Mileage inaccurate with correct stride length

[Kimberly19]

I have a new Inspire 3 that I received as a gift for the holidays. My main goals in using it are to track my steps and to track my exercise through the week. I walk each day on a treadmill and have noticed that my Fitbit registers only half of the mileage I walk. My Nordictrack will say I’ve walked 2 miles but my Fitbit only registers around .79 mile. I’ve checked and my stride length is correct.

I’m just at a loss as to how to fix this. If I manually log my workout then it alters my step counts and that is then off. But if I let my Fitbit calculate my workout then my 30 minute workout looks like I have only walked less than one mile. Any suggestions?

[JohnnyRow]

Treadmill presents a problem.  When holding handrails, wrist is not moving so steps are not detected. Distance on treadmill is calculated as steps times stride length.  But heart rate is detected and that determines calorie burn and zone minutes so those are good.

The alternative is to put watch in pocket and probably get good step count and therefore distance but lose heart rate and therefore calorie burn for that time.

Being worn on wrist, it can't really tell what legs are doing; can only infer steps from arm swing.  Have same issue any time wrist is held steady such as pushing shopping cart or baby carriage.

[Kimberly19]

That’s what I thought might have occurred the first time I wore it on my treadmill. However, today I made sure that my arms were down and I was swinging them as I normally would during walking. I kept a pace of 3 miles per hour and walked just over 30 minutes. It should have registered approximately 1.5 miles, but only measured about half that. It seems to measure around half of the mileage each of my walks. 

[JohnnyRow]

In that case, there are two of possibilities, or a combination of the two.

1)  The treadmill calibration is off somewhat and it is giving you more credit than you deserve, which is not far-fetched but not that much.

2) The Fitbit stride length is off, and that can be easily adjusted.  Fitbit sets a default based on your height and some other factors and is usually quite close but you are free to adjust it as you wish and that affects how your step count is converted to distance.  To get there, on phone app from Today screen, tap the gear settings icon at top right, then 'Activity & Wellness', then ' Exercise' then 'Stride Length'.  It shows walking and running stride lengths.  I think activity 'Treadmill' always uses Walking stride length even if running.  'Set automatically' shows the Fitbit-set defaults. Turn that off and you can adjust to your liking.  If you are getting half the distance, try cutting the walking stride length in half.  Then see how your distance measures up next treadmill walk.  Then you can continue to fine-tune the adjustments day-by-day.

I probably should have said first, check your data input that might affect default stride length such a height in particular.  And don't give up safety by not holding hand rails.  It would be just as good to just hold one rail with the non-fitbit hand.

Good luck and good stepping.