When it comes to your Exercise Minutes rating, one of the requirements is a minimum of 14 days of data within a 4-complete-week rolling time-window. What is a 4-complete-week rolling-time window? It’s the time frame we use to determine what data to use and what data to exclude when we calculate your rating. We define a complete week as 7 whole days from Monday to Sunday. This means that your exercise minutes from the current week will not be included in your rating until the following Monday.
Confused? Let’s look at the calendar below and imagine that today is Wednesday March 3 (highlighted in green). The yellow-highlighted weeks represent the 4-complete-week rolling time-window.
This 4-complete-week rolling time-window starts on Monday Feb 1 and ends on Sunday Feb 28. The exercise minutes recorded in your Fitbit, Health or Garmin app during this time frame will be included in our analysis.
Exercise minutes recorded during the current week - March 1 to March 7 - are not yet included in your rating. In other words, if you smash out a 30-minute tap dance today, those 30 minutes are not included in your Weekly Exercise Minutes rating YET. Because right now, today is part of an incomplete week. But please read on!
Rolling time-window explained
Every Monday starts a new week, and with that, the 4-complete-week time-window rolls over (hence why it's called a rolling time-window). As the time-window rolls over a week, the data from the oldest complete week expires to make way for the newly completed week. Out with the old, in with the new! Back to our example:
It's now Monday March 8 and the new week has begun. We can see above that the 4-complete-week time-window has rolled over one week. The older data from the week February 1 to February 7 has expired to make way for the new data from the most recent complete week March 1 to March 7. Those hard-earned tap dance minutes will NOW be included in your rating.
Exercise Minutes: covering 3 weeks of the 4 complete-weeks
To calculate your Exercise Minutes rating, a minimum of 14 days of data must be spread over at least 3 weeks within the 4-complete-week rolling time-window.
Let’s look at the data calendar below where today is Wednesday March 3. A circled day represent a day of data for user Vicki. You can see that within the 4-complete-week time-window Vicki has data recorded on Week 1, Week 3, and Week 4.
Even though there is no data recorded on Week 2 (she was holidaying in Hawaii and left her Fitbit at home) Vicki still has 14 days of data spread over 3 of the 4 complete weeks. When she views her dashboard, Vicki will have an activated Exercise Minutes rating.
Now let’s take a look below at the data calendar for her neighbour Victor.
Victor also has 14 days of data, but they are only spread over 2 of the 4 complete weeks. Victor is not yet eligible for his Exercise Minutes rating. Victor will have this rating activated when there are 14 days of data spread over 3 of the 4 complete-weeks.
Let’s wrap it up with the moral of the story; be sure to wear your Fitbit, Garmin or Apple Watch as often as possible to avoid missing out on/losing your Exercise Minutes rating.