Tracking Exercise: Horseback Riding - Horse Riding - Equestrian

I know it's perhaps not the most common exercise, but common enough and it's incredibly difficult to gauge what kind of calory burn and value this kind of exercise has, because - well the horse does most of the work! There is a huge difference in riding styles and how this effects my own exercise level: trail riding can be just walking - where the rider has little exercise, but if you trot it's quite the exercise for the rider too. Then there is the distance aspect, which is invalid when you do dressage or arena riding... Finally jumping has quite a different impact again. 

 

Since I work for a digital agency, I know that you must have business logic to build out expensive new features both for the sensors, the logic/algorithm and how you present it on the web. I know it's a huge effort. But with an equestrian tracker, you will have a captive audience and a weathy niche market who will be loyal customers. You'll need to do little marketing as this is definitely an industry/audience who are all interconnected and exchange ideas, infos and new products readily. 

And if you want to go all out, you could combine it with a FitBit for the horse - because most horse owners also want to monitor the stress on their horse as well as their horses' fitness. 

 

Moderator edit: Subject for clarity and labels.

202 Comments
Pebble
Recovery Runner

My fitbit recorded 8600 steps while I was riding - I input these manually as driving.  My riding nowadays is not as active as some as my lad is now retired and we tend to amble around (with the odd canter).

OlderRider
First Steps

I'm an older rider who has lost considerable condition and am starting to improve my fitness and hopefully at the same time improve the fitness of my horse. I would love to be able to track my workouts on my horse, in the arena I'm definitely the one working the hardest, and when out and about it would be great to see if I really am working the calories off. I always come home warm!

Naildriver
Stepping Up
I'm 62 myself. Fitbit doesn't track for horses yet. Not shure they can.
OlderRider
First Steps

Naildriver, I reread my post, I want to get fitbit to work with me, not the horse, I'm a dope!

EileenP
Recovery Runner

I would like to see horseback riding added to the exercises available on my Charge HR.  Currently, I have to remember to remove my fitbit, so that it doesn't think my ride is a walk or hike or bike ride.  I then use Map My Ride to track a horseback ride (it uses GPS). 

I use my fitbit for all of my other activities (biking, walking, hiking, yoga, weights).

Jennykate
First Steps

I just got a Fitbit and had a riding lesson using it today: I'm SO disappointed it logged the horse's steps as my own despite me listing "horseback riding" as the planned activity! This seems like some simple coding, my trainer even said it was a known problem. Why hasn't this been resolved? I read in the string that logging it as "driving" would remove the steps, but I tried that and it didn't work, either. Please fix!

Beckyandhorses
First Steps
Fit bit does know of this and said it is not something they feel needs to
be improved on. So I doubt this will ever prove apart of fit bit😔
EileenP
Recovery Runner

Improved on?  What does that mean?  There is nothing there now for horseback riding, so what is there to improve?

Map My Ride does a good job mapping our rides and calculating our calories burned.  But that means we must remember to take off our fitbits and set up Map My Ride on our phones.

Alison2016
Stepping Up
Different than what they told me.
At minimum they could just add the ability in the app to remove steps for a time period. That isn't a hard programming task.

Sent from my iPhone
Jennykate
First Steps
Exactly!
Alison2016
Stepping Up
Took mine off yesterday while competing and it recorded me as sleeping.

Sent from my iPhone
winterpaws
Stepping Up

I've switched to a Polar because it tracks horse riding as well as a heap more activities.

 

Love fitbit, I really do, but the lack of sports was frustrating and constantly manually updating your app is too time consuming

Jennykate
First Steps
Which Polar did you get? And how does it work differently? I am considering
returning my fitbit since I just got it. It logged me as burning 720
calories during my riding lesson (which was a very intense dressage
session) but I have to wonder if the calorie burn was accurate and off of
my heart rate, or if it's factoring in the horses steps that it also
logged? Open to other products, thanks!
winterpaws
Stepping Up

I don't want to get into trouble by talking about other products.... If you have a little look on their website at latest one it offers a massive number of sports and functions. I also like the GPS tracking my ride 

 

I loved fitbit for the challanges, and all our family owns them. But it just got too time consuming with the riding and I wanted to also look at how many rides I was doing in a month, time frame etc. 

Alison2016
Stepping Up

I trolled thu their website but couldn't find list of supported sports OR how it worked ie not counting steps riding.

I guess its time to look further afield than fitbit, mega disapointed in the response from fitbit. aside from racking up steps horse riding I'm now racking up thousands of steps on the tractor. As I keep saying its not rocket science to at least amend the app to allow deletion of steps for time periods.


@adobe101 wrote:

I know it's perhaps not the most common exercise, but common enough and it's incredibly difficult to gauge what kind of calory burn and value this kind of exercise has, because - well the horse does most of the work! There is a huge difference in riding styles and how this effects my own exercise level: trail riding can be just walking - where the rider has little exercise, but if you trot it's quite the exercise for the rider too. Then there is the distance aspect, which is invalid when you do dressage or arena riding... Finally jumping has quite a different impact again. 

 

Since I work for a digital agency, I know that you must have business logic to build out expensive new features both for the sensors, the logic/algorithm and how you present it on the web. I know it's a huge effort. But with an equestrian tracker, you will have a captive audience and a weathy niche market who will be loyal customers. You'll need to do little marketing as this is definitely an industry/audience who are all interconnected and exchange ideas, infos and new products readily. 

And if you want to go all out, you could combine it with a FitBit for the horse - because most horse owners also want to monitor the stress on their horse as well as their horses' fitness. 

 

Moderator edit: Labels added


 

Jennajan
Jogger

I have been going through this forum and it looks like the Equestrian community has been asking for a horseback riding feature that deletes the horses steps for at least TWO YEARS and nothing has been done. I have a charge HR and although I can now select horseback riding as an activity it still counts my horses steps towards my total. Taking it off and putting it back on is a pain and I often forget one or the other. Can someone tell me if/when this will be addressed? 

EileenP
Recovery Runner
I haven't found horseback riding as an exercise choice.

Eileen
Jennajan
Jogger
I had to manually enter it and now I can select it anytime. However it kind
of defeats the purpose when I still can't get rid of the steps!
Jennajan
Jogger

EileenP I had to manually enter it and now I can select it anytime. However it kind of defeats the purpose when I still can't get rid of the steps!

motherdecker
First Steps

Add another rider request for a feature we can use. I logged 18,000 steps today with one trail ride, and 93 flights of stairs! (All I did was get on a horse and go for two hours.)

Dragonmaid
Jogger

I also agree. I would love to track GPS, distance, and heart rate while riding without counting steps/stairs

smallsadsam
First Steps

I too would LOVE the ability to track a work out WITHOUT steps that is specifically for horseback riding. Come on FitBit... PRETTY PLEASE!!!! 🙂

Jojoflojo
Recovery Runner

the solution to this could be so simple for fitbit. Seeing as you are now able to edit the length of exercises that you track and also change the name of the exercise (only to an exercise that fitbit has chosen) they could enable you to change the name to anything you want. I don't mind using the bike mode for horse riding no steps, gps and hr recorded and then edit the exercise name afterwards. Sooooo simple!!! They could also do with allowing you to edit the exercises on the website version as at the moment you can only do it through the app.

smallsadsam
First Steps

I used bike mode on my ride last night and while there are no steps recorded under the activity itself, it STILL added steps to my daily total! So annoying! Please give us a horseback riding activity!

EileenP
Recovery Runner
I use my fitbit to track my bike rides. If it adds steps, those are maybe for-real steps?

Eileen
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