Stats for the stat god

[swan_tower]

Neither Shihan nor his wife were at the dojo tonight, which meant I felt comfortable asking the sensei who teaches on Wednesdays whether he was okay with me keeping my Fitbit on during class. He said that was fine, so for the first time, I have stats for what goes on with my body during practice.

I was surprised at how few “steps” it recorded, to be honest. Sure, we spend the first twenty minutes or so on various warmups and stretches, most of which won’t register on the Fitbit. But it only recorded 1500 for the whole hour, which is equivalent to about fifteen minutes of normal walking at my usual pace. I thought the various punches and blocks would add up to more. The real interest, though, is in the heartrate tracking: I can see where we finished the warmup and started doing basics, and I can see what happened when I ran seven kata back-to-back in preparation for my upcoming test, which is a thing I’ve been doing at every practice for about a month. Turns out that I do indeed spend most of the class in the zones generally classed as “cardio” or “peak,” and topped out the scale at 185 at one point during that block of kata. (It would be amusing to see which kata work me the hardest, but since I was only allowing myself five breaths’ pause between them, there’s no hope of differentiating one from the next via the stats.) 185 is what the American Heart Association considers the usual “maximum” for my age, so I feel safe in saying that I’m working pretty damn hard when I do that kind of set. :-P

I wish Fitbit had a way for me to save that data and label it “karate,” so that I can add it to my stats for the day any time I go to the dojo. But I also wish they made them waterproof enough to wear while swimming, and that they could make the actual unit thinner; I can’t get everything I want.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[gelsey.livejournal.com]

The problem with the fit bit and steps... you have to take more than a couple for it to register. I had a friend who tested hers sometime last year and it didn't register all the steps she knew she took. For instance I'm pretty sure it didn't register steps until they were more than four up or down, and at least two in a given direction (probably more, it's been a while ). So don't be discouraged by it, it's not wholly accurate on that front.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not discouraged; it's just an item of curiosity, is all. I also know the Fitbit often counts "steps" that are no such thing -- if I scrub something, for example, the rapid back-and-forth gets registered as if I were walking. I figure it sort of comes out in the wash overall.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I once saw an elementary assembly activity involving pedometers. Three kids and a teacher chosen at least somewhat at random had them strapped to their heads, and the most steps recorded won. I mean, great way to cause minor brain damage, but the kindergartner really didn't understand he was supposed to move his head and not the rest of him.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Maybe the kids will grow up to be heavy metal guitarists?

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Would "Exercise Mode" on the Fitbit do what you want in terms of saving the data? (https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/How-do-I-use-exercise-mode-on-my-tracker) I use that to track my weightlifting workouts. (And also my runs, although the Fitbit now automatically detects walking and running, so it's less necessary for that.)

Did your Fitbit record any floors climbed? I find that if I do something where I'm moving and lifting my arms, I often get spurious floor counts.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Exercise mode is how I got this data. What I want is to be able to add what it recorded to the list of activities, and then pick that activity out of the list in the future. Now that I check again, it looks like I can kind of can do that -- I can make a custom activity, and input something based on the duration, distance, and calories burned of the one time it actually got recorded. But I can't really save that; it looks like I'll have to input the data again every single time, rather than being able to just tell the Fitbit site "I went to karate again."

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see. The issue is that "Karate" isn't a recognized activity category, and custom activities are kind of a one-shot deal. That's inconvenient. Though, "Martial Arts" does appear to be a predefined activity in the activity list, if that's good enough for your purposes.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

But of course if you used the generic "Martial Arts" category, it wouldn't have your specific data associated with it, so possibly not good enough for your purposes.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Oh, interesting -- I don't remember seeing that in the list the last time I checked, so it may be new since then. Looking at its details, it overestimates my caloric burn (~600 instead of ~500). Which may be irrelevant, honestly, since I don't pay a lot of attention to Fitbit's overall estimate of my caloric burn for the day, but I feel like if I'm going to log this, I should log something closer to reality.