How to log exercise classes

[Freckles78]

Hi

I have been reading in the forums and am completely confused!
How do I log something like a Body Pump class? I wore my Charge HR and pressed the button at the start and end to log the work out - but the calorie burn was very low.
Should I log it some other way and if so how do I work out my calorie burn? Is there a way of working it out from HR?
Thanks!

[Freckles78]

Ps. I am on iOS.

[katej841]

Caveat:  I am using an Android. There's a new feature under "track exercise", click on "settings" and you should see a list of exercises that can be "auto-tracked". If you turn them on (mine were all on automatically), the device should identify these things after 15 minutes.  It's worked surprisingly well for me, identifed a bike ride yesterday and treadmill (elliptical) on Saturady. Your class would probably fall under "aerobic workout".

[Freckles78]

Hi

Thanks, I have that activated. Will I get a more accurate calorie reading if I use that and not the tracking that requires pressing the button beginning and end of a workout?

[RobertoME]

Hello @katej841 and a warm welcome to our community @Freckles78. Note that the calories will be burned in the same way if your tracker auto recognized your exercise or if you use the side button (Exercise Mode). In fact the any activity log, will improve the accuracy of these activities' contribution to your caloric burn if the activity is not precisely step based.

Also Exercise mode is useful when the exercise you are doing is not automatically recognized by your tracker due to the motion pattern of the activity itself beyond the two general categories as @katej841 mentioned before. These categories are:

• Sport—Includes high-movement sports like tennis, basketball, soccer, and others. Sports that might not be recognized include those without continuous movement or that vary in intensity level, like golf
• Aerobic workout—Includes aerobic activities with continuous movement, such as Zumba®, cardio-kickboxing, and other dance classes.

Hope this helps and see you around.

[Freckles78]

Thanks Roberto, 

So am I better off, with something like weight lifting, entering in an estimated calorie burn somewhere? If so, how do I do that? 

Sorry to keep asking questions!

xx

[aloha76]

So, nobody ever answered this?  I have the same questions.

[RobertoME]

Hi there @Freckles78 and welcome aboard @aloha76. I have to offer you a proper apology since I did not posted more updates, until now I received a notification of your concern.

I'm going back to the main question, and if you are doing an activity that are not exactly measured by steps, my best recommendation is to keep using the side button of your Charge HR. This will create an activity record on your exercise history after you have synced. This exercise created, then can be categorized to a different exercise or even a custom one. I can refer you to this other post where I go into more details about the steps for categorizing and creating custom activities.

Note if this is not really working for you, you can enter a manual activity or as I mentioned before, create a custom one and not necessarily enter a random number of calories. You can use the following calories calculator for a more accurate measure of your calories.

To make a manual activity using the mobile app you can use these steps:

1. From the main page, tap "Track Exercise" 
2. Tap the Stopwatch icon at the top-right
3. Switch from "Track" to "Log" using the toggle at the top of the screen
4. Choose the activity you'd like to log from the list, or create your own
5. Fill out the details and submit the log

Hope this cover all questions, but you can keep me posted if you need more help.

[Arohrer91]

This problem seems to have been going on for a while, is there a reason why FitBit won't add exercise classes to the activity list?

[RobertoME]

Hi @Arohrer91, welcome aboard to our Fitbit Community! Some of the activities are not step based and is hard to keep track of all the possible classes available. For this was designed the option to customized your own exercise.

I wonder what exercise you are looking for? For a reference list of activities available on your Dashboard, I recommend to review this amazing post of @Colinm39. It might be of your help to know which exercise are listed as manual activities.

Let me know if you have more questions.

[PercussaResurgo]

I log my bodypump class as 'workout'.

[LaLaLowcarb]

So basically, am I understanding that you need to do the exercise for the first time without “tracking for touching any buttons” then the exercise will show up in your history and you can choose it the 2nd time you do that exercise.