Hi All, I am 5 foot 8 and 138lb male (33 years old) at 6% body fat. My fenix 5 is updated to latest version and my activity level is set to 5. When I do stairclimbing I use the Garmin heart-rate strap.
If I go 1 hour on the stairmaster at level 14 of 20, my heart rate stays around 135 the entire time. The active calories only goes up by about 4 per minute at this rate, or about 240 calories per hour. The machine says I burn around 850 calories though. So someone here is way off.
It seems as if the watch is not giving enough credit for the high heart rate even though the "steps" are kind of low. In contrast, it doesn't make sense my garmin gives me 10 calories per minute on a 4.4mph 3incline on treadmill... here my heart rate is not even above 125. This workout is not nearly as intense but has more "steps". So something is really off here.
My analysis is that steps are overrated and intensity (heart rate) isn't factored in properly in the calorie burn.
Has anyone else run into similar issues? Is it because the watch doesn't see any elevation that it gives such low calorie burn on stairmaster?
Please advise.
