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Activities and Daily Summaries

Activity data covers two different kinds of item, and it helps to know which one you are looking at.

A workout is one session: a run, a walk, a ride, a swim, a weight lifting session, a yoga class and so on. It has a start time and a duration, and often a recording behind it with your route and your heart rate along the way.
A daily summary is one whole day: your steps, distance, floors, calories, resting heart rate, heart rate variability and the other totals your device keeps for the day.

Both come in through the same Activity source, so one source for your watch brings in your workouts and your days together.

A day is not finished until it is over, so we only send a daily summary to your destinations once we see the next day’s data. That way the steps you take in the evening are not left behind.

Where your activities come from

These services can send your Activity data to FitnessSyncer:

FitnessSyncer can send your Activity data to:

You can also record a workout yourself in the FitnessSyncer Notebook, upload GPX, TCX, KML, KMZ, PWX and FIT files there or with the FitnessSyncer Uploader, or read them from a folder on your cloud drive.

Workouts with a full recording

Which services sync my maps?

For the services below, an activity comes across with its full recording rather than only its totals. That is the route on the map, along with the second-by-second detail your device captured, such as heart rate, pace, power, cadence, elevation and your laps.

What do I get from a workout’s map and second-by-second detail?

It is what the deeper analysis in FitnessSyncer is built on:

FitnessSyncer Maps draws every route you have recorded, so you can see where you have been and find new places to go.
In the Stream, each activity opens to its map, graphs of how your heart rate, pace and power changed along the way, your splits and laps, your time in each heart rate zone, and your heart rate recovery.
Your Best finds your highlights across all of your activities.
FitnessSyncer Compare lines your workouts up against each other, as described below.

When we send an activity to one of these services, the recording goes with it, so it arrives with its map and detail rather than as a summary.

Your heart rate zones and power zones come from your Preferences. A temperature your device recorded during a workout stays with that workout; see Body Temperature.

What if a service I use is not listed, or a map did not come across?

Some services only share an activity’s totals, and some activities, such as ones entered by hand, never had a recording behind them. If you would like maps with another service, or an activity arrived without the map you expected, please contact us.

Comparing workouts

Choose two or more workouts in FitnessSyncer Compare to see their totals side by side and, where they were recorded, their heart rate, pace, power and elevation overlaid on one chart. You choose how to line them up:

by elapsed time, which is the default
by distance, so the bottom of the hill lines up with the bottom of the hill on a route you repeat
by lap, for interval sessions where each repetition is one lap
by the clock, for two recordings of the same session, such as your watch and your chest strap

You can also narrow a workout to one lap or a stretch of it, see its aerobic efficiency and decoupling, check how closely two devices agreed on the same session, and start a comparison from the map where a route you repeat runs. When you record glucose too, a workout’s own page shows your glucose after each of your workouts of that kind.

Seeing your activities

Your activities appear across FitnessSyncer: charted on the Dashboard, listed on your Stream and Calendar, minute by minute in the Daily Analyzer, and counted toward your Goals, your Leaderboards and the wear on your shoes with ShoeRenew.

Steps, heart rate and other daily figures

How do I sync steps?

Steps come from your devices through an Activity source. Add a Source for your data and when you sync it, your steps will be pulled into FitnessSyncer.

Steps are generally part of a daily summary, which gathers all of your daily step data and daily metrics into a single item. We only send it to other services once we see the next day’s data.

How do I sync heart rate or pulse data?

Heart rate is also part of the Activity source. Your heart rate during a workout travels with the workout, and your heart rate through the day travels with your daily summary, the same way as your steps.

How do I sync resting heart rate (RHR) or Heart Rate Variability (HRV) data?

RHR and HRV come with the Activity source and work the same way as steps, and some sources also provide them with your sleep.

Note: for synchronization, we only use the RHR from your daily summary.

How do you calculate daily heart rate per step?

We use the formula Daily Heart Rate Per Step = Average Heart Rate Per Day / Daily Steps Taken. Recent research in this area suggests that this is a window into your cardiovascular health, and the lower the number, the better your health is.

How do you calculate VO2 Max Fitness Category and Fitness Age?

VO2 Max itself is not something we calculate. It comes directly from your device or provider (for example, a Garmin watch or Withings scale), which estimates it during exercise. We take that reading and compare it to published age and sex normed VO2 Max charts (similar to those popularized by the Cooper Institute / ACSM) to determine your Fitness Category (Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent, or Superior) and your Fitness Age, which is the age at which an average person has a similar VO2 Max to yours.

Your sex and age are determined based on the settings in your profile in Personal Preferences. If these are not provided, we use the default values of 40 years old and blend male and female data.

Fitness Category and Fitness Age are a heuristic, not a clinical or standardized measurement. There is no single agreed-upon way to translate a VO2 Max reading into these labels, and other sources, devices, and apps may use different norm charts or formulas and arrive at different results for the same VO2 Max. Treat these as a rough, motivational guide rather than a precise or defendable medical assessment.

You can experiment with our calculator on our Health and Fitness calculators section.

Asking your AI assistant

With the FitnessSyncer MCP Server, an AI assistant can summarize your workouts, follow your steps and VO2 Max over time, give you the splits of a run or a swim, compare two runs of the same route kilometer by kilometer or one lap with another, and tell you whether a long run was a steady aerobic effort. It can also record a workout for you. See the sample prompts for ideas.

Can you process my planned activities?

We currently only support activities that were done. We do not support planned activities at this time.