Hello,
I have been developing an application over the past couple months that should help coaches and individual players increase their swim speed. I am hoping to receive some sort of feedback from coaches who have more hands on experience and can give me some feedback on what features would help them manage swim practice or what features would not.
Pretty much the app would just go through your swim stroke like a science experiment. You would swim a couple laps to get your baseline speed. From there you would start to receive instructions from the app, such as elongate your stroke. it will then run you through a couple of different instructions besides just elongate your stroke, such as simple instructions like kick more. Eventually at the end you will be able to look at what different techniques allowed you to swim at a greater speed.
I know that all in all this app is pretty much a fancy clip board, but I think it has a lot of potential. I know from my personal experience that some coaches are just parents that swam a tiny bit in college at most. I hope that this will help those coaches who do not have as much experience as full time coaches. Also, I think this would be a great tool for swimmers to use by themselves.
Please let me know what you think!
Thanks
P.S. Any thoughts are welcome. Even if your idea is completely different then what I have written I would love to hear it. My goal is to help coaches perform their job better by starting to incorporate technology into the sport!
Dear Mr. (or Mrs.) swimmingApp,
it's a bit hard to give feedback, given the rather limited description.
Currently I am still in the planning phase, so everything is a bit vague for me as well. That's why I am on this forum in hopes that I can start getting feedback immediately. This should help me narrow down what to work on first. I have added a more intricate description of the app below.
Given that hardly any smartphone is waterproof, I imaging that the app would run outside the pool before or after any workout.
Actually I would want the app to be run during practice. If you read the description below you can see why I think it would be helpful. But, back to having a smartphone near water. There are some phone cases that are water proof. I've used the Lifeproof iphone case before and it works wonders. In your opinion is this a huge concern? What is your main concern if so? (Extra cost? Worried about electronics near water...etc.)
It would then show pictures, text and maybe movies. That, however, seems to work better on a regular website, several of which exist for learning to improve swimming. Not to mention YouTube with all the free material on swimming (which certainly could be structured better, again something a simple website with links may offer more easily).
So, why an app? And what's the added benefit over existing tutorial websites?
The point of the app would be to add function to those existing tutorial videos. Basically at this point the app would be able to analyze each of your strokes by each of the techniques that it is comprised of. For example, when you swim freestyle you can improve your stroke in a bunch of different ways. Such as, kicking more or taking longer strokes.
The app would play the video that you already have access to on youtube, but then slow the video down to each of the techniques. After taking a baseline time where you swim your stroke how you normally would. You would then go through each technique the stroke is composed of while recording your time on the app. Now you can go back and look at your stroke and see where exactly you are weak. Maybe when you were told to kick more you reduced your time by 5 seconds. Now you know you have to be more conscious about your kicking. Also, having the videos with you at swim practice allows players to be a bit more independent. If you are helping one player with something and another player needs help they can find momentary answers until you have more time to talk to them. Hopefully this app would allow coaches to focus their work on areas that need the most attention.
Which brings us to the second stage. In later stages we would want to connect the app to a coaching app. This would allow the coach to view all of his players skills and skill levels. From their he can design his practice schedule around that. If he notices a lot of his players are weak on their kicking during freestyle he can focus on that area over the next couple of weeks.
Also, another function we were thinking of adding would be the ability to look at your ranking compared to other people using the app.
Best,
SwimmingApp
Dear Mr. (or Mrs.) swimmingApp,
it's a bit hard to give feedback, given the rather limited description.
Currently I am still in the planning phase, so everything is a bit vague for me as well. That's why I am on this forum in hopes that I can start getting feedback immediately. This should help me narrow down what to work on first. I have added a more intricate description of the app below.
Given that hardly any smartphone is waterproof, I imaging that the app would run outside the pool before or after any workout.
Actually I would want the app to be run during practice. If you read the description below you can see why I think it would be helpful. But, back to having a smartphone near water. There are some phone cases that are water proof. I've used the Lifeproof iphone case before and it works wonders. In your opinion is this a huge concern? What is your main concern if so? (Extra cost? Worried about electronics near water...etc.)
It would then show pictures, text and maybe movies. That, however, seems to work better on a regular website, several of which exist for learning to improve swimming. Not to mention YouTube with all the free material on swimming (which certainly could be structured better, again something a simple website with links may offer more easily).
So, why an app? And what's the added benefit over existing tutorial websites?
The point of the app would be to add function to those existing tutorial videos. Basically at this point the app would be able to analyze each of your strokes by each of the techniques that it is comprised of. For example, when you swim freestyle you can improve your stroke in a bunch of different ways. Such as, kicking more or taking longer strokes.
The app would play the video that you already have access to on youtube, but then slow the video down to each of the techniques. After taking a baseline time where you swim your stroke how you normally would. You would then go through each technique the stroke is composed of while recording your time on the app. Now you can go back and look at your stroke and see where exactly you are weak. Maybe when you were told to kick more you reduced your time by 5 seconds. Now you know you have to be more conscious about your kicking. Also, having the videos with you at swim practice allows players to be a bit more independent. If you are helping one player with something and another player needs help they can find momentary answers until you have more time to talk to them. Hopefully this app would allow coaches to focus their work on areas that need the most attention.
Which brings us to the second stage. In later stages we would want to connect the app to a coaching app. This would allow the coach to view all of his players skills and skill levels. From their he can design his practice schedule around that. If he notices a lot of his players are weak on their kicking during freestyle he can focus on that area over the next couple of weeks.
Also, another function we were thinking of adding would be the ability to look at your ranking compared to other people using the app.
Best,
SwimmingApp
