Cardio fitness level dropped to poor

[Sabrina2628]

I used to wear fitbit charge 2 and my cardio fitness level for my age (female, 40, 5,3, 115.)was always excellent (49) two weeks ago my husband bought me the fitbit ionic. Very happy of course!! I did a walk/run on the treadmill and eversince my cardio fitness level is poor (22) how is this possible?  By the way I am from Holland sorry for my spelling errors.

[SantiR]

@Sabrina2628 Welcome to the Fitbit Community! That is very strange for sure! 

I recommend just checking your personal stats on your dashboard to confirm if they are okay. Your cardio fitness level is calculated using your gender and age. 

Also, another thing that works to get a more precise calculation is performing GPS activities because it gets calculated using a relationship between your pace and heart rate during run, so its better that way. You should use the Exercise App on your Ionic of course. 

It is also recommendable to run on flat terrain as much as possible since only the flat sections of your run count towards your score estimate. You may need to go on several runs that are at least 10 minutes in length to affect your score.

Please check this helpful article for more details on cardio fitness level and how to get a more precise calculation.

If you still feel that it is not accurate after all, please perform a restart on your Ionic. That should help out too if none of the above works.

Hope this helps. Let me know how it goes! 

[Sabrina2628]

Thanks for your reply! The drop in cardio fitness level happenend after a treadmill workout using gps. I normally select the exercise mode: workout for my workouts. This was the first time I used the exercise mode treadmill with gps . My resting heartrate dropped to 52 and still my cardio fitness level stays at 22 (poor) with my fitbit charge 2 my level was always excellent. My personal stats are correct and of course I already tried resetting. Hope to have some answers.

[Sabrina2628]

I think I know what happenend. I used the exercise mode: run with gps and did a workout on my treadmill... I deleted that workout and now my cardio fitness level is what it always was. 

[Minkah]

Hi @SantiR can you explain what you meant below? I run hills all the time, are you saying the ionic can't track my hill work accurately? 

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@ SantiFitbit wrote:

It is also recommendable to run on flat terrain as much as possible since only the flat sections of your run count towards your score estimate.

[bbarrera]

@Minkah Cardio Fitness Score is a Fitbit invented term for "VO2max" which is a metric primarily used to rank the *potential* of athletes to compete in endurance activities. Fitbit's term is confusing. A lot of people are confused about VO2max, and Fitbit just made it worse by inventing its own term. The bottom line: VO2max is kind of like knowing your IQ score, mildly interesting but of no practical value. If you routinely do IQ tests and get scores of 110-120, its unlikely you'll ever get a score high enough for admittance to Mensa. And if you do a real VO2max test and are rated "good" then its unlikely you will ever compete at elite levels on endurance sports like running, cycling, swimming, cross-country skiing, and rowing.

Back to your question... Fitbit has a basic VO2max estimator, and it relies on you doing 10+ minutes on flat terrain. It is a simple VO2max estimator, thats all. There is a company (FirstBeat in Finland) that has patents on estimating VO2max without requiring flat terrain, and its been validated to be 95% accurate. 

So this isn't about tracking your hill work accurately (whatever you mean by that), its about estimating a metric that is vaguely interesting to discuss at a party for runners. VO2max doesn't tell you anything about YOUR fitness level (relative to previous races) for running a 5k or 10k or half or full marathon.

[SantiR]

@Sabrina2628 Thanks for your reply! That makes sense! I'm glad to hear that you were able to find the cause of your level drop. I'm very glad to hear that you are back on track now! I'm sure this will be helpful for other users as well.

@bbarrera Awesome explanation! Thanks for contributing your knowledge with the Community! I'm sure other users will find this clear. Is this the information you were looking for? @Minkah

Keep me posted! 

[Caitybaee]

Dear Santifitbit,

I have a question regarding this. My cardio fitness level was always on "average" but I checked it today and its gone to poor (almost at the bottom of the chart). I don't understand why. 

I went to gym and I ran on the treadmill for 30 mins, before that I decided to manually initiate the "Run" option via the button on my Charge 2. This is different to when it automatically picks up my runs, I found out. This is because it tracks my location too, which I saw on the app. I was obviously running on the spot so it just looks like a weird circular line on one spot (in the app). 

Do you think that because even though my heart rate was high, my fitbit thought I was standing in one direction because it couldn't pick up my pace speed, and this is why it has now gone to poor? 

Thanks in advance.

[tupipuffin]

This essentially just happened to me, too.  I often track elliptical and treadmill workouts, and my score always said "very good to excellent" and was slowly increasing into just being "excellent".  Today I used "run" while going around my hilly neighbourbood (which, to be fair, nearly killed me in one steep uphill part -- I had to walk for short spurts) and my score plummeted to "good".  What gives?

[SantiR]

Hello @Caitybaee! Welcome to the Fitbit family. Sorry for my delayed response. Thanks for posting your question regarding the cardio fitness score levels being too poor. 

Yes, it is possible that because you were using the run GPS option on a treadmill, it dropped down. As your tracker connects to GPS, Fitbit can provide a more precise estimate of your score using the relationship between pace and heart rate during your runs. If you're able to run at a comfortable pace for at least 10 minutes, track a run with GPS! Try using this option while running outside on a flat terrain as much as possible, then check if the results are positive this time. 

Also, if you keep getting the same poor score/level; please check that your personal settings are correct (gender, age, height, weight, etc.), as this cardio fitness score is also determined by those. Another good thing to do is wearing your tracker to sleep as it also takes into consideration your resting heart rate. You should be getting a more accurate score when doing this. 

Please check this helpful article for more details about this. You will find all the information needed about GPS and how to get the best cardio fitness score too. This should definitely help you out with this.

@tupipuffin I hope you're doing well! Thanks for sharing your experience on this thread. 

Please try using the run GPS option on a flat terrain as much as possible as only the flat sections of your run count towards your score estimate. Try to run at least 10 minutes each time you track this exercise for best results. Feel free to check the above article too for more details.

Hope this helps. Keep me posted! 

[Ameliatn]

Hi.. I'm using charge 2 for quite a while.

My cardio fitness is good but today when I check it became poor.

I mainly do zumba so it is recorded as aerobic workout. 

I just let the fitbit detect the exercise.

I have check my person settings they are correct .

Please help me.

[SunsetRunner]

Hi Sabrina, 

I also did the same thing and my score went down to poor. I deleted the exercise and it didn’t fix it. My score is still poor. 

do you remember how long it Took to go back? It has been like this for 2 days for me.