Using Fitbit Versa for CrossFit

[Wolfe1989]

Hello,

Since purchasing my Versa I’ve found a lot of conflicting info about using Fitbits for CrossFit due to them not being calibrated to either the compound movements, wrist movements or just HIIT in general. Has anyone got any advice on picking an exercise on the Versa to best track a CrossFit session?

In our CrossFit sessions we do a cardio warmup for a few minutes, a strength session with weights for practice - lasting about 15mins then finish with the ‘workout of the day’ which involves HIIT exercises with compound movements (an as many reps as possible type job) for 12-15mins. Therefore with this in mind could I pick different exercises on the Versa? i.e ‘run/workout’ for the warmup, ‘weights’ for the strength part and ‘circuit training/workout’ for the HIIT session at the end.

Input on what others have used would be great, also with regards to the wrist movements issue can you not just wear the Fitbit on your ankle? A forum I saw said someone using a cross trainer with the arms and a Fitbit on the wrist caused inaccuracies however wearing it on the ankle corrected this, again anyone solved a issue like this? Such as with rowing for example - I would imagine switching from wrist to ankle would have this same effect.

I won’t be devastated if it turns out I can’t properly monitor a CrossFit session with my Versa as I bought it to monitor swim laps primarily (I lose count very easily), and I was considering purchasing a Polar H10 chest strap anyways but I’d love to hear other peoples experiences on similar HIIT tracking issues. I’m starting to feel the Fitbit is only really useful for exercise if you’re a runner, if not it’s an expensive step counter/watch “/

[NellyG]

To track any activity not included in the exercise shortcuts use the workout one and then edit the name in the app afterwards to crossfit. You will probably have to create a custom activity of crossfit to do it as I dont think Fitbit has it on their list (see below)

As far as wearing the Versa on your ankle - yes you can,  but it wont register an activity automatically and you wont get accurate calorie burn or active minutes as it cant track your heart rate on the ankle. But it will count step, reasonably (though from my experience will be rather generous with the step count)

ADDING A CUSTOM ACTIVITY
First you have to know how many calories you burn in your activity. You can google calorie calculators. In your case, if you do a similar workout each time I would calculate the calorie burn for each individual activity and add them together so yiu can track the whole session as one event, rather than run, weights, etc as different workouts.

Then go to the Fitbit website Dashboard (not the app) and tap the top of the Recent Exercise tile. A little thing will drop down on the bottom of the tile. Tap See More which is on the right side. A new page comes up. Move right to the bottom of this new page to the box titled Activities which is on the right side at the bottom. On the bottom of this box, in blue and small print it says Create Custom Activity. Tap that and a box comes up. Put in the title of the Activity and then fill in the start time and duration of you latest session, fill in the calories burnt and hit log. You have now created your custom activity. Bit of a trial, but you only have to do it that way once.