stairs down.

[Gillean]

I do no stairs but do walk up and down hills. Walking down is much more difficult for me than up partly my age but also true for my daughters. 1 day I walked/climbed 19 flights of stairs all up. I checked the app at the start and finish of each section of the walk. Only ups were counted tho I did start & end at home! I'm 75 and walk with 2 sticks having had 4 joint replacements. This is VERY disappointing!

[Julia_G · Accepted solution]

@Gillean wow, that's a lot of ups and downs -- very impressive at any age and even without sticks!  As you have noticed, Fitbits only count up floors, not down, even though many people do find the downs challenging.  I think that is because though it can be hard on the joints, the downs don't usually get your heart rate going the way the ups do, so perhaps don't help with fitness quite so much.  But you can always imagine your number times two...

You will, however, get credit for the steps on the downs as well as the ups.

Welcome to the Community!  I hope to hear more about your experiences using your Fitbit!

[Gillean]

I can see the argument but disagree. Surely if up and down were counted it could be taken into account when considering fitness contribution. Yes I could just double my tally but that doesn't have the same morale boosting effect as having it recorded. I have found my one has been an encouragement but this isn't a great help. Also I wonder how it managed early on to credit me with 44 flights when I probably did the same walk as already referred to! 


Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

[WendyB · Accepted solution]

It uses an Altimeter which will only count elevations of 10 Feet UP.

[WendyB]

See @TandemWalkerpost here he explains it very well

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/One/Stairs-down/m-p/1178830#U1178830

[TandemWalker · Accepted solution]

It's important to understand also that all the steps taken, for both going and down the stairs or hills, do form part of your step count. Your tracker tracks floors via a sensor called an altimeter. This sensor will log on floor for every change in elevation of 10' or more, if accompanied by movements. The altimeter tracks changes in barometric pressure; and for every rise in elevation of 10 feet or more, the change in pressure triggers the One to register a floor.

The problem with this is that Fitbit One can be fooled in counting floors when there were none due to barometric pressure changes caused by factors other than elevation changes. Using a similar example as your own experience, a morning walk on a regular path in my neck of the woods which entails no hills or stairs, normally give me no floor, as expected; but that same walk on a very windy and stormy day would lead as many as 20-40 floors! The goes for a fan blowing on you when riding in a car or any other similar circumstances that entail turbulence.

Should you worry about false floors? I don't. They serve as a reminder that I had to fight the elements on a windy/stormy day; or else they make up for the dozens of floors I do weekly that never get counted, only because they fell shy of the 10 feet elevation threshold. To me, false floors is just a statistic aimed at keeping people motivated to move more, to take the stairs instead of using the escalator/elevator when at the mall or the office. Taken in that context, the floor functionality is working just fine. Not so much if you're looking for floor count accuracy. My take. Cheers!

TW

[TandemWalker]

Hey @WendyB. This last post of mine was interrupted. Had I seen your post first, I would have avoided the redundancy. My bad! I'll have to seek the latest posts in future whenever similar circumstances are present. Take care!

TW

[WendyB]

@TandemWalker Not Redunant at all. I was not sure you would make it over to this one