Inspire 3 - "Risk of undertraining" message

[Fanniemae]

After a challenging workout hour at the gym with the weight machines, the next day fitbit says I'm at a big risk of undertraining because I didn't get my cardio load up. I realize weights aren't cardio, but my heart was pounding anyway, and it's supposedly good to have weight days, so we shouldn't be made to feel like a slacker. I have Inspire 3.

Moderator edit - updated subject for clarity 

[LZeeW]

@Fanniemae   I completely agree with you.  I tend to ignore that training status and workout by how my body feels.  I feel like this feature is a work in progress.

[Julia_G]

Hi, @Fanniemae , did you check to see what your Fitbit recorded during workout hour at the gym?  Did your Inspire 3 detect your exercise?  For non step based activities, Fitbits (particularly the more basic, tracker versions) may not automatically detect the activity - particularly if it didn’t fully detect your “heart pounding”.  

For these sorts of exercises, in order to keep your cardio load info accurate, you may not want to rely on auto detection of an activity.  I would recommend starting the exercise on your Fitbit itself by using the exercise app (swipe left to find the app, then swipe up to find weights, or whatever your activity is.  Don’t forget to stop when you are done, though if you do you can edit the stop time later in the app.

Launching the exercise app on your Fitbit means that it will be recorded in your app even if it is not automatically detected, but possibly more importantly, launching the exercise app and recording your activity that way means that your Fitbit will sample your HR rate differently so that HR recorded will be more detailed, and likely more accurate than when the Fitbit is not tracking an exercise.  You may find, therefore, that your cardio load detection also is more accurate.

You are quite right that rest days and weight days are also important and combining cardio activities with strength training and weight bearing activities will give you the best fitness results.  You certainly should not feel like a slacker!  Remember that your Fitbit is only a tool… You also need to “listen to your body”.

Also, you can always manually log an exercise if you didn’t launch the app and the Fitbit did not auto detect it.  Although this may not change your cardio load messages in the app, you will have a record that shows that your activity level is meeting your exercise goals.  Remember: the little cardio messages in your app are only there until the next message, but the record of your workouts remains on your data record.

You may like to have a look at this help article which explains about activity logging.

[Fanniemae]

I always manually set my Inspire 3 to "weights" if that is what I'm going to do at the gym that day.

[Bonniebonnie]

The cardio load prompts are annoying and dangerous. Hundreds of fitbit members have asked to make cardio load prompts optional, but they won't listen. Some people have even been hurt by these prompts. Many find them to be negative and nagging - never says good job and always finds faults. Mine wants me to get 200 mins of cardio load. Insane!