Link Exercise to Active Minutes

[sophhiees]

Sometimes my Fitbit picks up my workouts as active minutes but doesn’t log it as exercise, but if I manually add exercise it will add extra minutes to my active minutes that I haven’t done. Hence, it would be useful if there was a feature in the manual adding of exercise where you could allocate previously logged active minutes as exercise. For example, I could log that I did an aerobic workout that counted for 20 of my total 30 active minutes that had been logged for the day.

[Rich_Laue]

Your best course is to manually start a multisport exercise. Not all a active minutes occur while exercising, not all exercising is composed of 100% active minutes. 

[sophhiees]

Is this able to be done for the Fitbit Alta HR? Because I looked all through the app for something like that and couldn’t find it, it seems I was only able to track a run, walk or hike.

[Rich_Laue]

@sophhiees I think your referring to tracking a run, walk, hike through the Fitbit app, not a Fitbit tracker. 

The Alta HR does not jab a manual exercise mode, but does auto detect various exercises. 

[DavideFitbit]

Nice suggestion, thanks for sharing. We look forward to hearing what other community members think.

[JCD88]

This feature would be extremely helpful - especially since it has been already confirmed there are no plans to add "Exercise Mode" for Alta HR. I often do HIIT or Crossfit-style workouts, which typically involve multiple short workouts with small breaks in between. Although the Alta HR comes with SmartTrack, these styles of workouts are frequently not recognized (likely because 1. the type of workout and 2. you cannot set the SmartTrack minimum minutes for any type of activity to less than 10). What frequently happens is that my Alta HR will log the "Active Minutes" but not log it as "Exercise", and there is no way to link those active minutes to what I was doing if SmartTrack does detect the workout. So then I have to figure out a workaround by manually logging the activity, which then often alters my active minutes or changes the calorie total. For folks who are interested in their real stats this is very frustrating. It would nice to be able to indicate what type of activity/exercise was being done directly from the Active Minutes page (i.e. during these 25 minutes I was doing "Crossfit") so that it appears in the Exercise log without having to manually enter a workout (which as previously noted, alters the calorie count and the Active Minutes that have already been captured). If this is not possible, an alternate solution would be to decrease the minimum number of minutes required for SmartTrack so that it is more likely to detect these types of workouts

[jgsmc2]

l completely agree with all above. My Alta HR has never recognized my HIIT workout (OrangeTheory). With my previous FitBit I could make it recognize the beginning and end of any workout, but the Alta HR doesn't have that feature. Very frustrating. I just spent half an hour chatting with a FitBit support person who had me update my device and then restart it, but clearly this is an issue with all Alta HRs, not just mine. 

[Rich_Laue]

@jgsmc2  seeing that HIIT is composed of intervals and not one type of exercise over a longer period I would be surprised I'd any one of the individual exercises would be detected by the Alta. Currently the Alta does not have an option to detect HIIT.

This threads request as t is not about detecting exercises but detecting Active Minutes.

What are active minutes?

Learn more about active minutes and how they're calculated.

[jgsmc2]

I know what active minutes are – I did a HIIT workout this morning and my FitBit recorded 47 active minutes. However, it did not recognize those “active minutes” as an exercise of any type. So…if the minimum for it to recognize any exercise is 10 minutes, but it did recognize that I was active for 47 minutes, what is happening? And wouldn’t it be a good feature if you could just click on those 47 active minutes and then label it some kind of exercise, manually? That would be fine. If it knows I am active, that is all I care about – I just want to be able to then grab that and list it as an exercise, so it counts towards my weekly exercise goal. AND so when I sync with Weight Watchers, I get credit for all of those 47 minutes.

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[Rich_Laue]

It knows that you have been active by the movement and elevated heart rate. 

When it comes to hiit routine,  they are usually short periods,15-60 seconds of intensity followed by easy periods, at easier routines and switching up the types of exercise. At least  is what I understand. From videos and descriptions. 

With the routines changing frequently and no individual walk, run, outdoor bike,  sport or aerobic workout lasting more than 10 minutes,  I very much doubt that the Alta HR will be able to see enough of any one type of movement to determine what the user is doing. 

Of course an exercise can be manually recorded. 

• How do I manually log exercises in the Fitbit app?

I prefer using the web entry by the clock,  since this input does not override the trackers data. 

[jgsmc2]

Thank you for providing this information. But this is not my problem. My tracker logged plenty of “active minutes” – 47 in a row to be exact – during my HIIT workout. It just didn’t register them as an “exercise”. This may be because of the need for it to be a consistent activity 10 minutes in a row. So my request is to add a feature on the Alta HR that allows one to just indicate that those “active minutes” are an exercise. Something that can be done by the user. Rather than just manually log an exercise – which goes into my record as IN ADDITION to those “active minutes” – the user would be able to “grab” those active minutes and then label them as they see fit. Seems like a very useful feature.

Jenny

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[Rich_Laue]

@jgsmc2 in my last post I provided instructions and a link to Fitbit help instructions on how to link active minutes to an exercise

[lauraeha]

Yesss please!

I do barre classes which have short bursts of aerobics (similar to HIIT) but not long enough to pick it up in the EXERCISE section (actually, my Charge 4 did pick it up one time). 

What I would really like to be able to do is either what the person above said or just to tell the fitbit "I am starting to exercise now". I just want it to count the time, calories, heart rate and zones as exercise without me having to manually enter it.