Recovery/ Injured / Sick mode or required rest

[apstyle]

I had a nasty cold all week so of course I am only at about 50% on most goals, and it brings my average way down. I wish there was a way to hit "Pause" on your counting so you can focus on getting healthy and continue on your goals when you are better.

Moderator Edit: Added Labels/Title for Clarity

[Gooddrrob]

Hi

i recently acquired a Fitbit Charge 2. Raring to go; I normally get out on the road bike at weekends and try hard to maintain/improve fitness, so an obvious choice, right? Well, yes, until I had a slide at low speed and landed hard on my left leg, fracturing my femur. Cue 5 days in hospital and an operation to put a rod (intramedullary nail) across the fracture site.

All active people get injured or are ill from time to time and getting back to fitness is a big challenge, even more so than maintaining or improving fitness from an already good, intermediate or even low level. Which set me to thinking: why not have a rehab feature built in to Fitbit? With the current features it is a bit depressing to be setting one’s goals at a level that seems so low at first. It would be much more motivational to have a rehab option which acknowledges that you are starting from a low level without feeling you are a lazy old ***! As I say, all physically active people (for which read Fitbit users) get injured or ill. Personally I think that having a rehab feature could be a big selling point for Fitbit. What do others think?

Rob

[Kylee7]

I too would love to be able to record somehow when I am sick or injured.  I wish this feature would be added.

[JoanPrice]

We've been asking for this feature for four years, and so many of us have chimed in. Clearly we get sick or injured or have surgery, or it's appropriate for other reasons to pause the step tracking without it affecting our stellar history. Would it be so hard to incorporate this feature, Fitbit programers?

Ankle replacement surgery - good reason not to exercise

[LanuzaFitbit]

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

[SunsetRunner]

Nice suggestion, thanks for sharing.

I believe that having a way to track your fatigue status and the recovery time you would need is to key to adequately adjust the tasks you do throughout the day based on the energy you have. This would also help determine the tasks that are most taxing on you so you can plan your day accordingly as well. 

We look forward to hearing what other community members think.

[Jmschneeman]

I think it'd be cool if you could let your device (or app) if you're sick. That way, the Fitbit could say things like "make sure to drink water," or give you insights on how the sickness has affected your heart rate, sleep, etc.

Moderator Edition Labels. 

[AlexandraFitbit]

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

[aimai]

I would really want this feature. Also, sick days should be disregarded when counting long term stats such as average daily steps or exercise.

[Jrpeterson87]

System to allow Injury and or illness/sickness tracking to allow for more precise information regarding activity and sleep information when you’re unable to maintain your “normal” activities/workouts/diet/sleep. 

[Trumpe]

As fitness watches are intended to train ‘smart’, I think Fitbit would only benefit of making Muscle Fatigue or Training Load function, that collects data from daily steps and trainings person had. 

I really jope, that this would be made!

[CandaceBerger]

I love participating in Weekly Challenges with my friends, but I have a chronic illness that occasionally knocks me out for a day. It's hard to stay motivated in challenges this way. Can we get a function that lets us skip a day, or puts in our daily step average so we can continue playing with our friends?

I know this could be tricky with the varying levels of chronic illnesses, but I think it would really empower a lot of users to keep working towards their fitness goals, rather than making them feel like they're failing because they missed a day. I would also love to see this incorporated in Daily Steps for the same reason.

Thank you!

[Martanka]

It would be awesome to see how well you are recovering - similar to “Whoop”. I’m considering changing products if this isn’t planned in the near future. 

[Fun2serve]

I currently pay for additional subscriptions to training peaks and
fitnesssyncer to get my recovery and load information but does look like
changing products might be simpler and economically more viable. There also
seems to be a problem with the information Fitbit gathers when the GPS is
not on (treadmill workouts etc) Will look at Whoop, thanks for sharing.

[SunsetRunner]

Here are my proposed improvements:

1. Two step goals: One for work out days, and one for rest days.
   1. Instead of a constant step goal (10,000 recommended daily for healthy individuals), the option to have a high step goal for half the week and a lower step goal for the other half would make those with chronic illness feel more positive towards our health.
2. Symptom tracking
   1. A symptom tracking diary for anyone with a chronic illness would be beneficial, as many of us use a separate app for this.
   2. A wide variety of symptoms could be used such as joint pain, swelling, migraines, fatigue, fever, chest pain, etc. It could look similar to the female cycle widget except with more options and an area to write notes about possible causation factors.
3. A Chronic Illness group in the Fitbit Community
   1. Right now you have groups for Diabetes, but this leaves out a vast majority of chronic illness sufferers.
   2. Workouts can be shared that are geared towards those with chronic pain.

[Bug25]

Would be a good idea to have an area where you can log your health. For example I have a severe illness at moment and my activity is very low. The Fitbit says I’ve been sleeping when I haven’t. Think it’s a good idea to remember people of all ages wear fitbits. I’m 64 and my suggestion is to have the ability to log days when activities are low due to being unwell. It would help give me a precise idea of how I’m going. Also I’d love ability to get rid of older notifications. Thanks. 

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @Bug25! We wanted to let you know that the ideas you recently posted already exist on the Feature Suggestions Board. You can see them here where you can add your vote to those existing suggestions:

• Recovery mode for injured, ill or required rest users
• Let us delete in-app notifications/messages

Please try to make sure you only post one idea per suggestion, so we can keep the board organized, easily searchable and see which idea other members are voting for.

Thanks for participating in Feature Suggestions!

[Samulsea]

Same idea for both: add a icon or something to the fitbit app where we can track days we are sick or have sustained/recover from an injury. When we are looking back at our data, we can see why we didn’t reach our goal for the day or week. Ie: recovery. 

[AlexandraFitbit]

That’s an interesting idea and could be useful, thanks for sharing this suggestion @Samulsea! 

[Jenn31]

Love this idea!

[JuliaMc14]

I think this is a great idea!

[tupipuffin]

This would be fantastic!  Both injury and illness have wreaked havoc with my overall activity and something to track them other than my head would be nice.

[YojanaFitbit]

Hey @Bug25.

I will be merging this suggestion to the one about having the option to use recovery mode. Be sure to vote for the suggestion about notifications if you have the time.

Thanks for participating!

[mmm43]

An extremely useful idea.  Please, Fitbit, please implement it.

[DramaQueenDiva]

I like that idea, since our activities when sick or injured seem to impact our step count (and rightfully so!)

[SunsetRunner]

Totally! Also, a way to correlate menstrual (especially cramp) days with performance. Mine decreases drastically on those days but there is no available way to see the two graphs in relation to each other. This makes the period tracking function a bit useless from a fitness perspective. If you can't correlate to your fitness stats, you might as well use a different period tracking app with more in-depth info about symptoms and trends than the Fitbit tile as it's very limited.

At the very least, having a sick/injured/rest-day/cramping button to snooze your goals until you're back on track would be very useful.