Piano steps

[skyemeadows]

There are several other posts that I've read about piano playing being counted as steps. I just got my fitbit yesterday, and after practicing about an hour today, my step count went up about 5000 steps...since I can practice up to 3hrs a day this could be problematic. From what I can gather from other posts, since it's an activity tracker it's tracking bodily movements. My question is if I choose to keep the fitbit on while playing piano and it records these movements as steps, will my calories out be skewed? My main reason for purchasing it was not as a pedometer, but to track heart rate and calories in vs. calories out. Since I play piano a lot and generally use my hands working around the house, if this burns fewer calories than taking steps, then the calorie count is very off and the product is not functioning properly as advertised, and I should return it...I am also wondering if the heart rate is really based on blood flow or if it also relies on movement detection to analyze heart rate. My heart rate was about the same while mowing the lawn as while playing piano, but I definitely feel more exertion mowing the lawn...thoughts?

[EdsonFitbit · Accepted solution]

It's great to see that you've visited the Fitbit Community @skyemeadows. If you keep your Charge HR on while playing piano and it counts steps, this will definitely affect the amount of calories burned. However, if you negate the extra steps your calories burned won't be affected.

I recommend setting your tracker's dominant hand in dominant in order to decrease the sensitivity of step counting. Please force sync your tracker after making changes to your Dashboard. The heart rate is actually based on blood flow. You can find more information about how it works in this post. 

Catch you later.  

[skyemeadows]

Hi. Thanks for your reply. After watching how many steps are counted while I'm playing, I've realized that the easiest thing will be to take it off while playing. Tonight, it counted over 1000 steps during a single song! That was even after switching it to dominant hand. I know that playing burns more calories than sitting around, but not so many so fast. Thanks for the tip about steps adding up to calories.

It's unfortunate that I'll have to take it off so often, but it is still helpful while working out, so I think it's useful for encouraging an active and healthy lifestyle.

I think my heart rate really does go up while playing! I'm going to test the accuracy by comparing my measured pulse to the fitbits readings.

Thanks again!

[EdsonFitbit]

Thanks for marking my response as the solution @skyemeadows. If you decide to take off your Charge HR while playing piano, you can manually log the activity in your Activity tab. Since it is not part of the list of activities in the database you can create a custom activity as shown in the screen shot below. It will be saved once it has been created.

To obtain the amount of calories burned during the session please visit this link from SparkPeople. Enter your weight in pounds and the minutes spent while playing piano. It will give you the amount of calories burned to be inputted in your Dashboard. Hope this helps.

Keep up the super stepping. 

[skyemeadows]

Hi-
I couldn't find those options on the app. Are they on the website? I may have found another solution that I'm going to try this week. I synced myfitnesspal account, and I can enter workout data with that for music playing. Maybe I can set my fitbit to workout when I'm playing music, and categorize it with myfitnesspal so there are no steps counted. I'm wondering if when it says outdoor cycling it's not adding steps, because it says it isnt. If that's the case setting to workout mode when I practice and doing that might work. Main goal at this point being getting an accurate step count without having to remember to take the Fitbit on and off...pretty busy so just remembering to press the workout button when playing might be tough!

[EdsonFitbit]

The above workaround is available to be performed through the website only, sorry for not mentioning before.

Renaming a recorded activity actually doesn't remove the steps from the totals, however, the workaround with MyFitnessPal seems to be a good idea. I haven't tried it myself yet. Please let me know if it works. 

[skyemeadows]

So I tried pressing the workout button, but even when I deleted the activity, it still logged the 1200 steps registered from 20 mins piano playing. Is there a way to remove steps once they've been logged?

[EdsonFitbit]

Thanks for the update. You can negate logged steps from your online Dashboard by following these instructions.

[skyemeadows]

Yeah...i can't go online to do that for everytime. How do I make a request to the company. Incorrectly logged steps seems to be a pretty big issue. At the very least, there should be a way to make changes to your step count on the app. That can't be too hard to program...

[skyemeadows]

Like if I delete an activity, all the cals, steps, heart rate data should go away, too...

[Gaber]

I don't like very much your proposed solution: Playing #piano / organ / harpsichord is a real activity and #calories are burnt, maybe not as many as walking but certainly more than watching tv. As a dedicated piano player, I don't want to manually correct my fitbit stats. I'd rather record my 3 daily hours of #pianopractice as an activity such as [playing keyboard]. Is there a way to create it? How accurate is the calories calculator in this case? Can it be tuned up?

[BHpianist]

. i play piano 3 hours a day,  6 days a week for the Brown hotel... My heart rate runs 130ish, it counts it as indoor bicycle.... and yes,  my steps go up.... But with an elevated heart rate,  i think I'm actually working out in a way... So calories burnt are  real.  And steps are representative of how far you could have gone if  you'd been putting that effort into actually going someplace. . Just my thoughts though - i don't have any science to back it up

[lisarachelle85]

I have to disagree with that link.  There can not be an accurate calculator for calories burned just based on weight and time spent playing piano... i can spend 10 minutes playing fur elise, or 10 minutes playing Joplin... there's a huge difference.  That's like comparing shooting free throws solo to playing 1v1 basketball...

[SunsetRunner]

It is difficult to track the activity of pianist.  There are too many variables.  There is a difference between playing a nocturne and playing some of Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin heavy pieces.  Also if you are playing organ you not only are using both hands and reaching for upper manuals but also using both feet making it a real workout.  After an hour or so of playing you have a real workout