Fenix 5 not counting the right distance while playing indoor tennis / padel. How to fix it?

BM over 5 years ago

I have my Fenix5 for a bit more than 1 year and I am really happy with it on my running activities. HR, GPS and distance are really good and accurate.

However I cannot get a good reading for distance while playing indoor tennis or padel. For example this morning in 1,5 h of indoor padel the Fenix 5 recorded 0,43 km of distance and 476 Cal.

I know I ran more than that. The calories seem to be a bit excessive too, but I can live with that as I don't care that much about it. I tried recording the indoor activity as tennis, or ieven treadmil running but the results are always poor.

Any one else experienced this with the Fenix 5? Any tips, tricks, suggestions are greatly appreciated.

N.B.: The watch is not the hand where I hold the racket and my backhand is onehanded.

0 figgeo over 5 years ago

I also would like a fix for that. Also would like a app that track it as a revised activity and with the name padel. Tracking time, pulse, distance, calories and mabye some other stuff as well. Now it tracks distance bad and I have to change what's kind of activity it is, and the name. Would like the best app to copy to make the best tracking for indoor padel.

0 razmichael over 5 years ago

IMO getting any accurate distance reading indoors (no GPS) playing a paddle sport is really unlikely! Treadmill distances (or outdoor runs without GPS) get distance by an assumed or calibrated correlation between arm swing and stride. This correlation pretty much falls apart during a paddle/racket sport given all the rapid change of directions and varied arm swing/motion (even when not using the watch on the racket arm).. I think you may be expecting way to much from a watch on your wrist. Even outdoors with GPS, the rapid changes in direction would be hard to consistently pick up given the granularity of the GPS sampling time and standard errors expected. Although I doubt if a foot pod (such as stryd) would make much difference but maybe someone has experience using one?

0 2656834 over 2 years ago

it hasn’t been fixed in 2022. My opponent with an Ultra Apple Watch ran 3 miles and my Fenix 7 shows that I ran .3 miles. I know I ran more than my opponent. It works perfect outdoor but not for indoor tennis

0 trux over 2 years ago in reply to 2656834

Using a HRM-Pro strap or RD Pod will give you better results, after the calibration at outdoor runs with GPS.

Watches of competitors usually estimate the distance using the step counter and the average stride length. Garmin does that too, but multiplies the value with a factor derived from the speed and cadence detected by the accelerometer, which works relatively well at indoor running, or on a treadmill, but often very wrong at indoor sports like tennis.

You can get a better estimate for example with the Connect IQ app tx Activity STEPS - it allows you to set the stride length manually, or keep using the internal one, and it also factors the stride length less aggressively than the internal algorithm, hence the results are more realistic. The factoring can be also turned off completely, in the app settings (hence using a constant stride length). The estimated distance is saved in a separate CIQ field.