FitBit
 

I wore my new FitBit device while officiating this past weekend...logged more than 13,000 steps during my six games!

Anyone else wearing one of these types of things and keeping track of your stats?

Does it chart your CCs, ICs and NCIs, too? :D

I hope that you are wearing it around your ankle and perhaps covered by a sock.

I would never wear something such as this on my wrist, which we wouldn't permit a player to wear on the court.

I carry mine in my pocket. It does well in a back or front pocket.

However, I don't buy the "we wouldn't let players wear it" nonsense. I'm not a player.

We would not let a player wear a whistle around his neck. That would be dangerous.

I wasn't planning on wearing it during the high school season. Nor was I planning on keeping my beard past October :D

What we wear has no connection to what players are permitted to wear. We're not players.

Or, if the requirements are the same, are you suggesting that you'd allow players to wear lanyards?

Agreed. I wear my wedding ring on the court. I do so because it's authorized wear, and it's a pain in the neck to remove.

Don't you mean pain in the finger?

Read the NFHS Officials Manual. We are only allowed to wear a wedding band. I don't even wear mine when I officiate because I was officiating long before I married my wonderful, intelligent, smart, and beautiful "better half".

MTD, Sr.

So was I but I wear mine. I even wore a pink wrist band when my first daughter was born. All my assigner said was congrats and wanted to know how soon we could get her working on the court.

I've not had the chance to wear my FitBit (FitBit one which I wear on the waist) on the court but I've worn it working football and baseball. What was interesting for baseball was seeing how many flights of stairs it registered me climbing due to what I guess was the squatting I was doing while working the plate.

The NFHS manual is a guide, it's not the law. Many states don't even use it.


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My question is why WOULD an official wear a FitBit on his wrist if he could instead keep it somewhere concealed?

We are "allowed" to wear rings on the court. However, if you watch the officials work the top games you will notice that none of them wear jewelry of any kind on the court. One told me that his wife convinced him that there wasn't a high school student on the planet that would hit on him or try to pick him up at any time...much less during a basketball game so he didn't need to advertise that he was taken.

The only thing I wear is a medic alert necklace...under my compression shirt.

We're talking about summer basketball, right? Worked by officials wearing shorts?


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I'm not...I'm talking about in a NFHS game since the NFHS manual was brought up and dismissed.

Is 13,000 steps a lot? I'm not really up on this, but I kind of have it in my head that this is about 6.5 miles. Over 6 games. Probably 4-5 hours. Not really much of a pace. (And consistent with what I would have thought)

Wow, thread hijacked. In any event, I've always wondered how much ground I cover in an average game. Summer ball would be less than an NFHS game just due to fewer switches, etc.

It may not be a lot for the type of activity he was doing. However, the generic goal I hear from fitbit users is 10000 steps a day. So, from that viewpoint, it's a lot.

I've been using a FitBit since April 2014. I have the little one (not the wrist band) that I keep in my pants pocket during games. I think I paid about $50 for it. I actually use it as my possession arrow tracker. I have found that about 2200 steps equals a mile for me. A varsity boys game usually logs about 2.3 miles. I've been wearing it this summer for youth games on Saturday mornings. I've logged 12,000-14,000 steps over a 4 game stretch. It also estimates calories burned which is what I really purchased it for.

I don't know if it's actually helping me with my fitness level but I think it's a neat way to measure and maintain activity levels. Tracking is done with a smart phone app. I've got a couple fellow officials in my association that have bought them as well. You can actually "connect" to them and watch their progress along with your own through the app. IMO, it's a cool application of new technology. If it isn't actually improving my fitness level, it's at least helping me keep track and be aware of it.

I use the Garmin Vivofit, and kept it in my pocket during regular season games, but I have worn it on my wrist for the summer games. The number of steps shown in previous posts are similar to my results. I am interested to see what it will show for the upcoming football season.

Also, I where my celtic cross under my compression shirt for all games and nobody has ever noticed it was there.

The one thing you have to be careful of when converting steps to distance is that the nature of the steps for an official is not likely to match those used to calibrate the distance. We take a lot of small adjustment steps as referees and they'll get counted the same as a full stride. It may well be 2.3 miles but I don't think you can rely on the distance....or for that matter the calories. They'll probably be overestimated.

I think that 10k steps a day goal is really kind of a misnomer.

Here's one article:

Tracking fitness? Why 10,000 steps a day may not be enough - TODAY.com

I do have some "step tracker" on my phone. I was nearly always at 13 - 14k steps per day even without any running (I did not carry the phone when running) and I have a desk job.

I've found that my particular device tends to under report steps and distance. I can tell when I go for a run...one that I know for certain to be say...a mile or two (as measured by my vehicle odometer or google maps). If I note the beginning distance logged on my device and then again at the end, it will usually measure slightly less than a mile. I don't know if this is specific to my device or all FitBits in general but that's what I have consistently found since day 1. I'd rather it under report than overstate steps and distance.As for calories...meh...probably a vague estimation at best. I'm not as interested in those. I know it can vary widely by activity type.

Like basic pedometers before them, these newer devices can't calculate an accurate distance without first being programmed with an accurate length of your stride. Some higher end ones may use GPS for distance but GPS is typically not usable indoors and, even if you could get a GPS signal in a gym, I'm not sure it would work in the context of typical movements of a referee where distances moved might be a foot to the right then a foot back to the left. I'm not sure such subtle movement would register as movement at all with a GPS.

If yours, being used for straight line running, is always under the distance, then the stride length needs to be set to a higher value.

Celtic Cross ...
 

Mine is tattooed on my right upper arm. It can't be seen when covered by a shirt sleeve on a shirt.

I think what many don't realize is that 10K is what the minimum should be. Those looking to improve fitness, lose weight, etc, need to do more.

And I did say "generic goal."

This got me thinking...I never thought to check to see if there was a setting for stride length...there is. I'm going to adjust it tonight. I have 4 games Saturday...I'll report back the results Sunday.

Yeah - let us know how well the meds worked. ;)

i have the fitbit flex. it fits into a band. i put it in my pocket to referee. high school game is about 2.5 to 3 miles. 5,000 to 6,000 steps. college game usually 3.5 to 4.5 miles. 7 to 9,000 steps. ive been to the track and worn it walking. it was right on. one lap 525 steps.( they say a mile is about 2100 steps. )

Four games averaged about 2.1 miles per game. I did in fact adjust the stride length to 2'9" based on the method FitBit reccommends to calculate stride length. While I was there, I noted that I have the FitBit Zip, the smallest device they make.

As far as meds Mark Padgett...a couple Advil and a foot soak did the trick. Not T's handed out and no Overtime (did have on 1 point game).

Like I implied before, it is unlikely you actually traveled 2.1 miles per game if you followed their stride setting method. It is designed for someone who is jogging/running and is taking a consistent stride throughout.

A referee does jog/run but also takes several smaller steps as well and they are all counted as full strides. So, if you set it for your jogging/running stride, it would overestimate the distance while refereeing....unless you jog from L-to-T/T-to-L and don't move once you're there. Such distance calculations are really only close when the stride is consistent.

It is very difficult to get an accurate average stride length for a referee to be used with what is essentially a fancy pedometer. That number could change substantially with each game....lots of fast breaks vs. a lot of half-court action. You can really only know the number of steps to any degree of accuracy.

Mileage Will Vary ...
 

Agree. However, it's not impossible to determine the actual mileage, but one must use another technique. Just breakdown a videotape of a game. We know various measured distances on the court, so it wouldn't be very difficult to determine how far an official actual moved. It will just take a lot of time, and patience, but it can be done. Anybody want to borrow my slide rule?

Regarding players, from various sources on the internet (below):

... nor did (John) Havlicek burn out as Cousy had predicted. The "man in motion," as he was dubbed in a book title, continued to run defenders into the ground. It was once estimated that he ran three to five miles per game.

There's an old wives' tale that the average NBA player will run five miles every game. Not quite. Many NBA teams have started using a system called SportVU, a specialized motion tracking system that enabling teams to get far more detailed stats about their players. In the 2012 season, the player that ran the farthest per game was Luol Deng of the Chicago Bulls, who averaged 2.72 miles per game. That's no where near the five mile myth, but considering how much of that is sprinting, it's still very impressive.

Basketball: 2.9 miles
Cutting-edge tracking technology called SportVU has allowed coaches and statisticians to track NBA player performance in real time, including the distance traveled per game. This is another generous estimate, averaging SportVU’s distance traveled from the top ten hardwood pounders. Running the most during the 2014 season was Jimmy Butler of the Chicago Bulls at 3.1 miles per game.

According to data from STATS, a global leader in the gathering and dissemination of sports information, it is possible for a basketball player to average around 2.72 miles per game. This number depends how much play time a person gets during a game and what position an individual is playing.

STATS collects statistics on athletes in a variety of sports using their ground-breaking tracking system called SportVU. Blair O’Donovan, a top strength and conditioning coach who has worked with high school, college and professional athletes, once used a sports watch GPS to informally track high school players. His experiment led him to conclude that the young men he clocked ran anywhere from 4.02 to 5.7 miles in a single game. However, in light of SportVU’s more advanced, detailed motion tracking capabilities, distances in the neighborhood of five miles are today being classified as little more than old wives’ tales.

Just remember Abraham Lincoln's famous quote, "Don't believe everything that you read on the internet". Our sixteenth president was a pretty smart guy.

It's also likely that when running, strides are much more than 2' 9". When I run, with a 34" inseam, my strides are a lot farther than 2'9". I'm not taking anywhere close to the 15.25 steps it would take to cover half court.

It's not exact science. It's a fairly accurate estimate. More important than whether you ran exactly 2.16 miles is that you're tracking the progress of your overall health and fitness. That's the purpose, which seems to be lost on some.

Upon further review...
 

I checked back on my settings page. The 2'9" is a walking stride. There is also a running stride setting. I haven't measured that yet but I'll enter it once I do. I don't really know how the device distinguishes between the two but it's there as an option.

Not lost on me, just pointing out to those who are set on figuring out a distance that they are not going to get an accurate distance no matter what they do.

Maybe it senses, with an accelerometer, the intensity of the activity and assumes running or walking from that.

Nevada:

Your PM cache needs some housekeeping.....