New Swim Logging/Tracking at the USMS-Swim.com Site

Former Member
Former Member
Greetings All: I assume everyone got the email from membership about the new USMS-Swim.com partnership for workout tracking. The FLOG here will connect with a new account at Swim.com and provide a lot of new features especially for people who wear fitness trackers. Anyone signed up over there yet? What do you think of the changes?
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  • I received the email but had completely forgotten about it until now. So I just downloaded the swim.com app, and it looks like it synched to my Apple Watch. I see 2 issues: * Kicking: my watch doesn't record it. This typically isn't very much, 3-500 per workout. * Over-estimates of some o/w: when I swim at Barton Springs, my watch can record distances far exceeding what I actually swim. After the swim sometimes I'll look at the map that it produces and it could have me 100+ yards outside of the water, with paces of :40-:50 per 100 yard pace! For o/w, when I do point-to-point swims, it is usually fairly accurate, but not so much for loops/laps. For best results, I've found it easiest to just keep track of the distance I swim myself. I've seen someone at Deep Eddy (an odd distance of 100 feet long) who has some sort of Abacus he keeps on deck while he swims. For Barton Springs, the laps are about 1/4 mile, so 20 of them are 5 miles, pretty easy. In general the Apple Watch will (sometimes greatly) underestimate swims where there is kicking or a significant amount of time underwater, no matter what app is used. I use the MySwimPro app, which is a competitor to Swim.com. I don't care about the tracking at all, but what I find useful is the ability to (a) either use somebody else's workout if I don't feel inspired to create one and (b) the tracking of the workout on the watch. If you follow the workout on the watch, it will credit you the appropriate amount of yardage (while looking at your HR, etc) because it assumes you are doing the workout as written. I haven't used the Swim.com app -- it doesn't seem to want to load on my watch (maybe b/c I am running the iOS beta on my phone) -- but hopefully it has something similar. I haven't tested either the app or watch in an OW swim, but I suspect the problem is the GPS hardware not the app.
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  • I received the email but had completely forgotten about it until now. So I just downloaded the swim.com app, and it looks like it synched to my Apple Watch. I see 2 issues: * Kicking: my watch doesn't record it. This typically isn't very much, 3-500 per workout. * Over-estimates of some o/w: when I swim at Barton Springs, my watch can record distances far exceeding what I actually swim. After the swim sometimes I'll look at the map that it produces and it could have me 100+ yards outside of the water, with paces of :40-:50 per 100 yard pace! For o/w, when I do point-to-point swims, it is usually fairly accurate, but not so much for loops/laps. For best results, I've found it easiest to just keep track of the distance I swim myself. I've seen someone at Deep Eddy (an odd distance of 100 feet long) who has some sort of Abacus he keeps on deck while he swims. For Barton Springs, the laps are about 1/4 mile, so 20 of them are 5 miles, pretty easy. In general the Apple Watch will (sometimes greatly) underestimate swims where there is kicking or a significant amount of time underwater, no matter what app is used. I use the MySwimPro app, which is a competitor to Swim.com. I don't care about the tracking at all, but what I find useful is the ability to (a) either use somebody else's workout if I don't feel inspired to create one and (b) the tracking of the workout on the watch. If you follow the workout on the watch, it will credit you the appropriate amount of yardage (while looking at your HR, etc) because it assumes you are doing the workout as written. I haven't used the Swim.com app -- it doesn't seem to want to load on my watch (maybe b/c I am running the iOS beta on my phone) -- but hopefully it has something similar. I haven't tested either the app or watch in an OW swim, but I suspect the problem is the GPS hardware not the app.
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