@Rich_Laue considering modern indoor cycling, I must disagree. Indoor miles have a very similar value to outdoor miles. Indoor rides are used nowadays mostly for quality training that cannot be done outdoors and that mileage is not less important. Smart bikes and smart trainers are quite common (my gym has Wattbikes, at home I use a smart trainer, and lots of people use Peloton bikes). Also, you could say the same thing about treadmills (you're not running anywhere, right?) but on treadmills, you get the distance and pace and it is recorded by the watch, too. Tell me that you'd not want to get proper metrics from such a ride (this is a roller-trainer I have my eye on but they don't ship outside US and Canada 😞 😞
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFQdLLKxiww
Little more than just spinning for calories, isn't it? 😉
@Joevench Depending on the stationary bike you use there may be no solution or some workarounds. If your stationary bike is a smart one (Wattbike, Peloton or any other modern device) then you may be able:
1) connect the bike app (usually, those bikes come with the manufacturer's app, like the Wattbike Hub app) to your Fitbit account if it's supported.
2) if the bike is smart without its app, you may use several apps (Rouvy, Zwift) to connect the bike to it and get activities recorded by them (bike mus support cadence, speed and (optionally) power) (how to sync that into Fitbit in a moment...)
3) if you own a "dumb" bike (no sensors, no connectivity) you may do something that I did long ago before buying a smart trainer - I bought cadence and speed sensors. I attached a cadence sensor to the pedal crank and opened the back of the bike to access a flywheel and attached a speed sensor to it. Then my stationary bike became a lot smarter. Some stationary bikes expose the flywheel so the conversion becomes even easier. Then, use apps from 2). This cannot be done if you don't own a stationary bike (for obvious reasons).
4) OPTION: If you own an outdoor bike, ditch the stationary bike and replace it with a bike trainer (you can get a wheel-on trainer cheap, I got my first "dumb" trainer for £40) or (if you want to add bike handling challenge) get training rollers (the prices range from £100 to thousands - this is on my own list to get). The point is, you attach the sensors from 3) on your real bike (then you get consistent distance indoors and outdoors as you use the same bike, same speed sensor) and then go with apps from 2). Also, buying a direct-drive smart trainer, as much as it's not budget-friendly, it's probably the best option for riding indoors (all sensors are built-in).
5) Log your indoor cycling manually as Bike entering the distance (this would work probably best/quickest if not that it won't include heart rate).
Now, Fitbit is too simple to work with sensors from 3) but there are ways of syncing external activities from the apps 2). This is what I do when I ride indoors on my trainer. You need (ideally) a Garmin account (you don't need a Garmin watch for that) and an app called FItnessSyncer. You link any indoor cycling app with Garmin (this is a reason why using a Garmin account - because 99% of those apps will link to Garmin and probably only a few would link to Fitbit) and using the FitnessSyncer you link a Garmin account with Fitbit. Then all your cycling activities will be transferred to your Fitbit account as a non-GPS bike containing speed and distance and (if you wore a watch during the activity) heart rate. This is how I sync my Zwift and Rouvy rides to Fitbit and didn't find any better way yet.
I know it all sounds complicated but Fitbit is too simple to make it work natively. Most of sports watches just connect to stationary bikes directly and record all data but Fitbit does not have any external connectivity features so all that's left are workarounds.
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