workout tends to be a mix of vigorous intensity (for calorie burn this means big muscle groups things like squats, deadlifts, compound exercises) and lower intensity (core work, exercises that use smaller muscle groups). But to keep it really simple, I would probably just split th difference between light effort and vigorous effort (the two choices) in my case proportionate to the ratio of activities. Hybrid workouts can be the toughest as they are so variable. More and more, I care less about workout calorie burn and more about just getting a good workout. But at some point it was important because I really didn't know how much I could eat with both a changing activity level and changing body so logging the workout did help.

[LDGourmet]

The UI forces entry by minutes. That's what I mean by inflexible. 

I just registered for SparkPeople (yippee yet ANOTHER app) and it let me add squats with number of sets and reps. HOORAY.

Then, when I tried to add situps, no dice. Now being forced once again to add only by minutes or calories. WTF. 

I just don't see what the difficulty is in allowing a simple spot to log "100 situps" - It's not something that requires the entire UI to be recoded. Instead of the field for calories it could be a field for numbers/reps, or in the journal there could be a blank page/field. 

It just seems everything forces to minutes and calories. (Probably because that code's been written and everyone is using the same code.)

I don't really care about tracking my calories. I understand how to manage my own food (most of which comes up in any of these because I don't eat processed crap.) I just want a program/app that acknowledges a diversity of activities. Yoga one day, squats, planks, situps, crunches, abs, arms whatever on another, running, walking on yet a third. 

Not rocket science. 

I appreciate your response. I am glad you've found a way to cobble together pieces that work for you. I just can't believe I am the only one that has this response. In fact, earlier on (when I was using the Force, now on the One) I remember seeing others asking for the same simple changes and flexibility as I was asking for. 

Would love ONE place to go not three or more....

[Heybales]

SportTracks cloud version.

Minutes not required.

You are attempting to work with a tool that is intended to come up with it's own calorie burn, which is obviously time based.

You are trying to replace what it estimates with what you did. Therefore, time based again.

You'll never get around that fact. Even calorie burn estimates are per time based calculations. 100 situps in how much time. Because very slow is going to burn less calories than really fast, for the same number.

But with SportTracks you don't have to enter minutes if there was none, and you can come up with custom fields if desired.

Now, if you want their app to estimate a calorie burn for common stuff, guess what will be needed. Mass and time and activity.

[allanf]

Hi,

Use pen and paper unfortunately.  Keep a record.

You could also get a HRM to measure the intensity of each exercise, I have the surge it does this.

Have a look at my profile on exercises, you should see my graph for your info.

Allan

[LDGourmet]

Thanks!

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[MICKIEDNOMORE]

MyFitnessPal.com will let you build a log for food and strength training w/o calories burned documented. Food entries will sync to Fitbit. Do not enter either through fitbit Food and weight training diaries can be generated through MFP reports.

[poptart96]

Sure you can add it manually but you need to know how many calories you are burning during weight training bar cause Google doesn’t recognize weight training as a calorie burn activity.  It defeats the purpose of logging the activity if you can’t attribute calorie burn. 

[t.parker]

@poptart96 you replying to a very old topic which originated at time when Fitbit couldn't track weight lifting as a type of exercise. Anyway, the weight lifting (classic way with sets and rests between) is one of those activities for which calorie burn estimate accuracy is pretty much random as it can't be estimated from the HR which tends to fluctuate a lot more than during ie. steady-state cardio. During weight loss relying on calories burned during weights lifting is the best way to miscalculate and at worst case, overestimate.