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ICONIC bike steps

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‎01-02-2019 05:56

‎01-02-2019 05:56

Just got an ICONIC for xmas... did a 25 mile bike ride on Jan 1 with a friend who has a different fitbit.  She logged about 8000 steps for the 25 mile ride, I logged 2000 steps for the exact same ride. That just seems nuts to me.  

 

We logged 4000 steps take a small walk for breakfast.  It seems odd that a long ride did not log enough steps for me to click the check box for I did a reasonable amount of activity for the day.  

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‎01-02-2019 06:36

‎01-02-2019 06:36

Riding a bike is not a step based activity (guess you worked that one out lol) so Fitbit does not 'give' you any steps for biking. There is no conversion of time spent on a bike into an equivalent number of steps. The 'steps' you get from biking are accidental steps from bumps you go over that the tracker feels and thinks are steps. If I ride my bike with soft tyres I get far fewer steps than if I pump them up really hard.  Also you will get far more steps on a dirt track than a tarmac road. I find my trackers (I have a few different ones) are pretty similar on bike steps, except I think the Charge 3 logs more than the others. So tracker could make a difference, your tyre pressure could and the route you choose could.

Community Council Member

Helen | Western Australia

Want to discuss ways to increase your activity? Visit Get Moving in the Lifestyle Discussion Forum.

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‎01-02-2019 10:48

‎01-02-2019 10:48

Yes it does seem nuts @pdorsey considering that neither of you where doing any steps.

Your tracker is simply counting the bouncing around of the handlebars, since that is what your hand is holding on to 

If your friend ride over more bumps or maybe their bike doesn't ride as smooth as yours. many people want Fitbit to remove all bike steps, while others want Fitbit to record a true step count for a non stepping exercise. 🙄

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‎01-02-2019 10:55

In response to Rich_Laue

‎01-02-2019 10:55

I did some reading on this.... some people like that biking does not make up fictitious steps. Most seem to think that biking should never log steps.


Personally... what I want is for the bike to create fake steps so that 2 hours of hiking would equal 2 hours of biking... the algorithm would look at speed, hills, etc. and fake an equivalent number of steps.


The idea is that I set some number... say 12,000 for my steps/day.... but if I go for a 25 mile ride I am NOT going to then go for a long walk or hike. I want to be able to say I was "good" every day. That might happen by walking, spinning, biking... etc.


I get that others think this is stupid... but I would appreciate a general "activity" metric.
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