Whether you use a Fitbit device to track your daily activity and health or to help you train for a specific event goal, there are a few things you need to know to get the most out of endurance training. The guidance of a coach or training plan, structured and specific workouts, and deeper workout data analysis will all help you reach your goal regardless if you are new to endurance training or planning for your biggest event yet.
Getting the best training guidance and analysis with your Fitbit devices has just gotten easier because Fitbit and TrainingPeaks have partnered together to allow more of your Fitbit data to sync directly to TrainingPeaks.
How
Getting started with syncing your Fitbit data to TrainingPeaks is easy. Sign into your TrainingPeaks account (or create one if you are a new user) and give permission to TrainingPeaks to access your Fitbit data.
You are in control of the data that syncs to TrainingPeaks. If you want to sync workout data from Fitbit we recommend selecting at least “activity and exercise”, “heart rate”, and “location and GPS” since those types of data provide the most accurate picture of your training. If you also want weight data to sync to TrainingPeaks, you can select that separately.
Once you have finished the setup, any new activities or body composition entries will sync the next time you record them. Previous entries or historical data won’t sync to TrainingPeaks. If you ever want to disconnect your accounts, you can do that here.
What
The permissions you provide while setting up the sync will give a general idea of what data can sync from Fitbit to TrainingPeaks, but there are some more details that can help you get the most out of sync.
Training Data
If you are recording your training with a Fitbit device, you can have those activities sync to your TrainingPeaks account as long as they have either heart rate or GPS data. Most activities recorded with the Ionic or Versa devices should include at least one of these, but if you are going to run on a treadmill or cycle indoors make sure you are recording heart rate data, as well. Indoor swimming workouts will not have heart rate or GPS data so you will need to manually enter those in TrainingPeaks.
Body Composition
If you choose to sync body weight and other associated body composition data from Fitbit to TrainingPeaks, you will need to record body weight, body fat percentage, and BMI. You can record this data with the Fitbit Aria or Aria 2 scales, but you don’t have to have a Fitbit scale to take advantage of this. Any body composition data that is synced to Fitbit from other scales or manually entered will sync to TrainingPeaks.
Whether you are an existing Fitbit user or have just considered trying one, the new Fitbit and TrainingPeaks integration should make managing your data even easier.
