Swimming workout miscounts laps and distance

Update: With more swimming, the lap count seems to get more accurate but still off. I kept reading online that the new watch had been tested by many swimmers, and they say that the lap count has been very accurate. When I look at my daily swim results, something was not adding up. The calorie count seemed good and comparable to the Speedo Fit app (which I used before the new watch). It was the lap count and the total yards for each swim session that was always wrong. So yesterday, I changed the pool length to be equal to a full lap length of a pool swim (the sum of the two lengths) -- finally, the lap count and total yards was correct by the end of my swim session. The lap count was off a little in between my short resting periods, but correct at the end. The total calories was roughly the same as before, which implies that the watch does not rely on either the lap count or yards for that calculation. Hope this helps!

Hi RoseMJ,

In my experience the key to getting the watch to correctly track length, lap and distance regardless of stroke type is to make a firm push off the wall when you turn. It doesn't matter whether you do open turns or flip turns, but it's important to make a distinct push and glide motion at the turn. It's usually a combination of the watch's gyroscope and accelerometer hardware that decides you've made a turn. If your turns don't register a distinct change of direction, the length, lap and distance numbers start to lose accuracy (for me anyway).

On a related note I've found the stroke detection of the swim workout to be pretty good. I swim all four major strokes; free, back, breast and fly. I just wish the app would show me the stroke type for a given length / lap instead of "mixed".

-Paul

Hi

I suggest that you raise this question with Apple Support, taking advantage of your initial 90 days of complimentary telephone-based technical support cover:

• Contact - Official Apple Support
• https://twitter.com/applesupport
• http://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/

My understanding is that if you are doing any other stroke beside freestyle, you will get an inaccurate reading. Just like if you did a kick set, it won't even pick up the yardage as you are not moving your arm.

If you found any additional information when talking to support, please let the community know! I am sure a lot of swimmers (like me) would love to know.

Happy Swimming!

You might be interested in this review and the section where he discusses accuracy, strokes and intervals.

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

I did my first swim workout today and for the first 3-5 laps I found that the watch wasn't counting laps properly. However, after a few laps I noticed that each time I did a turn it started recognizing the turns correctly and I believe I ended-up with the correct number of lap counts at the end of the workout.

Here are some assumptions for the initial miscounting:

1) Since this was the first swim, maybe the watch needs some calibration time to assess my stroke type, stroke length, etc. plus how I turn to determine the proper lap count. Around lap 10 I started looking at the watch at the end of every lap and it was counting laps correctly, ended-up doing about 51 and the total length tracked at the end seems about right for the pool length and my usual average time to cover a lap, so I think while it was showing incorrect laps at the beginning, it seems to have corrected / adjusted some time during the workout.

2) During the first laps I glided a lot as I was doing fairly strong strokes (i.e., covered length of pool with less strokes), so I wonder if the watch has a harder time determining distance covered as I was doing less strokes than what would be expected for the pool length (since the watch doesn't use GPS to determine distance when doing a pool workout).

3) Not sure how Apple counts distance covered or how they determine if a lap has been completed. I would assume some element of acceleration, velocity is determined using the watch's sensors and then they probably make assumptions based on your height, weight, gender to determine how much distance you covered based on those parameters (average displacement for a stroke, length of stroke, number of strokes, etc.). For pool counts they are probably comparing their assumption of distance covered with a detection of change in direction, or the fact that you might have stopped momentarily as you turn to a new lap. So, in other words, there are a lot of assumptions going into those calculations and I wouldn't expect them to be completely accurate, but to stay relatively in the ballpark of the actual number of laps, calories used, etc.

I will have to try again later this week to see how the watch behaves and if it needs that initial calibration for the initial laps.

I am having this same problem too. My watch does not count enough laps I did 10 laps using the kick board no arms and it read 0. Then I did 56 laps free style and it only read 51. When I checked the display during the swim it would be off by one or two. Sometimes it caught up and then the laps would be off again. Very frustratin.

You're welcome! 🙂

Another user has reported experiencing similar issues, but - in the absence of a known solution - the same suggestion applied:

Discrepancies/Inaccurate Swimming Workout Lenght