-
Fitness Trackers and Exercise Options: Pole Dancing & Aerial Acrobatics
I’m getting pretty sick of not being able to accurately record my exercise activities in these so called “fitness trackers.” I have used multiple trackers and NOT ONE has the option of pole dancing or aerial acrobatics as a fitness activity. Isn’t the point of these trackers are to allow the user to accurately document their fitness activities? Why do I have to be subjected to using gymnastics or dancing as a blanket term when pole dancing or pole fitness (whatever lingo you use) encompasses so much more than these activities do on their own? I decided to reach out to FitBit (the current tracker I’m using) in hopes that their app developers can recognize our fitness activity as a legitimate form of exercise. I wanted to share my message I sent this morning as I know this has been an issue I’ve heard from multiple students and fellow pole dancers within the community.
Dear FitBit,
I am a recent new customer to FitBit. I previously used another fitness tracker and when my corporation informed me their wellness program partnership with FitBit, I purchased one of your trackers. I have been getting used to your product and one thing that I have noticed that separates your product from other trackers I have used is the wide variety of exercises that are acknowledged in the app’s fitness tracker exercise log. Unfortunately, two very common activities which constitute about eighty percent of my workouts are not options. These activities are pole dancing fitness and aerial acrobatics. There are a huge number of your customers that participate in these very common forms of exercise activities. The pole and aerial community are very fitness savvy individuals that enjoy tracking their fitness activities and would like to have the ability to utilize your product more accurately to reflect the activities they enjoy doing for fitness. I hope you will consider adding these options to your tracking application to encompass a continuously growing community of fitness enthusiasts that have seemingly been left out of the mainstream recognition for fitness activities.
Thank you,
Kody ParkerIf you are a FitBit user and would like to contact them in the same manner as I have done above, I went to http://www.fitbit.com, scrolled down to the bottom and clicked About Us, clicked Contact Us at the top, and then clicked the General/Other box: http://help.fitbit.com/?cu=1&form=general
-
13 Replies
-
Thanks for starting this discussion! I use Garmin with Garminconnect and myfitnesspal. I’ll take your idea and contact Garmin and myfitnesspal as well as I am also frustrated with trying to use “equivalent” exercise options on those platforms. This would be a huge help for those of us who have company wellness plans. And of course I’m data obsessed anyway!
-
FitBit was really receptive to adding pole dancing and aerial acrobatics to their tracking app. Here’s the response I just received. I am going to take their advise and add a forum suggestion. If you’re also a FitBit user, you can vote for my forum discussion so the developers see it.
Hi Kody,
Thank you for your suggestion.
We’re constantly striving to improve Fitbit products and services, and we very much appreciate all of the input we receive from our customers like you. These activities pole dancing fitness and aerial acrobatics, these are great idea to be added on the tracker’s activities. We’ll forward this to our product development team for studies. Since the best place to make your voice heard is the Ideas board on our community (https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Requests/idb-p/features), which our product development teams consult regularly to ensure we’re delivering on what our customers need and want. We suggest for you to please take a moment to visit and give us your feedback.
If you find that a similar suggestion has already been made by another member of the community, you can vote for their idea and add your comments. Our product team looks forward to reading and incorporating your suggestions into future versions of Fitbit trackers and apps.
Thank you so much for your feedback and for participating in our community!
Sincerely,
Roselyn P. and the Fitbit Team
-
I was actually just looking at a Fitbit! I don’t have the money for one right now, but… I’m hoping that the future will allow me to get one 🙂 It would be great to have pole on there!!
-
Once you submit your idea, will you attach a link? I have a FitBit and I’ll vote for it.
-
I’ll vote for it too. And I want to see Pole Fit on their commercial that has all the different kinds of fit. I think one of them does have pole fit but I can’t remember what the person is doing but it’s not pole dancing.
@Runemist I bought a used FitBit on ebay for cheap. When I contacted the FitBit folks to make sure that I could register the device even when someone else had registered it before they said absolutely no problem. I wear a FitBit One because I don’t like to have anything on my wrist. It’s a tiny little thing and I clip it on my bra every day.
-
Correction: The FitBit commercial has someone doing Pull Fit (rather than Pole Fit) but he is at least doing a pull-up on a light pole or something.
I wanna see a bad-ass strong POLE Fit on the commercial, dang it.
-
Haha, yes, every time I hear the pull fit part of the commercial I thing POLE fit!
-
@Greyeyes- That’s a great idea! Totally forgot I could get things used or whatever from E-bay.
I hate wearing things on my wrist, too, and it’s a bit frustrating that the ones with better features are wrist-only.
Also I don’t sleep with anything but panties, and I suppose I could put the One on them, but… little bit uncomfortable maybe?
Of all of them, I think the One would be best for me. I’ll have to keep looking at it though! -
I doubt it’s anything personal against pole dancers. I would imagine something like pole dancing would be difficult to track due to the different levels of intensity/skill, and the tracker has no way of knowing what percentage of your workout is dancing verses pole tricks. I can see the estimated burns being heavily inflated.
I have the Charge HR and just let it autolog my active minutes. It usually records the excercise as “Sport”. For comparison, Zumba gets autologged as “Aerobic”.
-
I made the post but someone emailed me and told me I needed to make the post on a different forum. I’ll remake it when my laptop is charged and I have a chance to sit down at my computer and repost here later.
I have the FitBit Flex (no HR monitor). I wanted the option to wear on my wrist or put in a clip to clip on my clothes. The HR monitoring is only available in the wrist band options. Not something that works for all my workouts I do.
The app suggestion for Pole Dancing/Pole Fitness and Aerial Acrobatics was to classify my workouts accurately with the ability to record intensity. The Jawbone tracker I was previously using allowed me to classify my workout as easy to difficult. I don’t see this being a problem for the developers to integrate when Jawbone is already doing this in their tracking app. I’ll try to post the link today to the forum discussion for you all to vote on it. Thank you!
-
Here’s the link for fellow FitBit users to vote on the proposed Feature Request:
https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Requests/Fitness-Tracker-App-Exercise-Options-Pole-Dancing-and-Aerial-Acrobatics/idi-p/1194776#M49218 -
Voted
-
Voted!
Log in to reply.