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Fitness Trackers while riding - accurate?

Off Course
#1

Hi all. I’ve been looking into how to calculate my workouts while riding for myfitnesspal. I know I can create my own workout and guess how hard I’ve been working to see what calories I’ve burned but I’d really like to be accurate. I’ve considered getting a fitness tracker before but I read that they aren’t very accurate for riding due to tracking the workout as steps. Steps don’t really work when it’s the horse doing the steps.

I’ve been looking at the ones with heart rate monitors and those seem a bit more promising. Do any of you have experience using wrist heart rate monitor fitness trackers while riding? How accurate does it seem to be?

#2

I’ve got a garmin vivosmart hr+ and yes, it tracks steps while riding. However, the heart rate monitor seems to even it out as far as calories burned and it “feels” about right when I compare it to activities like volleyball and jogging. It’s not very good with my stationary bike, though. For some reason, the heart rate monitor on the garmin runs insanely low when the bike’s hr monitor is showing me well up into the 170+ bpm.

#3

I can tell you I don’t believe my apple watch is very accurate when I’m riding at all! I’m fully convinced it records all he horse’s steps as my own, and I don’t know how to turn that feature off so that it just tracks heart rate and not step count!

#4

Yes, I agree regarding the Apple Watch. I rode my rehabbing horse around at a plodding, tranquilized walk for 15 minutes and it told me I had met 1/2 my exercise goal for the day. Not so much!

#5

So it seems like the general consensus is that while the steps being recorded is annoying, the fitness trackers with heart rate monitors are more or less accurate.

Has anyone heard of particular ones that are better than others? I’ve done some research myself but I’m definitely not looking to spend 300$ on one. Especially if I’m not sure how accurate it is going to be. I think I can borrow a fitbit w/heart rate monitor for test runs so I’m probably going to do that as well.

#6

I have a polar a300 which I love! It has a separate heart rate monitor that you wear around your chest. You can download additional fitness profiles online and load them onto your watch. Out of th box I would use “other outdoor” to track my riding. If I wear it without wearing my heart monitor it wil track my rides as burning around 100 calories, but rides with the band burn more like 200. I also got a Fitbit charge which has a heart rate monitor too, but now that I have both a wrist tracker with monitor and one with a separate chest band, I can say that the polar with the chest band is considerably more accurate. When I wear them at the same time, my Fitbit registers my heart rate at 10-20 bpm less than the polar.

Love, love, love my polar watch. It’s very cost effective and the app is fantastic. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CUMHNGY/ref=twister_B00TZJGAPG?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

#7

VTMorgan06, I found that the chest bands were much more accurate in my research as well. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go that route though because it would be nice to have the watch as well just for an easy viewing thing.

Is the chest strap comfortable? Assuming you are female, does it fit well while wearing a sports bra? Does it look like you have a really odd lump on your chest? :lol:

#8

I’ve got a Fitbit Charge 2. I have not yet used it while riding, but I use the “workout” setting for activities that aren’t specifically listed by the Fitbit, like riding my exercise bike, and it seems to do a reasonably good job at recognizing elevated heart rate and giving me credit for the exercise.

1 Like
#9

The fitbit charge 2 was the wrist option I was looking at. If I ended up going with a chest strap, I think the polar one was the one I was looking at.

#10

I have no trouble with the chest band. Ive found it works best with a sports bra because you have a wider surface to tuck the band into. I don’t have any trouble with the actual monitor bulging out and I often forget that I’m wearing it…which is sometimes a problem! The battery in the monitor itself will last much longer if you unsnap it from the band when you’re not tracking your heart rate. When the metal connects the battery in the monitor is trying to communicate to our watch and drains the battery.

#11

A chest band to monitor your heart rate will give you the most accurate results of your fitness and how many calories you are burning. They are not uncomfortable at all and no one can tell you are wearing it. Polar or Garmin are good options…I’ve tried a Fitbit and it was very inaccurate for me. With the Polar or similar you put in your weight, age etc and it monitors your heart rate to figure out calories burned in a session. You can get one in the $100-150 range.

#12

Yeah the chest bands really do seem like the best bang for your buck no matter where you research heart rate monitors. And it completely makes sense, seeing how the contacts need to stay on your skin to read. The wrist moves a lot more than the chest does.

The next question would be, is it worth getting a watch to sync with the chest band? I know most of them have memory enough to record work outs so I imagine that you could not have a watch and just sync the chest band with your phone’s app once done. Is there any reason to get a watch besides the convenience of seeing your heart rate realtime?

#13

I’ve always bought the package watch and chest strap. I’ve never used an app although I briefly tried. I just like being able to see where my heart rate is throughout the workout (or ride) and when you go out of target range it beeps to tell you. For me, seeing calories burned for each session was enough. I don’t know enough about syncing the watch to an app to answer your question…but I’m sure you could call Polar or Garmin and speak to someone there and find out if you can do what you are looking for. You could also go to Amazon to read reviews of ones you’re interested in…tons of reviews on everything imaginable on Amazon.

#14

I’ve been reading so many reviews my head is spinning. :lol: But hardly any reviews are from the horse crowd, which is obviously my main goal for getting a fitness tracker. I have faith that any walking/running I do will be more or less tracked due to having been used by runners for longer than equine people.

I was surfing polar’s website yesterday and found that they make heart rate monitors for horses! :eek: Not that I ever expect to be doing something where I need to monitor my horse’s fitness that closely but still, awesome!

#15

My blogger friend just wrote about this very thing.

http://susanfriedlandsmith.com/2017/03/15/horseback-riding-exercise/

#16

Ooooh, data! Thanks for the great link. That really helps put it into perspective. :slight_smile:

And holy crap! Type fitbit in the search on her website and so many articles! How did her stuff not come up when I was searching every combination of horseback riding and fitness trackers I could think of?!

#17

Great info! I’m not sure I’m ready for another Fitbit, my last try gave me such inaccurate results…does anyone know if they only monitor heart rate from the wrist or do they have a chest strap option? I haven’t been using my monitor recently but this post is making me want to start. I’ll probably work a lot harder if I’m monitoring myself!

#18

Like I said, I have a Fitbit charge HR and when I wear it at the same time with my polar (with chest band) it is shocking how much lower my heart rate is according to the Fitbit. I found this article about a class action law suit against Fitbit because of how inaccurate the heart rate data is. Being off by 25 bpm is bad, but 75?? http://www.consumerreports.org/fitness-trackers/taking-the-pulse-of-fitbits-contested-heart-rate-monitors/

CTmom, I don’t believe there is a chest strap for any Fitbit models, I think they all use wrist pulse. You can get a polar watch with a chest band for less than a mid level Fitbit, and you know two going to be more accurate.

And just got fun, last weekend I wore my watch and chest band while doing barn chores…in 2 hours I burned 785 calories cleaning stalls and turning horses out. Who needs a gym membership when we have horses!? (My Fitbit said I burned 200 calories and had 25 active minutes)

1 Like
#19

I have an apple watch and I use the “workout” feature/app. I set it as “Outdoor Walk” and find that it’s quite accurate in regard to how many calories are burned (compared to the chest strap heart rate monitor I have) while riding.

#20

I have a fuel band (Nike) to track walking calories everyday but a chest strap heart rate monitor (from orangetheory) that I wear at orangetheory and the occasional lesson. I have a fairly small chest (b cup) but I’ve never been uncomfortable wearing it–I actually slide it so the small pod and strap are under my sports bra and that helps anchor it too so it doesn’t slide down. It took a couple wears to get used to it, but today I had to run a couple errands after the gym and forgot I was even wearing it.

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