Piano Guy

Q: Can Apple Watch Track a Swim in an Endless Pool

I work out in an Endless Pool which is basically a treadmill for swimmers. You stay in one place and swim your heart out while it blows a current against you to keep you in place in the small pool.

 

I see that the watch can track laps, which I think is controlled by setting the distance of your pool so it knows what one length is. I also see that it can track an open swim, and I am assuming that is by GPS.

 

Does anyone know whether it can count strokes? Or does anyone have any insight into whether you think it would work to track the swim in an Endless Pool where you 1) don't stop and turn around every "x" distance and 2) you also don't travel any distance as far as a GPS is concerned?

 

Thanks in advance...

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), macOS Sierra (10.12)

Posted on Sep 27, 2016 5:38 PM

Close

Q: Can Apple Watch Track a Swim in an Endless Pool

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

  • by fwallenberg,Helpful

    fwallenberg fwallenberg Oct 6, 2016 5:13 AM in response to Piano Guy
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Apple Pay
    Oct 6, 2016 5:13 AM in response to Piano Guy

    No.

     

    The Apple Watch uses the GPS to track your progress in Open Water Swimming mode and tracks laps when swimming in Pool Swimming mode. The endless pool doesn't allow either to happen. As for counting strokes I think it does (pretty much know it does), but they don't report that information. Since they don't know how far you swim per stroke they can't use that to calculate your distance. However, I can see a future update where they have an Endless Pool mode where you enter the speed of the pool (assuming you can set that like a treadmill).

  • by lllaass,Helpful

    lllaass lllaass Oct 6, 2016 5:14 AM in response to Piano Guy
    Level 10 (190,362 points)
    Apple Watch
    Oct 6, 2016 5:14 AM in response to Piano Guy

    Per

    http://www.macrumors.com/2016/09/23/apple-watch-swimming/

    the SR2 watch also counts strokes so you will get some activity tracked in an endless pool

     

    How Well Does It Work?

     

    So how well does the swim workout tracking work? The answer is very well if your goal is to simply swim back and forth to rack up yardage. The watch accurately senses individual strokes and both open turns and flip turns at the ends of the pool to calculate the distance you've traveled, elapsed time, and calories burned, and I found the active calories burned metric calculated by the watch to be close to figures estimated by other sources for various types of swimming activity.