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Get the Most Out of Your Swimming Session
Swimming is one of the most relaxing and yet effective ways to improve your overall health. From muscle strength to cardiovascular health, swimming can help you reach your goals but how do you track its effectiveness? Check out one of the coolest fitness trackers we’ve run across and how it can keep you on track!
Dear Swimming Enthusiast,
“Swimming is a sanctuary.”
Those were some of the words Olympic gold medalist Anthony Ervin spoke, when he became the oldest Olympic swimming champion at the Rio 2016 Olympics. It’s a great honor to have met Anthony, and spent some time with him. Those words resonate so strongly with me, as I’m sure they also resonate with millions of others, regardless of how accomplished we are.
Along the way, I became a pretty good surfer and even taught the surfing class. I tell you all this so that you can understand how huge a part of my life swimming was, and how that love for swimming expanded into swimming in lakes and oceans, and surfing, snorkeling, and traveling to blue water destinations, which is one of my favorite things to do.
Now, here I am at age 60. I can’t lift weights anymore. I can’t play basketball or skateboard, but five or six times a week, I still find that amazing sanctuary in the pool.
I’m also the vice president of one of the coolest swimming companies around—FINIS. We make training equipment that the world’s greatest swimmers and coaches use every day, at every practice. As I mentioned earlier, I swim five or six days a week, for a grand total of about 12,000 yards a week.
My FINIS staples include our very dynamic Axis dual-function pull buoy, our new Edge training fins, our famous Swimmer’s Snorkel, and our Duo underwater MP3 player, which I rarely swim without. My gear bag is gigantic, as you can imagine, but there always seems to be room for one more cool tool. My recent addition is very cool, and it’s called the Swimsense™ Live.
What is the Swimsense ™ Live?
The Swimsense™ Live is a swim-specific fitness tracker. It’s a simple device that collects your workout data on a wristwatch and allows you to view that data, both as you swim and immediately after your swim, using the FINIS Live Mobile Application and FINIS Connect Web Platform.
Who would enjoy using it?
Well, just about everyone: competitive swimmers and coaches, triathletes, fitness swimmers, and everyone else who is living the swimming “sanctuary” life. Let’s start with competitive swimmers and coaches. Having been a coach, I can attest to the tremendous value that this device will bring.
The reason top coaches are going to like this device is that for the vast majority of coaches out there, if you want workout data, you have to collect it yourself, which usually amounts to the head coach hollering at the assistant coach, “Hey, write these times down!” The head coach then starts frenetically yelling out names and times.
The assistant coach, in a complete state of panic, feverishly tries to write down the names. The final result is some quasi-accurate data, and it is a big hassle.
Most coaches don’t do it nearly as much as they would like to. But here’s the deal: data becomes invaluable when a coach has an athlete in the office, can show this data to the athlete, and can then compare that data with previous data. “Hey, look at what you did at this same time last year, and look how much faster you are this year!” This is when a coach realizes how golden this information is.
Now, with the Swimsense™ Live, coaches can get that data easily, conveniently, at every practice, every day!
So, what kind of data are we talking about?
Well, it’s pretty good stuff: How many laps you swam, how fast you swam them, how many yards or meters you swam, how long you swam, how long you rested, how many calories you burned, how many strokes you took, your stroke rate, your distance per stroke, and so much more! OK, you say, you’re not training for the Olympics, and neither am I—remember, I’m the sanctuary guy.
I swim neither too slow nor too fast, but sometimes, I lose track of my laps, because anyone who swims for fitness likes to know how far they swam. In fact, I was trying out a new pair of hand paddles the other day and was so intent on how they worked that I completely lost track.
I pushed the button, and WOW, I was able to quickly see that I had swum 2,000 yards. As I was walking to my car, I paired my device with my FINIS Live Mobile Application, and I could see that I had burned 420 calories and that during my one-hour swim, I actually rested at 9:36 seconds.
It’s amazing to be able to grab my stats immediately following my swim, rather than heading back to my office and plugging the device into my computer.
Wrap-Up
The Swimsense™ Live is super fun and easy to use for swimmers of all ages and abilities, and it’s the future of swimming in the age of information.
So, if you’re looking to get the most out of your swim, then the Swimsense™ Live is what you need!
- Using Swimming Data To Make The Most of Your Swim - September 13, 2016
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