These watches look very interesting! I know for me when I skip my regular pool and go to the health club pool, they don’t have a pace clock so being able to set an interval alarm is very useful. I would love to hear from anyone that has tried out the various models and get some feedback before I dive in. I don’t need heart rate so more looking at and trying to decide between the other models.
Thanks Lisa for such a generous coach discount, I’ll be taking you up on it as soon as I decide on model.
Hi everyone.
If you haven’t seen it already, Dan did a very thorough review of the PoolMate Live a few months back.
http://www.slowtwitch.com/Products/Electronics/Swimovate_Poolmatelive_4264.html
Mike,
I’ve used a basic model swimovate since it came out and have used both the garmin 910 and the garmin fenix2 extensively. I mention the garmin units because they both do swim tracking and have vibration alarms tied into them that can be set to vibrate either in times or minutes, like the advanced swimovate units do.
As far as the swimovate basic unit, for the price you get a solid little number.
what it does well: Finding the distance of straight swims, something that you and your athletes are probably pretty bad at in the water. so you can go for an 800 swim and be pretty well confident that when it says 800 are up, 800 are up.
What it doesn’t do so well: Kicking and drills obviously since it’s arm based, changing strokes and intervals can make it kinda flake out too. It doesn’t necessarily know that you have stopped swimming and are resting for 20 seconds before you take on the next one. on the other hand, people are usually pretty good at that.
I’ve looked at the more advanced swimovate units and as I said used the garmin units extensively. They share the strengths and the weaknesses are somewhat lessened but still there. My experience is that the watches will get ahead of themselves or lose a lap if you are doing say a set of 20 x 100 (:20 rest).
WHAT THEY ADD FOR YOU AS THE COACH
The first thing that the more advanced indoor swim watches add is simply logging. If your athletes are like mine, they don’t necessarily remember exactly what they did while running on Tuesday, but the watch does and it will automatically upload things to trainingpeaks or whatever system you use.
The other thing they add is the realistic possibility of higher intensity long swims. My personal thinking on the issue is that the reason swimming is broken up into so many repeats of 50 to 200 yards long isn’t that they are somehow magical in their metabolic processes but rather that they allow for better pace monitoring and intensity monitoring.
You’ll routinely have an athlete do 6 to 10 minute intervals of cycling or running but rarely in swimming. And whether we’ve realized it or not a big part is that when we do give swimmers that sort of swim, they come up short, their mind starts to wander, they start to think was that 150 or 200? Hmmm If I’m doing 1:20 pace then at the 200 the red hand should have been on the 40 … and in the end I don’t have much confidence that the swimmer did what was intended.
However, with one of these watches with the vibration alarm in them - 6 x 600 descend 1 to 3 and 4 to 6 and GO. The athlete sets the watch to vibrate when 600 is coming up and now they are working on their effort and technique not the clock. So these types of watches actually make an entire type of interval workout practical for your typical triathlete. Not only do they know their distance, the instantly know their pace. Monday night i was at practice, swimmer finishes a 550, I ask her pace and she looks and instantly gives it to me off the watch and I know she is right on critical swim pace, something we just couldn’t do otherwise.
HEART RATE
I haven’t used the swimovate heart rate watch personally, though DCRainmaker has tried it and just couldn’t get it to work. My own experience from back when hr straps all worked underwater was that the strap just won’t stay on when you do a turn tried many times with different watches. Tighten it down as much as you want and it just won’t stay there. Less of a problem for women. I think for swimovate or anyone for that matter to come up with workable heart rate while swimming it would have to combine the oximeter-type heart rate detection such as scosche, tomtom, or others that could be used around the forward or leg or something and combine it with a 5 mhz analog transmitter to get the data to the watch.
Back to Logging
Some athletes will get worked up about losing the drills or kicking or adding a length or two here. In my own use, it doesn’t matter, I know a certain amount of practice will be drilling or kicking and a few laps will be added if they do a set of 100s. But the addition of the longer intervals outweighs the minor loss of fidelity. Also, a fair number of those people, without the watch wouldn’t have recalled their swim distance for any given workout anyway.
That’s my take.
Hi Mike and all,
Thank you very much for your thoughts on these devices. I agree with pretty much everything you said. However, I have a question for you or others. You said, “Not only do they know their distance, the instantly know their pace.”
How do you instantly know your pace? I just received my Poolmate HR last week and have only done 1 swim with it so far. However, after reading the manual and playing around with it, I do not see anyway to have it display your pace. Obviously you can do some math in your head and figure it out, but one thing I have grown accustomed to as a Garmin guy (as with almost all of my clients being Garmin users) is instantly having my Garmin display my pace from my previous set/lap. I do not see this functionality with the poolmate HR.
Again, I have only done one swim with this device, but I was able to get the HR monitor to work fine. I did have the strap on too loose when I first got in the pool so it moved around on me, but after I tightened it up, it was a lot better. It does still seem to move a little bit occasionally, especially during flip turns, but it wasn’t really an issue for me.
As a Garmin user for years, it is definitely taking some getting used to using this unit. I love the idea of being able to track HR in the water and think there will be some real benefit there. However, I think one of the challenges with this product is going to be getting current Garmin users to invest in another watch when they already have the majority of the technology already (assuming they have a 910 or Fenix).
If I am missing something and anyone knows a way to display your pace on the poolmate HR, please let me know what I am missing.
Hi
Thanks for the reviews, you are correct you cannot display pace on the PoolMateHR at the moment but we didn’t realise people would find this useful. We haven’t been asked for it before. That’s the great thing about this forum, we get to find out what people really want.
I’ll add this to the enhancement list, discuss with our developers and hopefully we can fit it into future firmware upgrades.
If you find it difficult to keep the PoolMateHR chest belt secure then try a small piece of toupee tape on the plastic part of the transmitter, this should keep it from moving. As you say it’s not a problem for women as their swimming costume helps keep it in place. Men can wear a trisuit to get the same effect too.
Thanks
Lisa
If you find it difficult to keep the PoolMateHR chest belt secure then try a small piece of toupee tape on the plastic part of the transmitter, this should keep it from moving.
I’m already going through toupee tape very quickly as it is just to keep my looks!
Another question, are your straps lycra free? The ladies in my squad who have used hr straps in the past have given up on it because the lycra in them wears out - much like a lycra suit wears out. Your website currently lists replacement chest straps at 30 pounds, a steep price if they are mad eout of lycra and wear out as fast as a lycra suit.
Hi Kevin
The PoolMateHR strap is made from conductive rubber and the elastic strap is nylon and Polyester. We can replace the elastic part separately if it’s only this that is required.
I’m sure you have a wonderful head of hair, we do anti chlorine shampoo too by the way 
Have a good weekend
Lisa
If you find it difficult to keep the PoolMateHR chest belt secure then try a small piece of toupee tape on the plastic part of the transmitter,
I don’t own a poolmate strap, but tried toupee tape with both a polar t61 strap and suunto memory belt and neither worked even a little bit.
I find it hard to believe that it would work with a different chest strap.
That is a shame, we have tried this ourselves and others have had good results. The other thing to try is to wear underneath a trisuit of swim vest, this will keep the belt secure.
Thanks
Lisa