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Why doesn’t the connect app count swimming as active minutes?

Former Member
Former Member over 4 years ago

I do a lot of swimming but the sessions are never counted as active minutes. I did 30mins this morning, active minutes for the week - 29mins which relate the cycle route I took to the pool! A classic example was 2 hrs 50 mins to swim 10km. All tracked beautifully by the GPS, I even got a calorie count. Active minutes recorded - 0!!!!! It seems very strange to me that the app can record time, distance and calories but cannot convert that into active minutes! What are you doing to sort this out?

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    It's not the app that counts intensity minutes, it's your watch. Your watch probably didn't get any heart rate data during the swim, hence no intensity minutes.

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to tmk2

    Hi, OK that makes sense but it doesn't detract from the fact that it is highly frustrating that the watch logs the activity including duration, location, distance, estimated calories burnt but cannot log the minutes associated with the activity as intensity minutes. This is a big miss. I would suggest that an improvement would be modifying the algorithm to pick up logged activities that do not have heart rate information associated with them. e.g. swimming :-)

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

    When you don't log a heart rate the device can't determine the intensity of your activity and therefore you will not get intensity minutes. It is like that for all activities. There are also devices that doesn't support intensity minutes even if it logs heart rate like Forerunner 920XT. I bought an extra watch (vivosmart 3) just to get intensity minutes.

    Why not just log the heart rate during the swim? Then you should get intensity minutes.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to e7andy
    e7andy said:
    Why not just log the heart rate during the swim?

    Only some most recent devices can measure heart rate during a swim activity.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to tmk2

    Well, if you really want to see intensity minutes from swimming, you can still use a HRM belt, at most Garmin devices not having an internal HRM for swiming.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to trux
    trux said:
    if you really want to see intensity minutes from swimming, you can still use a HRM belt, 

    No, you can't. External heart rate straps cannot be connected to a watch in water, and heart rate data downloaded from the strap post-activity does not count towards intensity minutes.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to tmk2

    Yes, you are right. I thought that at least the HRM-Swim and HRM-Tri were capable of recording Intensity Minutes, but it looks it is indeed not the case. As stated in the Support document How Does the Intensity Minutes Feature Work on My Garmin Watch?, you need one of the following devices: 

    • fenix 6 series
    • Forerunner 945
    • Garmin Swim 2
    • MARQ series
    • quatix 6
    • tactix Delta
    • and newly also: Instinct Solar
  • 0 over 3 years ago

    I get the same issue when using hiking even with a chest strap connected so it’s not the lack of HR data they causes it.