Background info:
34 year old male, 145lb, 6% body fat, max HR 170
I was on stairmaster for 3 hours and 18 minutes, the METs on the machine was an avg of 6.8 and my avg heart rate was around 100 (using garmin external HR monitor).
My heart rate was low, but does heart rate == calories burned? I was dripping in sweat and looked like I jumped in a pool after this workout.
According to this METs calculator ( http://lamb.cc/calories-burned-calculator/ ) I burned closer to 1500 calories... the stairmaster also had me burning about 500 calories per hour.
If I had to describe the workout, it was a moderate intensity, slow climb.
I feel that garmin bases too much of the calorie burn on heart rate. Something is seriously wrong, I can burn 200 calories slowly walking for 45 minutes, yet a stairclimb over 3 hours barely gives that burn...
Also the vertical ascent climbed was about 4 miles per hour... so I climbed, not walked, over 12 miles, and burned 210 calories? But walking 2 miles burns about the same... lol
The device is too expensive too be so inaccurate, I'm sorry. Also, I can repeat these results at will. Every time I do this same workout it's about the same results on the Garmin. It is not just a fluke.
Anyone have any idea what is going on here, causing such drastically incorrect results? Has anyone else suffered similar results?
