@LoudTL wrote:
Hi everyone, I was wondering why my surge counts less steps while cycling than walking. When I cycle for 2 hours, I am working harder, sweating more with a higher heart rate and I strugle to get to 10,000 steps. When I walk for the same amount of time I get to between 13,000 and 14,000 steps. Is anyone able to clear this mystery up for me?
Thanks
Gordon
Because you aren't stepping while cycling, and therefore trying to convert cycling into steps is a fools game.
The real problem is that in the Fitbit world, steps are the primary focus, as you can see all the challenges are step based.
Steps are a really bad way to compare effort, think about olympic swimmers and how many calories are burned on non-step training in the pool for hours every day! Or lets talk running and walking - have you ever heard of a runner that measures progress by the number of steps? I can shuffle around my office on conference calls and easily rack up 8000 steps during the day, but I wouldn't consider those steps of much value to increasing my fitness or calorie burn.
I get about 10,000 steps in 5 miles, walking really fast (faster than some joggers) that takes me 65-70 minutes. At that pace my heart rate is around 120-130bpm, and I'm burning around 500-650 calories per hour.
On a bike my heart rate is around 140-150bpm and I get very few steps, however I'm burning around 700-900 calories per hour.
Just like you, I get better cardio workouts cycling than walking. And I'm doing more to improve my cardio endurance, so much so that after routinely cycling for almost two years I find that all-day hiking or snow skiing or water skiing is easy and I don't feel a thing the next day (and I'm in my mid 50s).
For exercise I focus on free weight strength training, and riding my bike to increase cardio capacity and endurance. Both are non-step based activities - and therefore I have stopped paying attention to steps for motivation or an indication of activity level.
Aria, Fitbit MobileTrack on iOS. Previous: Flex, Force, Surge, Blaze
