The short version
Each week you get whichever of two scores is higher: your steps or your eFit Minutes. Your overall Activity Score is the average of your completed weeks, shown as a percentage. Reaching 70% meets the challenge goal and earns your Challenge Certificate when the challenge ends. Every number behind it is on your Activity Score page, and every week there has a Show the math link that walks through the arithmetic with your own figures.
Two ways to earn the week
Steps: your best days count
Your organizer's scoring scale sets a daily step target (usually 10,000) and how many days a week count (usually 5, called ExerDays). Each week, eFit takes your best 5 days out of the 7 and averages them against the target. Two quiet days a week cost you nothing.
The easiest way to picture it: a week is worth 50,000 steps (5 days × 10,000). Your best five days are added up and the steps score is how much of that total you reached. 43,000 steps across your best five days is 86%.
eFit Minutes: a weekly total
eFit Minutes count moderate and vigorous effort from any tracker: 1 per moderate minute, 2 per vigorous minute, from your heart rate, a workout you start on your watch or in an app, or a brisk walk of 100 or more steps a minute. They add up across the whole week against a weekly target (usually 100). 84 minutes in a week is 84%. What are eFit Minutes and how do I earn them? explains where they come from.
You get the higher of the two
A week with 40% on steps and 84% on minutes is an 84% week. A low score on one measure never drags down the other.
The week in progress
Until a week closes, the Activity Score page shows what you have earned so far. Your best days to date are still divided by the 5 required, so on Tuesday two 10,000-step days read as 20,000 of 50,000, or 40%. That figure only goes up as the week goes on, and it is exactly the score the week would receive if it ended right now.
The Activity Score page draws this as two bars, one for steps and one for eFit Minutes, and names which one is winning the week. The At this pace line under Show the math tells you where the steps side lands if you keep up your average on the remaining required days, and how many more minutes would fill the other bar.
Today's activity counts as soon as it syncs. Because the figure can only rise, checking in the morning never shows a lower number than the night before.
When a week becomes final
A week closes at the end of its seventh day, plus one day for your tracker to hand over the last of its data. Only then does it join your overall Activity Score. Before your first week closes, the Activity Score page reads Not yet and shows the week in progress underneath. That means you have no score yet, which is a very different thing from a zero.
Excused days
When your organizer excuses a day (illness, travel, an organization holiday), that day is credited as a full activity day on both measures: the daily step target on the steps side and one fifth of the weekly target on the minutes side. The credit is added on top of anything your tracker recorded that day, and it lands the moment the excusal is on file, even for a day still ahead in the current week. Excused days are marked on your Activity Data page and noted on the week on your Activity Score page.
Reading your Activity Score page
- Activity Score: the average of your completed weeks as a percentage, with the points you still need to reach the 70% challenge goal, or Challenge goal met once you are there.
- Week by week: one bar per week beside the dashed line for your overall Activity Score. The week in progress is outlined, since it is still climbing.
- Weekly Score Breakdown: each week's average steps, eFit Minutes, the two scores and which one won. The open week says In progress: earned so far, day N of 7.
- Show the math: under every week, the exact arithmetic using your numbers.
If a week looks wrong
Compare your daily steps before anything else: open the Google Health app, tap Steps, choose Week, and check each day against your Activity Data page. Compare Your Steps Day by Day walks through it and says what to send if the numbers disagree. Days that never reached eFit are the cause nearly every time.