The optical sensors don’t work reliably in pool. I had the Garmin HRM swim but always found it a bit uncomfortable and never really found a use for the data.

You are probably thinking of wrist optical. The Rhythm24 works great in water. (Just not at all in a pool yet, only OWS.)

i saw this yesterday

https://www.triathlete.com/...onitor-review_373080

have never tried it

This does not really solve your garmin load issue, but I use polar OH1 which is awesome. Amazing how small it is and so much more convenient than chest strap
It comes with a plastic thingy to hold it on swim goggle strap and can record heart rate during your session.
After you are done you sync it to polar's platform (flow), download the file, upload it into trainingpeaks and merge with the garmin activity file
A bit tedious process, but there's no way to get it direct from the 935 wrist monitor.

That’s good to hear. I just got an oh1 yesterday for exactly the same reason as the OP.
I tried to use my Suunto belt in the pool and it rolls down each time I push off the wall.
Using my watch I think it under estimated the effort I put in. My heart is pounding but my sporttracks shows a low effort because I am slow!

I also want to swim without the watch, as I can feel a difference without it (ambit3 so quite big).

What about the Polar H10 does it stay on during a swim?

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I still lapped everyone on the couch!

I've been using Garmin's HRMSwim for the last 6 months or so with my 935 and have no complaints

Chlorine resistant and doesn't slip when pushing off the wall. Also helps prevents me from having to use the HRMTri strap which won't hold up as long in the pool

Quite pricey though

OHRs work fine in water, but all the wrist movement in swimming tends to yield low quality readings and BTLE transmission range in water is ~2". Any of the optical sensors that store data will work. Most have arm straps, but they can read from lots of body locations (I have mine under my bike shorts or jammers, sitting on my quads).

I had a MIO Link that I placed on the underside of my watch band. It was close enough for the watch to get a read, and (at least in my case) the values were quite accurate.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

If you want accuracy in the water, I suggest a timex ironman watch(25 bucks) index finger, and the ability to count for 10 seconds and multiply by 6.. Works every time, and is quite accurate..

NO MORE gadgets in the pools please!!! (-;

HRM while swimming is a pain, plus you’ll look like a huge tri-dork. Just give yourself 1TSS/min for a regular workout, a bit less if you are being lazy and call it a day.

The updated Polar OH1+ comes with clips to mount the sensor on the goggle strap and take the reading from the temple.

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Trust me I’m a doctor!
Well, I have a PhD :-)

As an update- I have had a few swims with the oh1 now, and it works really well. It just sits there and afterwards gives a good measure of the effort I put in to my swimming. I had found that just using my watch didn’t show as much effort, even though I was trying hard, as I am not very fast!

I struggled with leaky goggles to begin with, as with the oh1 too near the front it pushed the goggles off my eye. Once I got a good position further back it has been fine.

I am now choosing it in preference to a chest strap for running too, as it gets the correct hr straight away, with no need to build up a sweat.

If you wet the strap in (warm) water before starting, HR is correct right from the start with a chest strap.

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Trust me I’m a doctor!
Well, I have a PhD :-)

I actually used the Garmin HRM swim in the pool this morning for the first time. Not the most comfortable, but it appeared to work. From garmin Connect.

Yeah, even with that, or electrode gel, it doesn’t always work for the first few minutes. I don’t think I’m very conductive😀

What is the value of the HR data when swimming? That's what I just don't understand.

No idea. Got the strap in the bundle with the 945. Figured I would use it. Had no idea what my HR was during a swim. Now I know. I do not see using it in every swim, maybe just a couple of times here of there to see.

I think in swimming, the HR data might be of more use after the workout. I do manually take mine during, but only to see how hard my body is actually going. Suppose a real time in the water one could do the same. Usually it is when I coming off an illness, and dont want to be going too hard, even though my body feels tapered after having time off. The clock lies to you in those instances, so best to see what the pump is doing..

The fundamental problem with HR during swimming is you can only use it after the swim because ANT+ doesn’t transmit through water, so it’s store and forward. So even in your example of making sure you don’t over do it when coming back from sickness, the HR strap doesn’t really help because you won’t know u til AFTER you’ve already over or under done it.

I guess maybe you could look to see if HR is higher/lower at any given pace over time, but I never managed to find a use for it that was guiding my training decisions. It doesn’t help that the Training Peaks swim workout analysis interface is crap.

But I’d love for someone to explain how this data is useful. I think tracking training load in my Garmin would be nice and it does kind of annoy me that on swim days my forerunner thinks I’ve done nothing. But I’m not going to wear that dorky uncomfortable strap for no reason.

I think you are missing part of the point. While largely HR in swimming would be used for post workout analysis; some instances above list methods to display real time HR in the pool. While ANT+ does not transmit far in water; it will transmit a few inches and more and more watches now have optical HR built in.
Having been a swimmer for just over 50 years now - I've never really had any HR data at all. Sure, we've put our fingers up to our throat and tried to count beats over 6 or 10 seconds on the pace clock while heaving from a hard set or interval; while recovery is already happening. But to see an actual HR instantaneously at the end of the set or interval is a great improvement.
To see how HR changes throughout a set or interval can give great insight into what is actually happening in the pool.
I'm just beginning to use some of this to design sets and workouts.

I'll tell you someone who would have loved to have a HR monitor in the pool, Pauli Kirru. His whole career was based on HR training, and I swam with him and couldnt believe how he trained. He would swim a 200 very hard, hang on the wall with a finger to his pulse, and when it returned to a certain number he would push off and do another one, over and over. that was how he worked out, 4k of 200's, all send offs based on recovering HR. I could not think of a more boring way to swim, maybe with a rubber band strapped to my feet in a backyard pool...

Monty - that's a good example of what I'm trying to do. Start intervals once the HR is back in the decided zone (whatever that is)
As a distance swimmer, 20 x 200 is not all that bad. I'd likely do it as 5 sets of descending 1-4.

HR in the pool gives one an option to do things like this.

I wear a Scosche Rhythm 24 arm band paired to a Suunto Ambit 3 watch. It picks up HR whenever my arm is out of the water. I have instant readings at the end of a set, and it does a good enough job capturing the whole workout to analyze after.

For me it’s about taking advantage of the built in recovery metrics and overall work load. Without HR on my 935 (unless I’m doing something wrong), there’s no training adviser for swimming. It’s a first world problem as for many years I just had to “listen to my body” but I’d like the graph to look at.

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I still lapped everyone on the couch!