Manually Logged Activities Should Convert to Steps

[Lomond27]

For a variety of reasons...this would be an excellent enhancement. I have been doing some intense workouts that require a lot of resistance training but because I'm not swinging my arm I'm only registering 200 steps in 30 intense minutes. This is also the case when I am doing a lower body or ab workout, these are intense and burn lots of calories but don't register as steps. Therefore I have been declining challenges from my friends because they go walking and get lots of steps but because of my choice of workouts I don't. Not much fun!

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[hsinger]

I am very pleased with step tracking via my Force. Unfortunately, due to time constraints one of my major exercise activities is 30 minutes on the stationery bike each work day before work. I manually add the activity, duration and related calories (which my bike provides) each morning. What is missing is the determination of a step equivalent of the effort spent on the bike. I don't think it would be hard to add the logic, at least for some common non-step activities like bike riding. I know that calories burned is the common denominator. But since steps are the tracking item (for example with the 7 day step comparison with Friends on the app) I would like to see step tracking be more inclusive of other activities.

[margjordan]

It would be great if you could add steps like you can add calories when adding an activity in the app. Many activities like swimming or biking can have the equivalent steps calculated. Makes competing with others more fun, and for just myself the satisfaction of reaching my goal in "steps"

[StaceyC]

I know there are conversion charts on the internet, but it would be much more helpful (and make SO MUCH MORE SENSE) if, when we logged non-impact activities such as elliptical, swimming, bike, etc. that our Fitbit would convert it to steps.  We should not have to look up an activity and input our own steps.

I know the leaderboard thing is "for fun" for people who's primary forms of exercise isn't walking/running, well, we look like lazy slackers.

[gzs3]

I love the friends feature, but I feel sorta cheated when the activities I manually log - nautilus, stationary bike, etc, don't count as "steps" in the leader board.  Is there some way to convert manually logged activities to "step equivalent" and show in total?

Also, manually logged activities don't seem to be included in the "Very Active Mins" dashboard tile.

[birdstalker]

totally agree!  the conversions are easy why doesn't fitbit make these and log these as active times. does anybody just walk or run, seriously!

[RachelLou]

I agree. It's frustrating to see that I walked two and a half miles getting to and from work and swam a mile and a half but am still far from my 10,000 steps/day. I understand some people don't want to "pollute" their step counts, but it would be nice to have a step conversion option for folks like me who like to see all the lights on the bracelet light up.

[dtrav]

I wish my time on the bike/in the pool would be converted to steps

[MatthewFitbit]

Remember that "steps" are not a unit of measurement - your step count is a literal record of your steps.

Since biking and swimming do not involve stepping, these activities do not add to your step count. When you engage in this type of activity, or anything else that doesn't involve walking or running, you should manually log it via the Dashboard or mobile app to add the related calories to your daily total - check this article for instructions.

By manually logging your non-step activites, you'll have a more complete vantage of your daily caloric burn.

[Gorilla]

I would like my FitBit to be able to have a bike mode, so It could measure both walking and biking activity, and add it all to the total for the day.

[btavenner]

I would agree that a bike function would be a usable function on the Fitbit.

[Cristi]

I like to ride the bike allot so this would be Great! 

[SunsetRunner]

It would be nice to be able to create Custom Activities based on Steps rather than only on distance (kms or miles).

I regularly take part in 'Steps Challenges' at work and we are allowed to convert say a moderately paced 30 min bike into 6000 steps. As it stands right now I can add my bike ride to count towards my daily active minutes and calories but sometimes I would rather count an activity in terms of its steps equivalent.

[edunne]

Agree, the only metric to compete in a "challenge" is steps.  So I rode my bike 30 miles today but got beat by someone with 7,000 steps?  Not Fair!  I understand that Steps is an actual coun t of your steps, but for Challenges, it would be great to convert non-stepping activity to steps.

[Buzbeenie]

I totally agree that manually logged activity should convert to steps... I participated in STeptember (by UCP) last year, and their program converted a multitude of activities to steps; including increasing step count for activties such as running, since it was exerting more energy than just those number of steps taken.  

This feature would enable me to stop use of RunKeeper, which is an app quickly becoming more useful than my FitBit for tracking actual activity.  

Please consider updating the technology.

[Riley77]

Fitbit.....are you listening?

[janieles]

PLEASE FITBIT....I do water aerobics daily with many, many steps....can't wear watch in the water so just have to enter the activity and it gives no credit for steps.  So even when I am well over the step goal, it shows me as well under.  It should not be difficult to give us a conversion chart and let us enter the steps ourselves during the time we were not wearing the watch. OR have the software convert the time spent on water aerobics into steps.

[gzs3]

Might be useful til the software does it for us
http://www.purdue.edu/walktothemoon/activities.html

-GZS

[janieles]

There are some good online conversion charts, but very disappointed that Fitbit does not seem to have a way to allow you to use any chart to add activities as steps rather than calories.  People that are not overweight are not always into adding all their food and counting calories every day.  Number of daily steps and/or distance and cardio activities is their prime goal and it is  what doctors often tell you these days to watch as an easy daily measurement.  Many people that see me wearing a fitbit band ask me what all it does.  People lose interest in purchasing one when they hear there is no way their water activities (or other sports) can be given credit on their step count, ( especially given the $150 price of the Charge HR unit).

[klhalvers]

I would highly recommend a software update to add a step conversion factor for activities that aren't step based. This would make Fitbit a much more useful tool for people who are trying to implement a more active lifestyle! Even a simple conversion factor like low, moderate, high and vigorous intensity with a step/minute conversion factor would be better than showing an hour worth of activity having a 0 step impact on your day.

[senora75]

I totally agree. I do a variety of physical activities -- ballroom dancing, hiking (hills near my house), swimming laps, as well as walking. I understand that these are not strictly speaking 'steps." But it is disconcerting when what I want to know at the end of a given day is whether I reached my activity goals, not whether I took the magical 10,000 steps. What bothers me is that this is marketed as a tool to track fitness, not as a pedometer.

[TrainersOnSite]

I perform Martial Arts - Karate. While FitBit allows me to log my exercise, it does not consider the average steps a Karateka takes in an hour class. In order for me to keep on pace with my challengers - that would be a great feature to have. Logged estimated steps based on avg activity

[marthemar]

I agree completely with this.  I have family that I would love to do the challenges with, but they are not able to take their fitbit to work.  They do most of their walking at work.  Although this does register as steps for them when they enter how long they walk, it does not register in the challenges.  We either need to be able to use the manually entered activity as steps or need the ability to challenge based on activity and not steps.  Had I known this, I would not have gotten the fitbit for us.  I thought this would help keep us motivated because of the challenges we could set for each other.

[wendymr]

Ditto to this - I was very disappointed recently when I realised I'd forgotten to put my fitbit back on when I changed for the treadmill, and after manually entering the missed steps - AS STEPS! - on the dashboard they did not automatically add to my step count for the day. This seems like an obvious bug that should be fixed.

[PipSlack]

Hi, I would like to second TrainersOnSite's comment.

I also am a martial arts student in shotokan karate.  I am not allowed to wear my fitbit in the class, so am unable to log steps/HR etc in class as it would be unsafe for my fellow students in with me.  With this in mind, I have been using the custom log option, with Martial Arts as the chosen sport.  Now don't get me wrong, it's fantastic (!!) that you have added this as an option, but I can't for the life of me understand why it doesn't log any steps at all? 

Anyone who has ever tried a martial art knows that there are plenty of steps.  Aside from cardio fitness that may be required in classes, there are also kumite sessions, and steps in Kata also.  The sport can be rather stop-start in fashion as we will pause to have demonstrations and talks from our Sensei teaching us, but I am sure by the end of an hour to 2.5 hour class we would have done a lot of steps!!  I know some people track calories, which is great for them having it set as it is, however I like to track steps and it's my goal to reach 10K on 5/7 days... so not having my karate classes add to this is absolutely gutting.  

Please could you fix this oversight and add some steps to the activity? If you really want to show how brilliant you are, you could even divide the Martial arts categories into different subcategories, as there are quite some differences between the different sports.  Tai Chi vs. Karate or TaeKwondo would be an example of that... 

Other than that, I'm loving my FitBit... so keep up the great work! Thanks 🙂 

[MKMFB]

I have a FitBitOne and have become a "slave" to my 10,000 steps / day.  I am sorely disappointed that you cannot log the converted number of steps for a custom activity and that for a custom activity you are required to add calories.  Not everyone needs to lose weight, but do want to monitor our acitivty level during the day.  The name is FITbit; not STEPbit.  Staying fit includes so many more acitivities than just walking and running.  Many good converstion charts are out there, so PLEASE make logging the number of steps for a custom acitvity an option!  The only way to do it now is to record an acitvity as walking or running. Even a simple change like additing  a notation area where you could make a note that it was converted steps from another acitivity would be helpful.