Workouts for injured or disabled

[Newcrew]

Enable more capabilities to taylor or request workouts for injuries or disabilities. PLEASE! I tore my ACL and cannot run for a while. I know I'm not the only one who uses the coach that ever has an injury.

Moderator edit: Clarified subject and labels.

[LanuzaFitbit]

Hello @Newcrew.

Thanks for taking the time to share this suggestion. We appreciate your candid feedback on this topic. We believe everyone should be able to access and enjoy our products and we’re working on ways to improve support for our customers experiencing disabilities.

To learn more about accessibility features and support on Fitbit devices, see our help article help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/2469.htm

[Aidyl22]

I second this. I am not injured right now, but being middle-aged I suffer back pain after doing certain exercises like superman swimmers. When such exercises show up in my Fitbit Coach workout, I can either sit them out or endure a week of sciatic pain...It would be nice if you could opt out of certain exercises altogether, or perhaps there could be something in the personal settings where you could indicate some kind of injury/disability so the coach won’t give you inappropriate exercises for your condition. 

[pasdecheval]

The baseline for activity and heartrate health is for running. As a wheelchair user, I can't meet that baseline. As a consequence, I have a low resting heart rate plus daily exercise, but am always in the low heart health graph and, when I look at how to improve, I'm told to do high intensity workouts and lose weight. High intensity workouts aren't possible for a lot of disabled people, myself included. And my FitBit Alta HR wants to establish what a high intensity workout is by running, which is also not possible.

Where are settings for people who are wheelchair users or otherwise disabled who use FitBit for health monitoring? I can tell Google Fit when I'm rolling around in my wheelchair as an exercise and it calculates distance and calories burned from sitting in my pocket. FitBit can't do that despite monitoring pulse and having motion sensors. So where are my options? How do I tell FitBit about my personal best instead of being told constantly that I need to run or lose weight or do high intensity workouts or else my heart's going to go from fair to poor?

In short: be aware of different levels of ability, not just fitness. Work with disabled people, especially wheelchair and other mobility aid users, so that our activities are able to be counted. If it's all about being our personal best, then I shouldn't be measuring my personal best against an abled person, anymore than an abled person should be measuring theirs against a professional endurance athlete, as you all remind us. Normalise disability in your settings. Give wheelchair users the option to track wheeling around. The heart health graphs are difficult, I don't know how you'd factor in for that, but it's incredibly disheartening to be told all the time that my heart is terrible and I don't do enough when my doctors are telling me that despite having a chronic, terminal condition, I'm actually doing quite well and my heart looks great. I bought the Alta specifically to monitor my heart because I need to. Not to be scared into trying to buy the workout or coach add-on.

[christareally]

Hi!

my name is Christa & I have a rare, incurable lung disease that affects my heart called Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PH for short) & I do try to get in 30 mins of exercise 5 days a week but I’m unable to completely stand because with PH, my heart rate moves up in the 100s really fast & I have to use oxygen with excertion. Right now, I’m using videos found on YouTube for obese/disabled; these are seated workouts I’ve been using on YouTube & they are effective. I would love to see some workouts like this in the Fitbit Guidence section! It would also be nice to see challenges that are tailored & realistic for disabled people! I am a new Fitbit user. My best friend gave me her older one & I love it! Thanks for reading. 🙂 

[LizFitbit]

Hi everyone thanks for sharing this suggestion. This is being discussed although I do not have a firm commitment or timeline at the moment. Do continue to vote for this feature suggestion whilst it’s under consideration. Please note that if something is under consideration and chosen for development, it can be a while until it's released or until I have any news to share. Please watch this space for any updates! Thanks for your patience.

[thelionmachine]

I use my Alta HR to help me track a sleep disorder and correlate heartrate data with pain and dizziness. If there was some way to indicate to Fitbit I am in chronic pain and have mobility issues, I wouldn't get downer advice like "try to exercise more to sleep better" or "go to bed at a regular time for more energy"-- I'm not hitting my steps because I'm in pain and can't sleep! High heart rate isn't always good. I'm frequently in "exercise zone" from pain -- it'd really help to be able to flag or tag these events as bad for me instead of being rewarded for "burning fat" when I'm not exercising. A lot of tweaks like this to encourage us to be our best on our own terms could make Fitbit the best consumer health monitor around if you worked with a variety of disabled people.

[tolagal]

I also have a long-term health condition. It results in something like chronic fatigue. One of the most important weapons I have against this is sleep - so exertion is something which costs me. I bought a Charge 3 today, hoping it will help me to very gradually burn more calories without too much fatigue by being active for short periods more frequently during the day. But I would love to set a maximum heart rate to alert me prior to a heart attack, as it doesn't take much to make my heart rate shoot way up & O2 sats way down. 

Please consider this as another revenue stream for fitbit, that of a device for assisting those with real health challenges, not just for couch potatoes and exercise jocks. Then you will see the wisdom of investment in features mentioned in this thread.

Thank you!

[Newcrew]

Awesome idea!



Send from mobile device, please excuse typos.

[Booksy]

Hi I have been using Fitbit since 2018 with the Fitbit Flex 2 and have just upgraded to the new Fitbit Inspire HR, which I think is great.

I use Fitbit to monitor my health and encourage me to do more exercise. Since 2018 I’ve also tried the Fitbit coach, I have  Cerebal Palsy (CP) this makes it very hard to move some days, due to this I also have poor mobility. 

I saw saw someone write here about being a wheelchair user and I agree with what they were saying. We should be able to personalise our Fitbit experience to our ability levels. Just like I don’t wanna go to a huge gym with lots of people that make me feel bad about my body - I also don’t want to be benchmarked against able bodied people in my fitness/mobility levels. In this day and age their should be accessibility in fitness and adaptive exercise. Imagine how many disabled / injured people are out there across the world who are looking for ways to get a simple dose of exercise that they can tailor to their needs ! But there’s nothing out their like that that I’ve found and I recon it’s time someone closed the gap between disabled and able bodied fitness 

[lolagh]

This would help so so much! I have a permanently injured ankle and tendinitis on both wrists and I wish this could be taken into consideration for my workouts. There are some exercises can only do very little of and some I can't do at all, it'd be great to be given an alternative to those instead of just having to skip them when they're on my workout of the day 

[KatjaKat]

This would be a fantastic idea. I've had my Fitbit Inspire for a few weeks and have started using Coach to mix up my workout routine as I've been doing the same things for a long time. I had a minor lower back prolapse a couple of years back which is why I absolutely need to train back and core strength. It keeps me pain free. But I need to stay away from certain moves as they could aggravate my old injury. That happened this morning, and I'm not even sure which move it was. I would love an option to tick so that Coach can tailor my program around my injury. Back problems like mine are extremely common and exercise is a great way to treat them. But only if done correctly.

[xenamoto]

i agree with everyone on this thread. please make fitbit more inclusive of varied bodies.

[Zerasu]

As a wheelchair user with a spinal cord injury, I would very much like to see the fitness apps begin to give options that are wheelchair-friendly! It's particularly important for us to stay fit and have a healthy weight to improve our daily life and avoid difficulties, but it's also extremely tough to find content aimed at us! Please, consider this for development!

[briarcat]

I have been sedentary for most of my life. I am trying to lose weight in order to have a hip replacement. The surgeon has advised against unnecessary walking and anything that will strain the joint. I would like to use my progress in upper body exercise, but don’ know how to calculate that. 

[JZo]

I have tendonitis in my knees and many of the jumping related exercises are not good for me. I'd love it if the app could make suggestions for ways to either modify the exercise or if the app would create exercises that fit my injuries so that I can avoid things like burpees. I just did a Fitbit coach session that had a lot of jumping and my knee is bothering me again.

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi everyone. Thanks for sharing this suggestion about adding workouts for injuries or disabilities. While we don’t currently have plans to release this feature, we always appreciate the passion and creativity that comes out of this Community. Since we know this idea is important to many of you, we have left voting open to continue tracking interest and will post another update if anything changes. To learn more about how Fitbit decides which suggestions get developed, visit our FAQs.

We're always striving to enhance Fitbit products and services, and your input is a big part of that process. We truly thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us.

[ash8410]

I am a disabled woman in a wheelchair and using crutches. This is applicable to me because I swim a mile each day and do chair aerobics. There is no such benchmark customization OR workout in Premium that are suitable for someone that is disabled.

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @ash8410, thanks for explaining why you would like to have the option to see workouts for injured or disabled people on Premium. This feature suggestion already exists, so I've moved it into a similar request. While we don’t currently have plans to release this feature, we always appreciate the passion and creativity that comes out of this Community. Since we know this idea is important to many of you, we have left voting open to continue tracking interest and will post another update if anything changes. To learn more about how Fitbit decides which suggestions get developed, visit our FAQs.

I hope to see you around.

[Directions]

Fitbit needs to improve the sensing of steps because it doesn’t always sense steps when I’m using forearm crutches.

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @Directions, thanks for explaining why you would like to have the option to improve the sensing of steps when using forearm crutches. This feature suggestion already exists, so I've moved it into a similar request. While we don’t currently have plans to release this feature, we always appreciate the passion and creativity that comes out of this Community. Since we know this idea is important to many of you, we have left voting open to continue tracking interest and will post another update if anything changes. To learn more about how Fitbit decides which suggestions get developed, visit our FAQs.

I hope to see you around.

[TaniaRyl]

mode for people with disabilities

people with disabilities are people who are much more difficult to cope with different types of activities. it is possible for them to develop individual goals that would correspond to their capabilities

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @TaniaRyl, thanks for taking the time to share this suggestion about having a disability mode for special needs. This feature suggestion already exists, so I’ve moved your post here. While we don’t currently have plans to release this feature, we always appreciate the passion and creativity that comes out of this Community. Since we know this idea is important to many of you, we have left voting open to continue tracking interest and will post another update if anything changes. 

You might be also interested in these other suggestions: Accessibility for People with Visual Impairments (voice/audio) and Wheelchair use.

I hope to see you around.