How do I track horse riding with my Charge 2?

[ToniaJ]

I don’t run or cycle as I have Achilles tendinopathy. I mainly walk which is being tracked using my Fitbit charge 2 in steps or auto recognised as a ‘walk’. I swim which I log as activity as I don’t wear it while swimming BUT I also horse ride.

Today I rode quite actively, heart rate was in cardio mode but my Fitbit tracked all the exercise as steps and a ‘walk’. I could add horse riding in as a manual entry but I don’t want to ‘double dip’ ie get steps and activity!!!

i have only had my Charge 2 since Xmas and haven’t really grasped the activity logging yet. Any horse riding Fitbit experts can help me?

thanks

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity

[CarolineClark]

Hi

I am totally new to these devices & am a bit confused with activity/exercise tracking.

I have been brought a fitbit Charge 2.  I have installed the App & followed the set-up process however being a horse rider I would like to track horse riding as an activity.  From what I've read I think this can be done but I don't know how to set it up.

I have been through App on my iPhone & cannot see horse riding as an exercise shortcut.  Do I add this manually on the PC?

Please help! I am very keen to know calories burned, heart rate etc whilst riding & am confused as to whether it will track the horses steps as my steps?

Thank you

Caroline 

[Oliviadaisy]

I am wondering the same. 

[CarolineClark]

I have been searching all help pages & one suggests using 'Workout' on the tracker then after doing the activity changing the name of it on the Activity Dashboard.  As yet I have no idea how to change the name as I don't get the option to edit when I go into it....

[SarahBow]

Please can someone give me instruction on how to set horse riding as an exercise I can select on my Fitbit. I don't need interval workout if I am able to replace that

[WavyDavey]

Hi @SarahBow,

If you remove interval, you'll be able to see the list of available exercises in the app settings. However, horse riding is not one of the defined exercises. I would probably log it under the Workout category, which works well for exercise not covered by other categories.

[JohnnyRow]

If any horse riders read this, they might have a better idea, but my thinking is that it's always safe to use "Workout", with manual start and stop rather than auto-recognize, for anything that doesn't fit neatly into another category.

[ToniaJ]

I don’t run or cycle as I have Achilles tendinopathy. I mainly walk which is being tracked using my Fitbit charge 2 in steps or auto recognised as a ‘walk’. I swim which I log as activity as I don’t wear it while swimming BUT I also horse ride.

Today I rode quite actively, heart rate was in cardio mode but my Fitbit tracked all the exercise as steps and a ‘walk’. I could add horse riding in as a manual entry but I don’t want to ‘double dip’ ie get steps and activity!!!

i have only had my Charge 2 since Xmas and haven’t really grasped the activity logging yet. Any horse riding Fitbit experts can help me?

thanks

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity 

[ToniaJ]

I’ve heard people talking about workout mode - what is that?

[JohnnyRow]

Have you been using just exercise auto-recognition mode?

If so, push the side button until you come to an exercise mode, then tap screen until come to Workout.  For more details, see

http://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1935/?l=en_US&c=Topics%3ADashboard&p=charge_2&fs=...

[ToniaJ]

Wow! Ok I see. So this stops the Fitbit tracking my steps and looks at my heart rate instead?

I have a Pilates class tonight, I could do the same for that?

[Apocalypso]

Hi, welcome to the fun learning process of Fitbit! I'm a newbie too (Christmas gift), and the first full day I had it on, I jumped on my bike and did a little five mile jaunt. What I learned is that, oh yeah, when you're holding onto handlebars, your wrist doesn't move as if you're walking with a normal arm-swing. (Neither did it get all my steps yesterday as I had to walk my bike with a full-on flat tire about four miles to the closest shop. Hands resting on the bike to push it along.)

I've been told I should explore getting an ankle-band or fashioning one, so that it would move with my feet as I pedal. I might do that. But also some activity like weight lifting or pilates doesn't involve steps at all.

So what I did is set my primary goal as calories burned... and when I do something like a bike ride, I use the activity setting on the Charge 2 and tap-scroll to "bike" or "workout" etc. You'll then get a summary of your workout in terms of time, distance (if you have GPS activated on your mobile device for it), calories burned, max and min heart rates.  I'm sure riding uses the major muscles in your upper legs quite a lot and those are good heart-rate-lifters!   - There's a YouTube video by "Budget Equestrian" addressing the Fitbit/riding/horse care situation too. 🙂 

The biggest "oh yeah" I've learned so far is that how much I continue to move after my higher aerobic workout really affects my longer-range heart activity and calories burned. So, when I went to Jazzercise on Tuesday and then drove home, my heart rate came right down in the ten minute car ride. But on Thursdays, when I stay and vacuum and mop the studio, I burn so many more calories because I never sit down until I get home. Today I'm biking to the studio and back. It's only a 20-minute ride but because it's after some peak heart rate activity, it seems to be much more beneficial, if that makes sense. I doubt you get to sit down right after a good ride anyway! 

[JohnnyRow]

---

@ToniaJ wrote:

Wow! Ok I see. So this stops the Fitbit tracking my steps and looks at my heart rate instead?

I have a Pilates class tonight, I could do the same for that?

---

No, it doesn't stop step tracking.  Any setting looks at both steps and heart rate.  Heart rate is the biggest factor in calories burned.  So no matter what category you called horse riding, it would still credit you with calories burned from raised heart rate, and probably many steps from arm movement, even thought steps would probably not be very accurate.

I haven't tested many exercise categories to be sure, but I consider them partly for your own documentation, and partly to determine which stats to show in the exercise log.

[HeydyF]

Hey @ToniaJ, it is cool to see you around more often! Well, as you already know, you can only manually log this activity, because there is no other option to track it. And of course that the results won't be as detailed as if we had this option on the multi-sport for example or the auto detecting feature (SmartTrack). 

I can see that many other users have requested this addition, so I found this idea on our Feature Suggestions board, so please take a look at it and leave your vote. So the most votes it has, the bigger the chances to be taken into consideration by our team it'll have. 

If you have further questions, let me know! 

[Emilyclaire0904]

Does anyone know how to stop the Fitbit from tracking steps taken whilst horse riding. I ride almost everyday, and I want to record my heart rate and calories burnt however, even after setting my activity manually to ‘horseback riding’ the Fitbit is still tracking steps taken which are obviously the horse’s steps and not mine. Feeling a little frustrated with this as I feel like I’m cheating and taking steps I’m not. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[mmm43]

Hi Tonia.  I'm a horse riding Fitbit newbie too.  Looking thru the posts, several said they used Bike, so I'm going to try workout first, especially for poop scooping, grooming etc.  If that doesn't seem to work I'll try Bike.  Good luck to all of us.

[mitchellkid32]

How do I track horseback riding on my fitbit

[mmm43]

Hi.  I hate to tell you this, but nothing anyone suggested tracks the steps accurately for me.  But if I remember, i turn on WORKOUT when I start grooming and saddling, then turn it off before I mount.  Then I start it up again as a 2nd workout and leave it on TIL I dismount..  that way I can see the graph of my heart rate during both activities.  I was surprised to find how much exercise  just walking my horse on the trails was.  I should say that my horse is a very lively Arab/quarterhorse cross and the trails are in the  Cuyamaca mountains where it's unusual to find a stretch of level ground  in other words, it cinstant ups and downs.  I also found that grooming was even more vigorous than I'd expected.  

[CLopez]

I’ve been manually adding this activity after the fact, taking the Fitbit off to ride. It does capture every step my mare takes when I leave it on and it credits me far too much activity. I’d like to know if there is a setting That will track my heart rate without tracking steps. Riding is a great workout but wearing the tracker leads to over reporting activity and I suspect keeping it off may lead to underreporting. Not sure why they don’t fix this. 

[mmm43]

What I do (when I remember to LOL) is start a workout when I start grooming and tacking up. Then just before mounting I close the workout and start a "walk". Of course the number of steps is outrageously high and so far no one has had a fix. I don't remember if I ever tried to change it or not. My best buddy says she just mentally divides the ride steps by 4.

I sure wish Fitbit would acknowledge that people use their Fitbit's for exercise besides hitting a gym or running/walking. And that counting calories to control weight has a very long history (like at least 100 years) of being unsuccessful.

Sent from my iPad