strength training

[dori01]

how do you put in strength training (ie) chest press  ab reduction machines etc.

[Tannia]

I was curious about this too as weight training is the majority of my exercise the next three months. I think we have to log onto the website and manually enter the info for calorie expenditure.

[Vanille]

You could wear a heart rate monitor and then manually enter the calories burned. Here are some instructions and information: 

https://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/articles/413311

https://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/articles/1020095-what-are-%22very-active-minutes%22-

[aaron88 · Accepted solution]

If you search under the activities tab, there is one called, "Weight lifting (free weight, nautilus or universal-type), power lifting or body building, vigorous effort".  That's what I use.

[Tannia]

Thanks!

[dori01]

Thanks

[makethegrade]

yes.  found that. 

thanks!

[Jarred]

I use myfitnesspal too and ran into this problem. I think with weight liftting we all put out a differnt amount of effort so we will not burn the same amount of calories that they are estimating. I wore a heart rate monitor for a month to get a better idea of how much I was burning for a given workout. 

[Heybales]

Sadly the HRM suggestions are going to give inflated results.

The database entry while it seems small is also more true.

The formula in HRM that even ties HR to calorie burn is only for steady-state aerobic exercise, meaning same HR for 2-4 min and in the aerobic zone, from 90 to about 150-170.

Anything lower than exercise, like wearing it sitting around, is invalid calculations and inflated.

Anything with changing HR and going in to anaerobic zone is invalid calc's too and inflated.

That would include lifting, which if you are doing it right is anaerobic spikes, and always changing HR.

Elevated HR while lifting has nothing to do with needing to supply more oxygen for fuel burning going on, because the fuel burned doesn't need it, hence the reason when you must hold breath to lock in core on certain lifts it really doesn't matter, you aren't using O2 anyway.

It can be useful while lifting though to see if doing it too tired. If you can't push the HR in to the anaerobic zone, then you aren't lifting heavy enough to really cause the effecting lifting could - wasting your time basically.

[slysam]

Lately I've been using the exercise tracker on Spark People to get a calorie burn estimate. I do also have a heart rate monitor that I usually wear during strength training. Though I partially use to see my heart rate response--how high it spikes during exercise and how long I need to rest to recover and also for the clock to see how long I spend doing an exercise/resting, etc.

The Spark tracker has you log the exercise, time spent working, sets, reps and weight used and for the activities in their database it estimates a calorie burn. I think it might be lossely based on METS for the exercises, because I notice that my total usually ends up higher than "weight listing, light-to-moderate effort" and "weight lifting, vigorous effort". And my exercises are a mix of vigorous effort and lighter effort. The lighter effort would be any isolated weight exercise using smaller muscles or a lot of machines, ab work, planks, etc. (Though the ab work is really "calisthenics, light effort"). The vigorous for more compound exercises using larger or multiple muscle groups i.e. deadlifts, squats, weighted step ups, etc. I think, it is mainly with compound exercises that I personally see a spike in heart rate and I feel more tired from them.  

I think if I didn't want to bother with this app (it can be a little tedious their search isn't great and some of my exercises are not included) I would just try logging a proportion of "light effort" and a proportion of "vigorous effort" to match whatever it basically was for the workout. I've also veen logging "yoga, general stretching" in Spark for my rest minutes because I usually spend it foam rolling or doing mobility work (I am impatient with rests so have to do something to fill the time). 

[coach19k]

thank you !!

[sonia_trainer]

Hi, I wanted to chime in even though I noticed this question was resolved because there's a problem with the FitBit website that some people may not be aware of. 

I weight lift 3x a wk and do cardio 3x a wk and then rest (crash) on Sundays so I've dealt with this issue too.  I wear the Fitbit and my heart rate wrist watch which also measures calories burned.  I then enter the workout under "activities" as others have suggested.  However, there's a BIG ISSUE doing this and it even made the national news a few wks ago because some people using FitBit have actually gained after following FitBit's calorie suggestions.  

Reason being, FitBit provides addtl. caloric allowances based on the activities you enter and if you were to keep eating as many extra calories as FitBit suggests then you too would end up gaining weight. So what I'm doing these days is that I still record all my activity but instead of eating as much as FitBit ends up suggesting I stick to the basic amount of calories listed to lose weight as IF I didn't do any extra work outs.  That's when I've seen lbs come off cause otherwise, I don't lose an ounce. 

According to the TV newscast this feature of adjusting calories is a downside to using FitBit.

Hope this info helps someone out there.

[Heybales]

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@sonia_trainer wrote:

Reason being, FitBit provides addtl. caloric allowances based on the activities you enter and if you were to keep eating as many extra calories as FitBit suggests then you too would end up gaining weight. 

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Sorry, this one too.

Gotta understand the tool before you comment on how it works.

Fitbit does NOT add on additional calories from manually logged workouts unless you made the calorie count bigger. Then it REPLACES what it estimated based strictly on steps with whatever start time and duration and calorie count the manually entered activity has.

That may be bigger, it actually could be smaller.

But guess what, lifting, taking as few steps as would normally occur during that exercise, is a for underestimate from what you really burn doing a lifting workout.

Of course you burn more lifting than the measely steps and calculated calories would estimate.

If your results showed otherwise, that's fine and you might have used the tool wrong since the above comment seems to indicate you might not understand what it's actually doing.

Besides, even if you added some extra calories from a workout and ate to a new slightly higher goal, it's still a deficit to what is being burned daily that is not inflated.

Can't get around the fact you wouldn't gain weight at the worst - you just might not lose as much.

And if you picked Weight Lifting powerlifting as entry, but you aren't really doing it that serious to burn that many calories, then should have selected medium effort entry. 

[naturallyslim]

I was told that weight lifting wasn't effective unless you were sore, however, my experience suggests the opposite. 

I started side-step stairs and never did so many that I was sore.  I did this 3 X a week for a month or so, then I met with an old-school personal trainer who told me I had "wasted" my time.   As part of his initial testing, he asked me to do 30 deep knee bends, in proper form. 

I did.  He was surprised.  He concluded that it was because, even though I hadn't pushed myself faster, I had done each in good form, so the muscle eventually increased, albeit, not as quickly.  He even went so far as to say that I was a natural athlete!  No one has ever said that to me before!

P.S.  I couldn't walk without pain for 3 days after that session and stopped altogether for months.

[Heybales]

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@naturallyslim wrote:

I was told that weight lifting wasn't effective unless you were sore, however, my experience suggests the opposite. 

I started side-step stairs and never did so many that I was sore.  I did this 3 X a week for a month or so, then I met with an old-school personal trainer who told me I had "wasted" my time.   As part of his initial testing, he asked me to do 30 deep knee bends, in proper form. 

I did.  He was surprised.  He concluded that it was because, even though I hadn't pushed myself faster, I had done each in good form, so the muscle eventually increased, albeit, not as quickly.  He even went so far as to say that I was a natural athlete!  No one has ever said that to me before!

P.S.  I couldn't walk without pain for 3 days after that session and stopped altogether for months.

---

Generally soreness is a response for a little while to using muscle in a way that hasn't been used.

Some get it worse than others. You can also ease in to it slower like you did, get joints, tendons, muscles use to new activity, then increase intensity, without getting sore.

And actually muscle can gain much strength without getting any extra mass of it. Everyone things that if you gained strength you gained muscle.

Not until you've tapped out all the strength your existing muscle has, and then you'd have to be NOT eating in a diet for the body to actually build more.

Sorry to hear about the bad experience with the test. Usually the soreness like that only lasts a long time the first few times doing something, then body gets better at recovery and repair (if allowed and not taking too big a diet), and you may only be sore the day after for a bit, and eventually that way go away too.

[blairz]

Heybales. I just got my fit bit charge recently. I lift weights and do HIIT cardio. I got the fit bit charge to see how many calories I burn in a day when I go to the gym. I'm concerned I'm not getting an accurate calorie count. I have logged in a workout before and I'm curious where it's getting the number of calories burned for that particular work out. have logged in a workout before and I'm curious where it's getting the number of calories burned for that particular work out. I have a few days to take this back so I want to make sure it's doing what I wanted it to do. Can you help?

[Heybales]

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@blairz wrote:
Heybales. I just got my fit bit charge recently. I lift weights and do HIIT cardio. I got the fit bit charge to see how many calories I burn in a day when I go to the gym. I'm concerned I'm not getting an accurate calorie count. I have logged in a workout before and I'm curious where it's getting the number of calories burned for that particular work out. have logged in a workout before and I'm curious where it's getting the number of calories burned for that particular work out. I have a few days to take this back so I want to make sure it's doing what I wanted it to do. Can you help?

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You aren't with those 2 workouts.

The only valid use of the formula that gets calorie burn from heart rate is steady-state aerobic exercise, same HR for 2-4 min.

Those 2 workouts is exactly opposite if done correctly, non-steady-state and anaerobic for good amounts of time.

When you log the workout as activity record, you are getting a title so you can find it later, and a calorie burn based on HR, and that workout turns off the GPS since not needed inside.

So invalid calorie burn.

NO, none, nada, HRM will be valid for those activities. So the HR-based model will be good for any cardio you do. The daily stuff below exercise is still based on steps and that slight activity seen.

Because HR-based calorie burn also isn't valid below aerobic exercise - which daily life is.

So if the sole purpose was those 2 types of activities, and don't care about seeing what HR does during the day, don't care about steps or inspired to get more (I'm not) - then indeed, this isn't useful for you, compared to say a simple Zip.

Because with either device - you manually log those activities. The database entries that are used is based on studies of calorie burn produced during those activities actually being done in a metabolic chamber to measure heat produced and therefore how much the body burned, not through measuring via face mask amount of O2 and CO2 produced through the effort for aerobic exercise.

[Indyteddy]

I do kettlebells and kettlebells / virp but it only records  61 calories.  I have tried to change it but it will not let me. Any suggestions? 

[Dominique]

@Indyteddy: which Fitbit model do you have, what’s the duration of your workout, what have you tried to change and why do you think 61 calories is too little? If you think you know better what the real energy expenditure of any given exercise is, you can log the activity manually and enter your calories.

[Indyteddy]

I have a fitbit 2. I have tired to enter the calories by hand but had no joy. I do know when you work out with kettles for 50 minutes it's a lot more calories then 61


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