Recording Sessions: Swimming
Recording swim sessions requires choosing pool or open water and the pool length beforehand; in the pool, sets are captured manually with the lap button.
Definition
“Recording sessions: swimming” refers to capturing a swim workout with a sports watch, where distance is derived either from GPS (open water) or from wrist motion patterns combined with the configured pool length (pool). Discipline and conditions have to be defined before the start; in the pool, the workout is then structured mainly by pressing the lap button. With some routine, recording is straightforward, though it often feels confusing at first.
Why it matters
No watch on the market, however smart, can objectively record a swim workout when only the start and stop buttons are used. Every wrist movement, including waiting at the wall or pushing off, is then registered as a stroke. The result is sometimes utterly strange distances and speeds that make analysis impossible.
| Environment | Distance measurement | Auto lap default | Key setting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open water | GPS | Usually 500 m | Treat GPS distance critically, it can deviate a lot |
| Pool | Wrist motion × pool length | None, manual via lap button | Set pool length correctly beforehand |
| Pool, kick sets | Time only, distance manual | Manual | Choose a mode without stroke detection |
In open water, GPS handles distance. That can be very inaccurate at times and should never be taken at face value, because the signal drops every time the arm submerges. In the pool, the pool length is the basis of every distance: if it is set wrongly, every value in the session is systematically wrong.
How obseed measures it
obseed imports the swim recording with its captured sets, lengths and strokes and presents them as segments. Pace per 100 m follows from distance and time, stroke rate and stroke length from the detected strokes. The reference value for intensities is the Critical Swim Speed.
Whatever the watch got wrong can be corrected in obseed: missing or surplus lengths and misassigned strokes can be adjusted manually so that the session metrics are right. obseed regards swim data as the most error-prone type of recording, which is why a note describing the workout often brings more clarity than the raw data set.
For a clean pool recording, every set is started and ended with the lap button. With automatic stroke detection on, it helps to push off, turn and touch the wall decisively so the watch identifies lengths and turns unambiguously. In kick sets with a board, the arms barely move; here the watch is switched beforehand to a mode that records time only, and the distance is entered manually after the set.
Example
A swimmer does a main set of 8 × 100 m freestyle on 1:40 in a 25 m pool, followed by 400 m kick with a board.
Without the lap button, the watch logs the whole workout as one block of 1,375 m in 38 min, including the rests at the wall and several “phantom lengths” from arm movements while waiting. The kick set shows up as 150 m because hardly any strokes were detected. The average pace of 2:46 min/100 m is useless for analysis.
With a lap press before and after each 100, obseed receives eight segments at 1:28, 1:29, 1:29, 1:30, 1:30, 1:31, 1:32 and 1:33 min. For the kick set she switches to time mode, presses lap after 400 m and enters the distance manually. The session now correctly totals 1,200 m plus warm-up and cool-down, and the 100s show a clean, slightly rising trend close to CSS.
Categories
- Trainingsaufzeichnung