Help track workout on Stationary Bike.

[tacomaintx]

Any recommendations on use of stationary bike? Will I be able to do anything to add time on bike as exercise on my Fitbit? Any help or motivation would be greatly appreciated 🙂

[MaryMac123]

I put my Fitbit around my ankle. It’s held in place by my sock. Amazon sells extenders for Fitbit bands if you’d prefer that. You won’t get credit for any bike exercise with your tracker on your wrist. I also put it on my ankle when I push a shopping cart. I get 2000 steps at Costco’s massive warehouse. I have arthritic knees and had my primary doctor (in his 40s but with bad knees) and an orthopedic doctor both tell me to ride a bike to help my knees. It does!

[Heybales]

You can add anything as exercise on your Fitbit.

Not everything should be done that way though, like daily chores - it would get a tad tedious to start a workout of folding laundry, doing dishes, ect.

That's all taken care of in your daily burn estimate anyway.

Riding bike though, sure start a workout and count it as exercise. There are notes you can add for like what tension level you use so you can compare later and see you are getting fit - like note the avg HR, or avg Watts it said you did, or distance (though that is bogus in reality).

Tips - spin around 90 rpm cadence - decent bike should show what that is - if not it would mean every other foot hitting bottom of stroke every second just to spot check.

Reason is it can protect your knees compare to attempting to push it out slow like you are doing leg presses.

Have a slight lean to your torso to handlebars so it can take a bit of weight off your rear, but not so much it hurts shoulders or wrists.

Move hands to different positions - most handlebars have that ability. Seat forward or back effects that.

For seat height to save the knees too - sit with heel on pedal with leg perfectly straight at farthest reach, hip should not be tilting down to accomplish that reach.

Now when you pedal normally with forefoot on pedal, there is a natural bend to your knee that is usually on average correct.

Since height now effected seat distance from handlebars, may need to adjust that, and then may need to get height again. Keep adjusting, the repetition of cycling means with bad setup you can quickly hurt your knees.

But once done, usually done for good until weight is loss and your weight transfer is different.

The calorie burn based on HR requires the device seeing an accurate HR.

The advice to move Fitbit to count steps better should NOT allow that to fail. Steps is not more important than getting a good read on calories burned IMO.

If you can accomplish both on your ankle - that's great, many can. Some can't even get a good read of HR on their wrist without some fiddling, and they do better on their ankle. Just hard to tell the time there quickly in public. 😉

[rthomas268]

Looks like the easiest way to track what doesn't have a set label is to use the Workout setting. During the workout/bike/whatever you can view your HR and when done, sync it to your app, then you csn edit the name Workout to Whatever you did. I like the Workout setting even when I'm on the treadmill so I can monitor my HR.

[GBO323]

I echo what @Heybales and @rthomas268  said. Start the exercise called "Workout". The main thing is to get the FitBit to track your Heart Rate so it more accurately measures your workout intensity vs just steps. Technically, a cycle isn't stepping...but the heart rate will give you the most accurate measure for your stationary bike.

Since I use the FitBit food tracker, I feel confident using the Exercise modes to give me a better insight into my calorie burn.