SUPPORT DISCUSSIONS

I would like to know how calculation is done as well, I ran 5k this morning miCoach gave me 473 Cal, from Nike+ (stride sensor only) gave me 350 Calories.

Distance recorded, by the way, is very close 5k vs 4.96k.

I'm going to see if I can wear my Polar watch and then compare calorie to that and micoach to see how close they are - i'll post the results! I would assume its based on heart rate but would be good to hear from Adidas on this...

I have a question - do you need to have the stride sensor on your shoe if you are doing gym workouts like cardio fitness classes or other cardio machines ?

Thanks for your reply

D

I think I've found the answer to my own question re total calories burned during a day as measured by HRM.

As I now understand it, the HR measured uses an algorithm to estimates the amount of calories burned assuming you are doing aerobic exercise.  This algorithm uses data on previously (accurately) measured information about the number of calories burned at particular HR levels and adjusts it for the age, gender, weight and height of the person doing the exercise to give an estimate of the calories burned by that person during the particular aerobic activity they are engaged in.

Calories are burned when muscles use energy while exercising.  To facilitate this process, the heart beats faster.  And since there is a relationship between HR and calories burned while exercising, this can be estimated by MiCoach (etc).   But, fortunately, the heart also beats when we are not exercising! (and can speed up for reasons that have nothing to do with exercise - such as stress or anxiety).  But the MiCoach system always assumes that we are exercising and uses it's algorithm to estimate calories burned accordingly.

It's a bit like a car.  When the motor is running, there is a measurable relationship between the speed of the engine and the position of the accelerator pedal.  But there is only a relationship between the speed the car is travelling and the accelerator pedal if the car is in gear.  MiCoach will only give an accurate approximation of calories burned if you are actually exercising.....otherwise, you are just measuring the engine speed (heart rate) with the car in neutral!

Using this logic, the MiCoach gear will not give an accurate measure of calories burned when doing non-aerobic (anerobic?) exercise such as lifting weights.

Please let me know if I've got this wrong.

This is all starting to make more sense.

According to the HRM, your excellent workout watching X-Factor was similar to my tough workout at my desk - roughly  600 cals per hour.  So, out of interest, I looked up (on Livestrong.com) an estimate of calorie burn would be for what could be considered "base level" aerboic exercise.  According to the good people at Lance's place, "Walking at 2.5 mph" (about 4 kmh....so barely strolling) burns about 285 cals per hour.  This leads me to guess that the base data which is applied to the algorithm that calcs calorie burn using HR assumes that the minimum calorie burn for the most non-taxing aerobic exercise is 300 cals per hour.

In other words, if your "workout" results tell you that you aren't burning much more than 5 calories a minute, then you might as well not bother! 

Enough of this....it may be Friday....but I've got to do some work!