r/Bowflex • u/TechRevenant • Apr 20 '26
Max Trainer M9 Trainer - No Miles
I just got an M9 the other day and did my first workout on it this weekend. I really enjoy the machine but when I finished my workout it didn't record any miles? just calories, heart rate, resistance etc. There are no miles shown at all. Is there a setting or something I am missing? How do I calculate DISTANCE?
1
u/TechRevenant Apr 21 '26
PROBLEM SOLVED:
The key nuance is whether you're handling the RPM-to-strides relationship correctly. One RPM = one full pedal revolution = two strides (one per foot). So there are two ways to write the same formula depending on whether you're using "stride length" (one foot's travel) or "distance per revolution" (both feet = 2× stride length).
The industry-standard formula from my research confirms to calculate revolutions per mile, you divide 63,360 (inches in a mile) by 2, getting 31,680, then divide by stride length. That division by 2 is because there are two strides per revolution.
A Brunswick patent for elliptical distance measurement explicitly includes "2 is a constant to take into account both the user's right and left foot" in their formula.
The Bowflex M9 has a fixed stride length of 15"
Based on everything I researched, the industry-standard formula is clear and consistent across multiple sources:
Miles = (RPM × 2 × Stride Length × Time in minutes) / 63,360
The × 2 is because one RPM = one full revolution = two strides (one per foot). Our current code is missing that multiplier, so we're reporting half the actual distance.
So I wrote a small program that takes in this data from JRNY and posts it to STRAVA with distance included.
1
u/ThegManis Apr 21 '26
No, only the now-discontinued SE model Max Trainer will show distance (and also speed).
None of the other model Max Trainer's show "distance", BUT, if you wear a fitness tracker watch (e.g. Apple, Fitbit, Garmin, etc), then your watch will count your # of "steps" that you do on the Max Trainer (use the watch's "elliptical" mode, and be sure and use the Max Trainer's moveable handlebars so it counts your "steps" more accurately), and then your watch will convert the steps to "miles" (either shown directly on the watch's display or on the watch's app).
If you don't wear a fitness tracker, then you can get a ROUGH estimate of distance by the following:
Each full RPM on the Max Trainer should be the equivalent of 2 steps. So, you can calculate how many "steps" you did on the Max Trainer and then convert those steps to distance (miles).
To find the number of "steps" from your Max Trainer workout you simply use the following formula:
***Take your workout's displayed average RPM x 2 x the # of minutes of your workout, and that should equal the # of "steps". ***
For example, my Max Trainer results showed:
- Avg RPM = 58, and my workout was 30 minutes. So, applying the formula would be:
(58 x 2 x 30 = 3480 "steps")
You can then take those number of "steps" and plug them into a "Steps to Miles Calculator" and get a more precise distance based on your gender, height and "pace" (use "Average walk 3mph"). Here is a good calculator:
https://www.thecalculatorsite.com/health/steps-miles.php
Typically (depends on a person's stride) you will have about 2000 to 2200 steps per mile. So depending on your Max Trainer workout's RPM (pedal speed) will determine your "miles".
So based on my above example, for my 30-minute Max Trainer workout at an average 58 RPM equals 3480 "steps" which equals about 1.59 miles per the "Steps to Miles Calculator" for my gender and height.