HR monitoring when cycling

[tarheelteeth]

I have been using my Charge HR while cycling on a spin bike.  I am not concerned with logging my steps during this activity - I want to track my heartrate as accurately as possible.  For some reason when I am cycling it frequently registers a resting heartrate or won't register it at all.  I don't have this problem with any other exercise I do

[MariamV · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the forums @tarheelteeth. I'll be happy to help here! Hey, just out of curiosity does your Charge HR show "--" instead of heart rate? The reason why I ask is because I also use my Charge HR while spin class and it sometimes shows two dashes but this is caused by the sweat on my arm. I then dry my arm and tracker and then it's working again. I'd recommend using a sweatband. 

Another thing to consider is making sure you are wearing it correctly. Try with placing your tracker higher on your wrist; because blood flow in your arm increases the farther up you go, moving the tracker up a couple inches can be helpful. Also, make sure you're not wearing your tracker too tightly; a tight band restricts blood flow, potentially affecting the heart rate signal. After a short wait, you should see your correct heart rate again. If this reading persists, try changing your Heart Rate setting from "Auto," which means the heart rate tracker is usually active when you're moving, to "On," which means the heart rate tracker is always active. Then, try relaxing your wrist and staying still briefly about 10 seconds, after which you should see an accurate heart rate reading. Note that your tracker will still provide accurate calorie burn readings during these types of exercise by analyzing your heart rate trends over the course of the workout.

Hope this helps. Keep me posted with the outcome! 

[Ben-Haile]

My charge is very inaccurate for measurign heart rate while bicycling. It seems accurate for everything else, including a sudden heart rate increase when I start running. I have completely given up on it for cycling.

Some folks have discussed moving your arm in a jogging motion while biking to get better heart rate measurements. I will try that next and report back on the results.

Here is a link to a Reddit discussion of the problem. The second link is to a short article by fitbit basically conceding that trackers other than blaze and surge do not measure heart rate while cycling.

https://www.reddit.com/r/fitbit/comments/2yjyfo/anyone_else_struggling_with_heartrate_tracking/

http://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/Does-the-Fitbit-tracker-accurately-track-calories...

Occasionally I have compared it to the heart rate measurements on a stationary bike. One theory I have from this comparison is that the fitbit gets out of phase and reads one half of my actual heartrate. Perhaps because there is not step movement like running or climbing stairs to alert it to activity, it misreads the heart rate as being one half. Sometimes after being on the stationary bike 20-30 minutes it will catch on, the heart rate will come up, and from that point forward it will read a heart rate very similar to the stationary bike.

[MariamV]

@Ben-Haile thanks for joining us! Hey if you wish to have a more detailed caloric burn from your cycling activity you could try manually logging this activity. However, your Charge HR has been enhanced to track your Heart Rate during non step based activities such as cycling. It will automatically recognize and activity based on your heart rate. To check out these activities make sure you go to your devices settings and scroll all the way down:

After my tracker has automatically logged my outdoor bike activity, it kind of looks like this:

I really hope this helps, let me know if you have further questions. 

[Wheeezzze]

Thank you for sharing this. What I am really after is GPS tracking of cycling which incorporates elevation and speed into the heart rate and calorie burn. People have been asking for over a year now.

Thank you for your post

[MariamV]

@Wheeezzze thanks for stopping by! Since your Charge HR doesn't have a GPS integrated it's not capable of such feature. The app will help with the GPS capability only for step-based activities, such as running, walking or hiking. You can add your votes and comments in this idea right here. Good luck and I really hope to see this feature implemented in the future. 

[MoJo2]

My new Hr shows teh dashes -- while I am on the stairmaster and the results are very low numbers for me in the 'zones'. I can be sweating on the stairmaster for an hour and the fitbit will show 2 mins in cardio and 15 in fat burn. It will show my HR as low as 49!  Rediculous. My resting HR shows 53 so 49 while on the stairmaster is obviously inaccurate.  After noticing these low numbers I set my iphone to the fitbit screen today and watched it during my workout. That is when I noticed the fitbit is not really tracking my HR much at all.  What is the point?  I pushed it around and wiped the sweat away underneath it and it sorta would work for a few minutes. If I put it 2 or 3 inches higher on my arm (as suggest here) it will just slide down as I am not to make it too tight (also suggested on these forums). So I fail to understand the solution and how the string is marked 'solved' on this topic.  The solution is to put it 'on' all the time but that will drain your battery - sorry had that with my last fitbit...then cinch it up 3 inches higher on your wrist, oh but not too tight and hope it wont slide down all while NOT sweating during your workout? Did I get that right?  

[Ben-Haile]

Thanks for you post. This issue is definitely not solved. I posted in
this thread a while back about low heart rate measurements while
bicycling. I have given up relying on my fitbit while bicycling. I'm sad
but not surprised to hear that it fails on the stairmaster too. I say
these things as a fitbit enthusiast. I still use it to monitor heart rate
in sleep, meditation, and while running. But it just does not work in some
applications. And this does leave me wondering if some of the data that
seems reliable is not. To what extent does the fitbit just make up heart
rate data from the motion sensor data telling it how fast we are running,
walking, etc.
~Ben

[MariamV]

@MoJo2 & @Ben-Haile Thanks for sharing! Since you have tried everything to no avail, then the best course of action would be to contact our Support Team for further assistance. They definitely have the proper tools to take a deeper look into your tracker's behavior. Mention them all the troubleshooting steps you've done to fix this. By doing that you'll be helping them to provide you with a quick follow up. 

[MoJo2]

Today after 53 mins my tracker said I was resting. Omg. It never showed me hit cardio zone once when the machine sensors had me it in about half the time. I tried to post pictures -not easy to take on the machine - but they don't seem to be showing up. I had it set to ON. that might have helped it not lose signal as much. 53 mins of sweating and I am "resting"? Omg

Mid 80 vs 132

[BradMCK]

Just got a Charge 2 for Xmas, started off great on my 1st 3 workouts but now my heart rate stays on about 120 BPS while the treadmill consistantly reads about 155. I have done all adjustments, tight, loose, cleaned , shaved my hair on my arm. I used 10 different treadmills, same story. Very frustrating becuase in SA you get points and rewards for keeping your HR abover the cardio zone for 30+. I go for a full 45mins @ 12.5km/h on 3-6% incline , it might touch 130 for a few seconds and then die back down, so i get zero points, what a sad waste, becuase the device and app are great , just HR does not work

[mcmarcus]

I've had my Charge 2 since November and at first it read my heart rate during exercises really accurately - primarily running but also machines and classes in the gym. 

Since the software update in January I'm finding that the heart rate accuracy has gotten much worse. When I'm working out & when my heart rate reaches peak level it drops the heart rate reading and I get the "--" until my heart rate drops down to Cardio level. I know my heart rate is above peak and the other machines in the gym confirm it, but my fitbit doesn't record it.

It worked absolutely fine until the software update a few weeks ago. Other people who have the Charge 2 I know have found the same. Tried restarting it and that hasn't done anything. Is there something else I can try or is there a way to fix this?

[FaStLaNe]

Hi guys

I have exactly the same issue. 

My charge hr 2 while cycling always shows me a false heart rate, it never goes over 90bpm, that is obviously very low for a spinning lesson or for a cycling session. 

No issues during running. 

How can we raise a bug for this? 

[BradMCK]

I think it's a limitation of the device and tech and not sure if a patch will fix it. Still have the same issues sadly

Regards
Bradford

[bbruton]

I have had the same heartrate tracking issue with my Surge while exercizing on my Peloton bike. I have tried all of the solutions listed here but with very little success. The Surge tracks my heartrate just fine and then suddenly loses the heartbeat or drops to what appears to be one half of my heart rate right in the middle of exercizing. Very frustrating. 

So I started thinking about possible electrical causes. I believe the spinning wheel of the bike creates a magetic field that interferes with the trackng of the Fitbit. I don’t know if the field is conducted up the handlebars or not. What I do know is if I fold a hand towel and place it over the handlebar of the side I wear my fitbit on, and then let that hand rest on the towel, my fitbit never loses my heartrate. The folded hand towel creates enough of a shield to make it work properly. 

I’m convinced that the towel provides electrical insulation from the handlebar but I don’t know for sure. I just know it works for me!

Good luck and happy spinning!

BKB

[alanDS]

I have a fit bit charge 2, and my heart rate reading whilst on a stationary bike is 90 on the fit bit, yet my chest strap is sending a reading to the console on the bike of 150 nom.

how can I get my fit bit to give me an accurate heart rate when cycling on both a stationary bike and a bike outdoors? 

[Misskato]

I have exactly the same problems... it pretty much thinks I’m dead during a spin class, it’s so disappointing. I’ve tried all the recommended solutions with very little success. I have a charge hr, was thinking about ungrading to the charge 2 to see if that worked, but after reading these, I doubt I’ll bother. I will have a go at the towel trick though...

[Janncam]

I have a Charge 2, have tried all the suggestions below and it still does not track my HR accurately while on my stationary bike. If I wave my arms around while cycling it does seem to be slightly more accurate. It works fine doing aerobic exercise when my whole body is moving. I only just want to integrate the HR data into my daily activity to accurately record calories burned. It doesn’t look like I can sync a chest band monitor to the fitbit app either.

Also, my Charge 2 will randomly show a heart rate over 100, when I’m moving my upper body briefly, like making the bed. But a quick pulse check shows my HR in the normal range for me of 60-70.

Could my Fitbit be faulty? Thanks for any help or tips.

[Polemic]

I've recently started on a smart cycle trainer and have the same problem.

Interestingly it's the same problem I've always had on a concept2 rower.

So my theory is the fitbit doesn't like sports that involve gripping things tightly. Especially if the hand is bent back at the wrist. Probably due to the tendons in the wrist tightening and/or pulling both blood vessels and the watch out of ideal position. 

This seems to fit the comment in this thread that 'adding a towel to the cycle grip side the Fitbit is on restores the HR'. A towel widens the circumference of grip and probably the muscle intensity and tendon stretch in the wrist.

May be nonsense, but that's the best fit reason I've been able to come up with.

I'm still fed up with it though (and with fitbit not syncing trainer rides via Strava) so going to go garmin.