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
roxygill5
Recovery Runner
Thank you. I will try the bike mode. Just mainly interested in calorie
burn..not necessarily # of steps, so this may work better than the
"running" mode.

Thank you!
Sheharizaade
First Steps
Lol, I am up hill and down dale sometimes at a reasonable speed 😁
LaurelSayer
Recovery Runner
Good point, I noticed that myself today. What would you suggest. I want to principally ggain an accurate measure of calories used.


Sent from my Samsung device
roxygill5
Recovery Runner
Thank you! I'll try cycling. I haven't tried to change the name of the
excercises yet. I'll give it a try on cycling and see if I can get it
changed. What do you ride? I've got 3 I'm training. Mine is a big 17.3 hand
Thoroughbred...hunter jumper and 3 day eventing.

Thanks for the help!

Roxy
roxygill5
Recovery Runner
I agree. There are a lot of equestrians who need it 🙂
IanSims
First Steps
I train for endurance and use the bike mode. It does track steps and floors
but when the excercise is logged it seems to remove those stat's from the
daily total.

Regards
Ian Sims
0407388562
roxygill5
Recovery Runner
I do jump...a lot so I wanted to get dialed in on calorie burn mainly. I
guess putting it on cycling is the closest thing until they get something
better. Thanks!
roxygill5
Recovery Runner
Thanks Ian. I do both 3 day and jumpers so I'm trying to get calories
burned. Thanks for the help!

Roxy
DrKendra
Jogger

The crumby thing is how EASILY Fitbit could just do this. They just need to take a feature they already have and make it simpler. But I have been complaining about this since 2014 and this thread has been going since 2015, so I can only assume they don’t care what their consumers think. Apparently everyone on their design team does conventional exercise. 

motherdecker
First Steps
Well good luck with that Roxy! I wish I was a trainer… I ride one of my
eight ready mounts and I have four babies. The youngest is just one month
old and I’m in love! My horses are quarter horses, the mares crossed with
Andalusian. That makes my foals Azteca. Appropriate for here in Mexico! My
3 1/2 year-old tossed me today after getting into kicking scuffle that
shouldn’t have happened. I have a little strawberry on my cheekbone to
show for it.
I stopped using my fit bit a couple of months ago when I got a Garman.
Still trying to figure out how to get it to show me my GPS tracks that it
says it is taking. When I find out that I’ll be able to see my elevation
increases and my distance and hopefully match that with some kind of heart
rate track. (Heart rate extremely high when I went flying through the air!)
You can find out more about my horses on my Facebook page, Rancho San
Francisco, Chapala. I’m on trip advisor toI!
Stephanie
motherdecker
First Steps
What I can’t figure out is how to forward everything from this thread to
someone who is in the design department. Do you think they really don’t
know about it?
Sheharizaade
First Steps

I am a happy hacker these days on my 26 year old Arab Stallion and am just starting to ride his part bred son that I gave to my daughter as she is working long hours.

On another note, I see these posts go back to 2015! Fitbit, giving your customers a forum to whinge about not having horse riding as a choice for exercise does not count as looking after them after 3 years! Pull your finger out and get it sorted. 

HorseladyMia
Recovery Runner

I also do horse riding, it does burn a lot of calories and it' not just 1 or 2 areas that gets worked.... it's your whole body inner core, balance etc. Usually in about 1 hr riding session I burn 500 to 600 cal. Horseback riding is actually a very common exercise, it's not just your horse doing all he work I can assure you of that. A couple of examples for a normal chilled out hack. When you do rising trot you are actually doing squats to a one two beat. When you canter especially larger horses you don't just sit in the saddle, you stand slightly in your stirrups and raise your butt a little off the saddle so you are having to hold urself. Both of these require the rider to be doing a fair bit of work not just the horse. Also depending how strong your horse is with you, your arms are gonna be a bit like Popeye lol. At the moment I've been using map my walk app and linked it to my fitness pal app. Unfortunately map my walk doesn' link to fitbit. I would really love to see horseback riding added as an exercise option on fitbit and I'm pretty sure that there are many others who would love it added.

Sheharizaade
First Steps
Have a go at using the bike option in preset exercises. I have it set to
being the first preset exercise on my wristband. 3 clicks and then press
and hold and it's running. Very useful when youve got a bit of an impatient
hooligan underneath you.

I found a good article about how active minutes, flights of stairs etc is
calculated.

https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1379

I notice that distance is excluded from miles travelled and steps are from
the motion of our bodies balancing and not the steps of the horse. Heart
rate read out is cool. We do a lot of hill work which we tend to trot -
doing the "squats" you were talking about.

If fitbit got really clever they would produce a wearable for the horse to
give you a dual read out for you and your horse. This would help us look
after our horses while exercising making sure we weren't either pushing too
hard or not enough for competition.
Rider1
First Steps

I really wish there was a horseback selection on my Ionic.  I love the GPS and being able to see where I was when I explore new trails. I had not tried the workout function when I ride but will try next time I'm out.  I hope Fitbit adds this and other activities. 

SunsetRunner
Not applicable

Hey,

 

I would like to have horseback riding as an exercise shortcut.

 

I train actively with my horse everything form easy walks in the woods to dressage and jumping. If I had horseback riding as a shortcut, I would be able to see the statistics in one screen. At the moment I have to change everything from walking to run and outdoor bike to riding and there might be three or even four different recogniced exercises per riding session.

Hhalei
Stepping Up

I am very invested in these sorts of features becoming available. To be honest I can't believe they aren't already! It's been literally years that people have been asking about features for horse riders (not even particularly complex ones), and there are so many threads on the topic how can they possibly not know about this?! Very frustrating... 

 

I used to just put in my rides manually, but recently my old fitbit died, and now I've decided not to replace it until it is more equestrian-friendly...

Dees2011
Jogger

I asked already twice by mail to FerdinandFitbit  moderator regarding this if there is already after so manny years any update. But NO respond. So I believe nothing will be done about this.  😞

Moderator

 
  
 
pammalamma
First Steps
I agree. Fitbit never responds to much. Certainly not horse community.

Sent from my iPhone
Hhalei
Stepping Up

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Suggestions/Generic-Exercise-Option-Using-GPS-Without-Step-C...

 

I've made a new suggestion, that hopefully will apply to other sports as well so it gets more notice, that might interest some people on here?

Dees2011
Jogger

Hhalei.

I vote for your request also. Hopefully they do something about it.

jesspace
Jogger

Please add horseback riding as an activity! All we need is for the steps to not be counted. 

AppelonD
Jogger

I was searching for a way to monitor my horse hart-rate along side with my own, when I go horseback-riding, then I went googling, and found that only Polar and V-MAX are providing hart-rate monitoring for horses, I don't like any of those 2 brands, and I started to think about what features, there would make me buy a device. One of the strong features, that make any Fitbit so useful for humans, are the continually monitoring of hart rate, this option give the right picture for the resting pulse, and then can give the best in-sight to the conditions of my horse and it's performance, when I go for a long distance ride. Also with the growing interest for paddock-paradise, where the horses, have to move around to find food and water, would be measurable, with continually hart rate monitoring for a horse. The size of a measuring device, don't have to matter as much as for a human watch, and maybe you even could take advantages of the moving around all the time, and recharge the measuring-device. I love graphic and the material design of the dashboard for my Surge, and dream of a way to collect the data from such a device, when I move around my 8 horses in the corral. Feel free to contact me for more information, on my suggestion. 

 

 

Moderator edit: Clarified subject

Status changed to: Reviewed By Moderator
LanuzaFitbit
Premium User
Fitbit Moderator
Fitbit Moderator

Thanks for sharing your idea @AppelonD.

 

Let's see what other users think.

geoff_t
Stepping Up

What Jesspace says ^

 

This was acknowledged by Fitbit in 2015.... come on how long does it take?

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