Fitness trackers for rides

[thenotsonaturals]

Do people generally track their rides and what are the benefits? Which fitness tracker is most suited to do this? I heard Garmin and Apple but if anyone could recommend a tracker of smart watch that would be great.

It depends a bit on the purpose of the tracking - answer slightly different depending on if you want an accurate record of distance covered and pace which would mainly be useful for horse fitness and preparing for things like XC or endurance or longer riders. Or are you more thinking of your own fitness for which duration of ride/heart rate/calories burnt is more useful.

I have a Garmin watch which based on research seems to be consistently the best for riders, I got it mainly because I was annoyed my cheaper/older one would only record rides as my own step count which would massively overinflate my steps for the day. The Garmin does let you record rides as a seperate category but it's far from perfect, you can't choose riding as an activity type direct from the watch, you have to choose 'other' then afterwards go into the app on your phone and manually choose from the thousands of 'other' options to get it to reflect as riding. Or you can just leave it as 'other' and it will just track your heart rate and duration of activity which gives a reasonable guesstimate of calorie burn and allows you to track back over time. Or even easier just let it run in the background and if it detects an elevated heart rate and/or rapid movement it will autostart an activity, it will usually guess you are cycling or running but again you can manually correct that later in the app if important. For hacking providing you either have your phone with you and the GPS on (or the more expensive watches have own inbuilt GPS) it can also show your route taken which is nice... Not sure TBH I'm very bothered once the novelty wore off for me but it's quite a nice little extra.

Thank you so much. Very useful to know.

Or are you more thinking of your own fitness for which duration of ride/heart rate/calories burnt is more useful. This is what my dd would be using it for. She doesn't have her own horse rides several times a weeks including hacks. If you do chose the riding option, does it record more than e.g. heart rate/calories burnt?

Which Garmin do you have or do all the models do this?

It shows time and date, distance covered, duration of activity, average pace, calories burnt and if GPS on, a little map of where you've been which can be nice to see for hacking. You don't have to set it to horse riding to get these stats, fine to leave it thinking it's walking or running or whatever, it just will be more accurate on the calories if you set the activity type correctly. It can then make you bar charts of how often over time you've done that activity if that's of note and you can add notes or photos to each activity which I guess could be good if you want to track which horse you rode at the riding school or remember feedback from the instructor or what height you jumped or something (although equally you could do that on any notes app).

It also monitors your 'intensive minutes' which it bases on heart rate, it's interesting to see how often (or rather how little, sadly) of riding counts as intensive - yard work more so.

I have the Lily2 which is a nice looking watch, I think all (or most) garmins have these features. I can't say honestly it's changed my life though...

I only track through equilab, as I'm primarily interested in tracking time in each gait and how long spent on each rein - not my own performance. It can also be set up to live track rides, so people can monitor where you are on a hack for additional safety.

Equilab is only available through phones, and how you carry your phone will impact data quality - e.g. if my phone is loose in a coat pocket it's less accurate than in a tight pocket on my thigh.

I track my rides using the OS Maps app on my phone. I have absolutely no interest in the fitness information but like to know where I've been, how long I've been out and how far I rode.

It's also really handy for exploring new areas as I can use it to navigate my way back to the start if I get lost (truthfully, this is the main reason I use it!)