Sense 2 - doesn't count steps, it counts arm movements

[Seadaroma]

Today I asked in Fitbit Help Chat why I was getting step counts when I had chosen paddle boarding as my activity. One literally cannot step and paddle board at the same time on top of water. The answer was that the device doesn't count steps, it counts arm movements. Even a 5 year old knows that's faulty science. 

Moderator edit:  updated subject for clarity

[JohnnyRow]

That is correct - it does count arm movements.  But I don't know any way something on my wrist can tell what my legs are doing.  If you know how a watch on your wrist can truly accurately count steps, please do share, or perhaps patent it and get rich.  Steps are inferred from arm swings as in walking.  For most people over the course of a day, it comes fairly close, though not precise.

You get some extra as you experienced. You lose some when wrist is held steady as pushing a shopping cart or holding hand rail on treadmill.

But doesn't affect heart rate so calorie burn and active minutes are still good even if steps might be off.

[t.parker]

@Seadaroma all wrist trackers/watches count steps from arm movements. There is no other way known unless you would wear a sensor on foot (that isn't bulletproof either and majority of footpods don't bother to count steps). That's not a secret. Steps counting is an approximation based on detecting patterns in the sensors data. Those patterns are linked to the event of walking/running etc. Now, the watch has a hard task to filter out which data is linked to steps and which aren't. Some watches do better job, others worse but none is 100% accurate.

[Seadaroma]

My dismay stems from the act of me telling it that i am not taking steps
but am paddling and it still counts my movements as steps. I am taking the
time to give it an input: paddling, a non stepping activity. That input
should pause the step counting until complete.

[t.parker · Accepted solution]

@Seadaroma this is a different problem and it is in fact specific to Fitbit. For example, my Garmin does not add steps when I track non-step activities like cycling, climbing, swimming etc. This is (in my opinion) the correct behaviour. Fitbit however tracks steps somehow in the background for each activity and regardless of what you track, you will get steps from anything (some time ago Fitbit removed step count from some summary screens in the "Impact" section but it's easy to see when looking at the step chart that steps are being added regardless). Unfortunately, this is how the Fitbit platform always worked by design and I don't think it's going to change (additionally, some users expect to get credit for other non-step activities even if it's just through glitchy recognition). In other words, with your expectations, you are using the wrong platform.

Here's an example from the Swim activity:

The "fake steps" coming from swim stroke will contribute to the daily distance, too. It's just Fitbit's way of doing things. Makes no sense, provides contradicting information (you probably didn't try to see running duration, distance, pace and splits where nothing adds up) and never cares to correct it.