Pool swim with Garmin Vivoactive 4
So I have been playing around with the various sports that my new Garmin Vivoactive 4 can record and have been really impressed so far. The only thing that irritates me thus far is that the GPS can sometimes be fussy and not want to connect because I live in an urban area where you don't have direct access to the sky regularly because of tall buildings.
Fortunately, once it gets the satellite GPS linkup or whatever it is called, it seems to hang on to it even if you go back under tall buildings or even bridges. If that wasn't the case and you needed to be in direct view of the sky at all times this watch would be unusable in the city. Fortunately it is just the initial contact that seems to need to have an unobstructed view of the sky.
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Something I don't do very often but in the middle of summer will do if I cant' must up the gumption to challenge the summer heat by any other means is I will go swimming and I had my doubts that this watch would be able to measure this properly but they must have done their magic again but I'll de damned if it didn't get it basically exactly right.
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I wasn't really trying to beat any speed records here because I just wanted to see how and IF it would work. To me it seems like this would be extremely hard to get done accurately because not only am I moving back and forth in a relatively small area as this pool was only a 15 meter pool, but my arm that the Garmin is attached to is moving back and forth constantly as well.
So while I don't have any idea how or why it works, I do find it particularly amazing that apparently, it DOES work. I was counting the laps in my head as I was doing them as well just to keep the watch honest only to discover at the various times I stopped for a breather, that the watch knew exactly how many laps I had done.
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The stats that it provides are pretty fantastic because swimming is one of those activities that I can never really tell if I am working very hard or not since the water keeps me cool and I can't hear or really feel my heart rate until I stop moving. Thank you Garmin!
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The only thing I would say that disappointed me about the whole thing is to find out that out of all the physical activities that I do, swimming seems to burn the least amount of calories. This could also be the result of me only doing half an hour worth of actual work but for me, I find lifting weights to be far more rewarding and enjoyable so if I have a spare hour or half hour I will just go do that instead. I think I also get out of the pool a lot faster than I actually need to out of fear of sunburn as well as my eyes and skin starting to hurt from all the chemicals that they have to put in there.
I went in the dead of afternoon when all the kids are at school so I would have the place to myself. If I had turned up and there was a bunch of people in there mucking about I would have just left without doing any laps at all because this was a general pool, not a designated lap-swimming school.
So this pointed out two things to me: One, I am extremely impressed that the watch is able to get a real figure on how far you have swam despite the fact that your arms and legs are flailing about when you are doing the exercise and two, I am kind of disappointed about how few calories swimming actually burns. I think I would rather do any of the other exercises that I do such as just go walking, rather than get all covered in chlorine just to burn a single beer's worth of calories.
In the end, I am still very happy with the watch and am very happy I purchased it. I still highly recommend it because it has been a motivating factor in my fitness life.
Sounds like a great result. Did you have to input the length of the pool. I need to change mine at different size pools
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It was recommended that I do so yes. This might be a big part of the reason why the accuracy was good because it knows when you change direction. One of these times I am going to switch back halfway in the pool if it isn't busy and see if the watch knows the difference.
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Does the watch also measure calories burned while doing other reforms of exercise or is it just for swimming.
I sometimes wonder how these gadgets are able to calculate things like, number of strokes or steps done.
Oh and I didn't realise that you could get sun burned while swimming. I thought the water shields the skin in a way
it calculates calories burned for all types of exercise and it is based on your height, weight, and age according to the manual and website. I don't know how accurate this information is but becuase it is a HUGE company I would imagine they do their best to be as accurate as possible.
You can get sunburned in a pool, because unless you don't need to breathe you have to put your head out of the water quite regularly :P I mostly do breast-stroke so my head is out of the water the entire time. That being said I don't actually know if water can prevent sun rays from burning you and now I have to look that up! Thanks!
My watch doesn't support swimming directly, but there was an app for it. I'm not sure how effective that was in our tiny pool. There are a lot of apps out there, but you need to work out which ones are worth having. I did get one that displays my parkrun barcode.
GPS technology has improved a lot. I had a 'PDA' with it years ago that was not great at getting a fix and my early phones struggled too, but current ones are good. It is amazing to have that technology with us all the time. I don't worry too much that anyone is tracking me.
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oh i thought that when you mentioned before that yours was just for running and cycling that this was perhaps because it wasn't waterproof. I have played around with the apps but I'm not really keen on bloating up the very limited memory that exists in the watch. Perhaps I will play with that later.
Mine seems to be waterproof as it survived the pool. I'm not sure how many apps it can store, but I'll look out for any that are useful. I have played around with different watch faces, but settled on a basic analogue one.
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II would never have expected this type of result and it is amazing that you were prepared to bin this after day 1. Surely this is a must have for anyone serious about exercising.
yeah, i look back on day 1 (and 2) and kind of have to laugh at myself a bit. I love this watch now.