From the Endless Pool review on slowtwitch…
I increased my swims to an hour, and still no boredom. In an hour of straight swimming I cover around 5000 yards. I almost never swim that far in my masters workouts.
How can you possibly know how far you’ve gone in this pool?? Perhaps you can base it on your time but one would be clueless on how far they have actually travelled. Or is there a swimmometer? 
I’m not sure but wouldn’t the the flow of water in the “pool” be measurable?
The question that begs asking is what if you can’t keep up? Do you get pinned to the back wall? Seems like something that John Candy would get himself involved in. LOL. I can just see it.
The other interesting thing I noted from that article is he stated that his kick became stronger and his pull became weaker…hmmmm, just what you want to have happen for triathlon swimming:)
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“his kick became stronger and his pull became weaker”
as i recall he also wrote that this problem was neutralized via engaging in a weight routine.
he’s my next door neighbor, and so i’ve seen his progress since coming back from heart problems and the insertion of a pacemaker. he’s now probably the fastest swimmer in our age group nationwide, and he does most of his swimming in MY endless pool. meanwhile i spend most of my time building the deck around it, and the rock-walled pump house, and so forth. oh well…
notwithstanding monty’s success in using the pool, i agree with you. i just don’t think the endless pool is going to make you as fast as swimming in a standard pool. however, if you supplemented endless pool swimming with a once a week masters regime, maybe twice a week, then you’d have it all.
yes, there is a flow meter. however, what monty was saying is, at his particular effort level, a straight swim for one hour is going to net him 5000 yards plus or minus. remember, he was a front pack swimmer in kona for years, and is probably a 52-minute kona swimmer now. swimming at that pace gives him just under 4900 for 60 minutes. maybe he does’t quite swim 5000 yards in that span of time. however, our endless pool motor kicks off after a 32-minute cycle. monty generally swims two cycles. that would give him 5200 yards at race pace, making 5000 yards, or close to it, seem not unreasonable.
He did say that the problem was neutralized with strength training and that makes sense. I agree that if you had one and were able to swim at least a couple times a week in a regular pool you would have it all.
I must also admit that if I lived where you do with that view and a deck around my endless pool I would probably use it a lot too…that, or I would sit in a deck chair sipping an adult beverage while enjoying the scenery and watching you swim in it:) That is a primo view I must admit!
" I would sit in a deck chair sipping an adult beverage while enjoying the scenery"
unfortunately i am given to doing this more than i ought and using the pool for it’s intended purpose less than i ought. however, now that i’ve got a lot of the deck done i hope to reverse that.
Interesting article about your long-term review of the pool. When you began mixing it up and doing intervals in the pool, how did/do you change the speed of the water? How easy is that to do many times in mid-swim?
Any thoughts for the company to build the pool with an option for a lanyard that connects the swimmer to a speed control? That way, one would control the water speed by adjusting your one’s swim speed.
For example, the swimmer speeds up and begins inching forward which pulls on the lanyard which speeds the pool flow up until the swimmer inches back to the orignial swimming position and can continue swimming there at the higher speed until he slows down. And when he does slow down, the reverse would happen.
The “inside ride” bike treadmill at Interbike last year was controlled this way–a very clever way to do it.
What would be even better is to create a simple programming language so that the swimmer could type in a workout and the pool would adjust the speed based on a timer. Computrainer does this with their .erg files for their coaching software and it works great. This would be a big enhancement in my purchase decision and wouldn’t cost Endless Pools much money to implement.
Also, when you say that “the endless pool is not going to make you as fast as swimming in a standard pool,” why is that?
“why is that?”
mainly it has to do with the level of competition during workouts. there’s no beating swimming with a masters team. but, as i said, no need to do that more than once or twice a week, swimming easy (lap swim, open water, endless pool) the other days.
know that the pool can come with 4 jets like a spa but what is the maximum water tempature you can get out of it. can’t remember if you have the gas, propane or electric heater.
As Dan said earlier the pool cycles off every 32 to 33 minutes. I usually swim 2 full cycles close to full pace. I figured that full speed is about a 53 minute Ironman effort, and from that I get about 5000 yards or so in the 2 cycles. The other way to figure out some distances is to count your strokes. Most swimmers know how many strokes it takes them to get across a 50 meter pool, and after that it is just math. More to my point about this pool though, is that you don’t need to think about any of these things or do any math. Just get in it, turn it up to Ironman pace, and swim with a clear mind. Save all that other clutter for the masters swims where you have to be on top of your game and competitive. Remember, this is usually a supplement to the masters workout, so find a way to enjoy it, and don’t make it into something it doesn’t need to be.
“what is the maximum water tempature”
i don’t know. we’ve gotten it up to 80 degrees without an difficulty, even tho it’s an outside pool in a cold climate.
i have an electric heater, but i might change it out for a gas, or i might try to have them both inline. my electric bill ramps up per kilowatt hour after you hit a certain usage level, and then the electricity, which might start out even with or even a bit cheaper than gas, becomes eventually more expensive than gas in a high usage month. so i thought i’d stick a gas heater in there and feed it propane.
When you began mixing it up and doing intervals in the pool, how did/do you change the speed of the water? How easy is that to do many times in mid-swim? Any thoughts for the company to build the pool with an option for a lanyard that connects the swimmer to a speed control? That way, one would control the water speed by adjusting your one’s swim speed?
“Remember, this is usually a supplement to the masters workout, so find a way to enjoy it, and don’t make it into something it doesn’t need to be.”
That makes sense to me because it would seem (IMO) that training in this pool is like training on a treadmill. What I mean is that you are keeping up with it rather than pulling or pushing yourself along and over time this would make you less effective in open water similiar to how you get when strictly running on a treadmill for a long period of time. You stated that you were able to offset with strength training, however I wouldn’t think there is a substitute for the real thing.
However, for a tool to use at your house I would definitely like one:)