Step Conversion

Our app supports two step conversion modes: Automatic and Custom. You can also leave step conversion disabled if you want your challenge to count only steps.

Steps-Only Challenges

Step conversion is disabled by default.

In a steps-only challenge, activities such as cycling, swimming, yoga, or strength training are not converted into steps. Only the participant’s daily step total counts toward the challenge.

These daily totals are sometimes referred to as background steps.

Automatic Step Conversion

Automatic Step Conversion is the easiest way to give participants credit for activities that may require significant effort but do not naturally produce many steps.

We convert eligible activities into steps using information such as:

• Activity type
• Duration
• Distance
• Speed or pace, when available
• The type of device or connection that recorded the activity

The conversion is designed to recognize different forms of physical activity while reducing the risk of counting the same effort twice.

When the tracker already tracks daily steps

For devices and connections that provide a daily step total, MoveZenGo generally converts activities that require physical effort but do not normally generate meaningful step counts.

Examples include:

• Cycling
• Strength training
• Yoga
• Swimming and similar non-step activities

Activities such as walking, running, hiking, and treadmill exercise are generally not converted into additional steps when daily steps are already being received. The steps from those activities should already be included in the participant’s background step total.

Giving additional converted steps would mean counting much of the same activity twice.

For this reason, we recommend carrying or wearing your step-tracking device whenever possible, including during workouts.

Manual activities and trackers without daily step tracking

For manual entries and connections that do not provide daily step totals, we can convert activities into steps even when the activity is walking or running.

In these cases, there is no daily step total from that source that would otherwise give the participant credit for the activity.

The number of converted steps depends on the activity and the amount of activity completed. More demanding activities generally receive more credit than less demanding activities performed for the same amount of time.

How Are Step Conversions Determined?

Activity conversion is necessarily an estimate. A platform cannot know exactly how much effort an individual participant used during a particular workout.

Our approach is informed by established research on the relative energy demands of different physical activities, including the Compendium of Physical Activities.

The Compendium assigns activities a MET, or Metabolic Equivalent value. MET values provide a standardized way to compare the typical energy cost and intensity of different activities. For example, an activity requiring substantially more energy than light activity will generally have a higher MET value.

We use this type of research to help establish reasonable relationships between different activities rather than treating an hour of every activity as equivalent.

However, these values describe typical or average energy requirements, not the exact effort of a particular person. Two people can perform the same activity for the same amount of time and experience very different levels of exertion.

As a result, converted steps may sometimes feel too high or too low for a particular workout. There is no perfect conversion between cycling, weightlifting, yoga, swimming, and walking.

The goal is not to claim that a converted activity is literally equivalent to taking a specific number of steps. The goal is to provide a consistent and reasonable way to recognize different types of physical activity within a step-based challenge.

The same conversion methodology is applied consistently across participants.

Try the Step Converter

Event administrators and participants can see how activities are converted using our Step Converter:

Try the Step Converter tool

Custom Step Conversion

Custom Step Conversion allows event administrators to work with our staff to create their own conversion rules.

You can select which activity types should be converted and specify how many steps one hour of each activity should receive. Our app then calculates the converted steps based on the activity type and duration.

For example, if an activity is configured to award 6,000 steps per hour, a 30-minute activity would receive 3,000 converted steps.

Walking and running

Custom Step Conversion does not allow additional step awards for walking or running.

For participants using a connected fitness device, those activities normally already contribute to their daily step total. Converting them again would create a significant risk of duplicate credit.

If you want to automatically account for differences between step-producing and non-step-producing activities, we recommend using Automatic Step Conversion instead.

Custom Activities

Our staff can also add custom activities for you if there are specific activities your team engages in that are not normally tracked by most tracking devices or apps. Examples might be non-exercise-related activities like housework or gardening.