Swim Watches and TI

[andyinnorway]

I wanted to share my experience of swimovates Pool mate swim watches and in particular pool mate pro. The pool mate pro is a swim specific training watch that measures lap count, stroke efficiency and the pro version has the ability to download your sets to mac or pc, so in theory a great training tool. It works by using a tiny gyroscope that registers each stroke by change of direction. that is the theory at least.

I bought the watch in February this year as someone who hasn't swum in 20 years and then only as an pre work 800m breast stroker.

This was also the time I discovered TI on youtube and began to train freestyle the Terry way.

My watch worked fine for 6 weeks as my stroke length for 25m pool was around 20. However, since then I have swum 6 times a week and now average 13 strokes per length which causes the watch to miss more than 10% of the laps and therefore render it useless for measuring times and sets?

I had the same feedback from a TI coach in the UK who said they had experienced exactly the same problem, and wondered if anyone else had had problems with either the pool mate pro or other swim watches not measuring their laps because they were too efficient?

Comments please

[dshen]

I had the same problem with the Swimovate. I emailed them and they said that the watch needs at least 6 one arm strokes before it records correctly. Anything around 6 or below simply won't record. As far as I can tell, they have not fixed it.

You should switch to the Finis Swimsense. That watch is AWESOME.

[AWP]

Have had my $30 Timex IM Flixfor five years and "keeps on tickin", just saying.

[RadSwim]

I spent 2 or 3 years swimming with 11 - 13 SPL but decided that I was gliding too much. I have a much more fluid stroke at 14 - 17 SPL. You might save the price of a new swim watch by starting your catch a tenth of a second earlier.

RadSwim