StairClimber and Cycling

[Russellp]

Hi

Hi

I'm fairly new to the fitbit family.

I have a Fitbit surge and when on the Stairclimber I tend to lose the heart rate or the reading sometimes appears to be to low. I have tried various positions on my arm and also wiped down my arm before begining with the exercise. Surge shows a heartbeat of 80 and the machine shows one of 132. The other issue is floors, the machine indicates I have done 84 floors whilst the surge reflects 4 floors.

My other question is whilst the running program gives you an option of treadmill or road, there is only one option in the cycling program, When in the gym and cycling should you use the workout program or do you have another suggestion.

I would appreciate any feedback

[RobertoME]

Hello @Russellp welcome aboard to our community. There are some activities where step count isn't the best indicator of the calories burned so you might see some of your data less accurate. If you are doing an activity that does not require steps (like cycling or swimming), or an activity that requires more than just steps (like tennis or yoga), you can use the Workout mode of your Fitbit Surge to improve the accuracy of this activity's contribution to your caloric burn. You can also use manual logging an activity directly on your account. This will work too for your cycling exercise if you are using a stationary bike.

About your floors note that your tracker detects floors using an altimeter, which is a sensor that calculates altitude based on atmospheric pressure. Atmospheric pressure decreases with increasing elevation, so the tracker calculates elevation gain based on the reduction in atmospheric pressure. Your tracker registers a floor when it detects continuous motion combined with an elevation gain of 7 to 10 feet if your are using a machine then this your floors will be lower since your tracker is not registering elevation. 

Hope this helps, I'll be around.

[bbarrera]

The Surge optical heart rate monitor doesn't work well for everyone during exercise. I also have this problem. However other optical HR devices do work well for me (Apple Watch, Scosche Rhythm+). Unfortunately with Fitbit Surge and Charge HR there is only one backup plan - manual logging. I just entered a manual spin and the estimate is 229 calories which is completely wrong and 3x -5x too low (should be 700-1200 calories).

Floor count generally works well when climbing (real) stairs or walking up a hill, however at times it can be erratic and give a lot of extra floors when walking on flat terrain.

[Russellp]

Hi Roberto



Thanks for the response.



Regards

Russell