This is beginning to mildly piss me off and I would love to find a solution….

I have started going to spinning classes again recently and, on starting the class, I go to the Strava app on my Fitbit and select ‘Spinning’ however it doesn’t record anything and the activity never shows up in Strava (apparently because there is no GPS data). So I thought I could just select ‘Riding’ and it would record the effort but all I get is the hart rate and I am unable to over-ride the distance travelled – I assume to stop cheating and I get random pausing because it thinks I am not moving. More annoyingly, the Strava browser app doesn’t have the ability to add ‘Spinning’ as an activity so I can’t change it either.

All I want to be able to do is record spin classes – so is there a way?

Does the Fitbit not record it as a stationary bike? Or can you not start a session on Fitbit then upload to Strava and save as spin?
My Garmin watch disables the GPS for stationary bike sessions. Although I’ve used it more for treadmill runs.

What’s it actually recording? A file (of whatever format) with HR (and no other data?)…

Can you manually download the file and upload to Strava?

I tried manually downloading but it doesn’t recognise the file because there is no GPS data

As far as I can tell its the same for Garmin. Even if I set the manual distance in garmin and then reload the activity it still doesnt play.
havent found a satisfactorily solution.

Ok both my suggestions have a distance associated. Sorry I’m out of ideas.

It’s crackers though – surely many people do exercise that doesn’t involve moving? Treadmills, bikes, ellipticals, rowing machines etc etc etc. There must be a solution- especially as Fitbit records the data correctly, its just that Strava doesn’t – but I use Strava as my ‘definitive’ for recording my fitness / progress.

Yup its crap. The only way you can include distance, as far as I am aware, is by creating a manual session but you can cheat as much as you desire but that of course doesnt have heart rate info.
So then you need to decide whether to bin off the original data, set it with a zero/couple of seconds time for the manual activity and hence nuts speeds or just say sod it and double the hours.

So I’ve a Garmin Fenix watch, and managed to record the spinning class I did…
Connected the spin bike to the watch for power and cadence..
Connected HR monitor to the watch.

Essentially it’s just recording power, HR, and time working out.

However, i do have an ‘indoor bike’ setting on my watch, so it knows there’s no GPS movement.

DrP

DrP that’s what I thought but it’ll be able to guesstimate a distance from that. Like treadmill Garmin has an estimation of my average running stride length so on treadmill just uses that to estimate a distance.

But Strava also allows a yoga or weights session which have no distance.

I’m guessing because there’s no consistent metric for distance on a spinning bike?

The ones at the gym I liked had no electronics at all (but the resistance felt fairly natural).

The ones at the posh gym give you a speed, but it’s ludicrous, I guess it just reads off the flywheels circumference. So with the resistance wound off it ticks allong at 30mph/130rpm+. Although I don’t use their classes as the resistance is a bit all/nothing.

Strava always seemed quite happy to accept them as gym workouts (this was in the days before there were hundreds of options). So you just had a log of time and estimated calories.

I can certainly record non-gps activities on my Garmin Fenix, just yesterday I did a weights session that went Watch -> Garmin Connect -> Strava, with no track showing. (I used the cardio workout setting on the watch, then changed it to weights in Strava, but that’s just cos I find the weights activity on the watch is a bit a of a pain).

Not much use for a Fitbit, but just to point out that it’s not Strava that’s blocking you.