New Kayak activity doesn't track strokes/paddles count/rate?

Just updated to 9.2 and did a Kayak activity but was surprised not to see any data on stroke count, rate, statistics, etc. What's the point of calling it a Kayak activity if all I get is time, distance and speed, hr, etc. its just another timed activity. I was expecting more, am I missing something?

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jetdog9 over 7 years ago +2

This is kind of ridiculous. Why add a new app for a paddling activity without cadence or total strokes? Especially when the technology is clearly in the watch?

WHIFF...
Mintaka over 4 years ago +2

Agree. Having a kayak activity without having the ability to add any stroke fields to the activity is quite ridiculous. And the fact that you complained about this 2 years ago and nothing has changed is…
Karovaldas over 4 years ago in reply to Mintaka +2

Just to make sure, you know that you can get the cadence to work if you use SUP activity instead. Just making sure. Garmin's decision to disable cadence on a dedicated KAYAK activity that takes twice as…

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0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to Karovaldas

I tried SUP in the uPaddle app but still have no reliable cadence on my Fenix 5 Safire while kayaking.

0 Karovaldas over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

I am not familiar with uPaddle app but cadence is definitely available in SUP activity profile. It's either the app or maybe your watch has a problem. The way to test if it's the app is to run Garmin's native SUP activity and see if you get cadence data there. And, needless to say, the watch needs to be on your wrist for it to work. Putting it in the center of the shaft can give you these non-'reliable' results. Obviously, can't get cadence if your watch is on the deck. Just ruling out the obvious.

What, exactly, do you mean by 'realiable'?

0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to Karovaldas

I'll try the SUP app tonight. Obviously it is on my wrist, my left one to be precise.

No reliable means that there is one data point for cadence and then 10x none, while there are data points for speed and HR. Then 1 more datapoint and then some other amount of missing datapoints again. See graph below. Cadence in grey, speed in blue and HR in red. This is about 7 minutes of data.

0 Karovaldas over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

Hmmm, strange. One more idea: Garmin has a hand option in the setup. You need to set the side on which the device 'lives'. Check that yours is left. I know, this is reaching, but we're getting desperate here. Any chance the cadence peaks are your sprints? The values you have a way too high for regular paddling which should be around 30 strokes per minute not 60. Finally, cadence registers up-and-down motion. Depending on how you paddle, you may be doing mostly back-and-forth motion with very little gravity change. That may be a problem too. Try to exaggerate up-and-down aspect of your stroke and see if that makes a difference. But I suspect it's the app trying to do something fancy or just not having the algorithms set up appropriately. Personally, I use DozenPaddle data field and Row,Sup,Kayak activity by Fbbbrown. Both work flawlessly. If Garmin SUP native activity works, you may want to give these two a try.

0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to Karovaldas

Finally, I used the build in SUP app and now I get better results. Below screen shot of part of last night data (cadence in grey, HR in red). Thanks for your help Karovaldas, I will try out your suggestions for datafield/apps.

0 Karovaldas over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

Glad to see you got it to work.

0 Ceten over 4 years ago

Such a shame that after all these years the cadence and power meter data fields still haven't been added to the kayak activity. Power meters and cadence sensors for kayaks do exist but due to Garmin leaving them out of the activity. I agree we can use the sensors with a bik or sup activity but this results in the wrong sports type in Garmin Connect.