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Swimming Intensity Minutes Bug?

ic3cold
over 6 years ago
I've recently added the HRM-Swim to my toolkit and have done 2 swims with it linked to my F5+. I'm not sure if this should be brought up here, or as part of Garmin Connect or just emailed to the Beta team directly. I'm noticing some weirdness with respect to how Intensity Minutes are tracked for swimming vs other sports.

Since Friday, I have done 2 swims, 1 run and a short mountain bike ride pulling a wagon with my son. Below are my zone stats. My main question is why are my Swimming Intensity Minutes so much lower than my running/biking for less effort? I'm spending more time in zone 4/5 for the swimming, so I would expect Intensity to be much higher for that.

Anyone have any thoughts or feedback?

Aug 27 - Swimming
Zone 5: 9:52 mins
Zone 4: 16:21 mins
Zone 3: 12:09 mins
Zone 2: 3:30 mins
Zone 1: 0:37 mins
Intensity minutes: 23 mins (19 mins moderate + 2 min vigorous)

Aug 26 - Bike Ride
Zone 5: 0 mins
Zone 4: 10:36 mins
Zone 3: 6:39 mins
Zone 2: 2:44 mins
Zone 1: 1:03 mins
Intensity minutes: ~45 mins (did not capture the full breakdown)

Aug 25 - Run
Zone 5: 0:05 mins
Zone 4: 22:14 mins
Zone 3: 6:08 mins
Zone 2: 0:17 mins
Zone 1: 0:09 mins
Intensity minutes: ~upwards of 75 mins (guestimation looking at the screen and assuming 25mins for the swim)

Aug 25 - Swimming
Zone 5: 8:24 mins
Zone 4: 18:02 mins
Zone 3: 15:06 mins
Zone 2: 1:52 mins
Zone 1: 0:07 mins
Intensity minutes: ~25 mins
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    Thank you.
    Ever since my Fenix 3 ownership time, I have been wondering why Garmin do not allow swimmers to measure their intensity minutes. It appears that all other HR measured activities are taken into account, just not swimming. I have both the Tri and Swim HR belts, but although both measure the HR effects really well, I get no intensity minute credits.

    Appears that someone in Garmin believes that swimming is not a real excercise!
    been like this for years though.
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    Hello everyone,

    if you read this article you will find in the very end the information that swimming activities are not designed to give intensity minute credit.

    So why does it count intensity minutes in your case?

    When you come out of the water your heart rate is still increased as long that is the case for more than 10 minutes it will start to count. That is why you get so different values, on some days your heart rate drops to normal faster than on others.

    Best regards
    Christian
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    Hello everyone,

    if you read this article you will find in the very end the information that swimming activities are not designed to give intensity minute credit.

    So why does it count intensity minutes in your case?

    When you come out of the water your heart rate is still increased as long that is the case for more than 10 minutes it will start to count. That is why you get so different values, on some days your heart rate drops to normal faster than on others.

    Best regards
    Christian


    LOL. Well good to know I am creating intensity minutes while I am in the shower!! Sort of silly swimming doesn't count to wards the IM. Oh well. I fired off a note to the BETA team previously, so I guess they will respond with this. However, I think I will still push them to add to their backlog, as it should really be there especially if HRM data is available.
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    Yes it is rather strange - today for my morning swim I acquired 31 Intensity minutes after a 26 Minute swim
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    JSRUNNER_

    as I described above, it does not count intensity minutes for the activity itself. So it doesn't matter if you swim for 1 minute or 1 hour.

    It gives you intensity minutes for the time once you get out of the water and your heart rate is still increased.

    Best regards
    Christian
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    Scout40000 yes I understand your comment but not convinced that my HR was over the threshold for High Intensity minutes for 16 minutes - especially as Garmin say that these are only measured when HR strap is used and my strap is removed as soon as my HR returns to recovery level - which is a couple of minutes after completing swim
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    How do we request a feature? Swimming is my primary activity, I don't run, and only bike occasionally. I'm an old guy focused on good health, not performance. I bought the fenix 5 specifically because it is one of the few devices on the market that measures HR while swimming. I will routinely spend 30-60 minutes in HR zone 4 and 5 and will also routinely get Aerobic TE above 4.0 yet I get no intensity minutes credited.

    The fact that swimming is my primary activity renders the "Intensity Minutes" feature worthless in my case. There has to be a way to credit IM when HR is used for swimming.
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    olson917 unfortunately all you can do is post on here (there are various features suggested threads) also email Garmin directly

    Also you say you are spending 30-60 minutes in zone 4/5 - how much of thtat is zone 5 as if more than a few percent it sounds like your HR Zones may not be correctly set - have you let the watch reset them - mine has recently done this and is showing 9 minutes of a 40 min easy run in zone 5 and 15 mins in zone 4 which is totally incorrect
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    Hello everyone,

    if you read this article you will find in the very end the information that swimming activities are not designed to give intensity minute credit.

    So why does it count intensity minutes in your case?

    When you come out of the water your heart rate is still increased as long that is the case for more than 10 minutes it will start to count. That is why you get so different values, on some days your heart rate drops to normal faster than on others.

    Best regards
    Christian


    I must say this is not the case at least in my experience, i don't wear a heart rate chest strap and today I had zero active minutes, went into the pool for a continuous 48 minutes (barely stopping), came out and stopped the pool swim activity, I immediately checked and I had 46 active minutes, checked the wrist heart rate and it was still on "Measuring..." as not even a minute had passed since I stopped the activity, so these 46 active minutes weren't the after swimming elevated heart rate, IT WAS THE SWIM.

    More over, active minutes are not always based on hear rate, they are sometimes based on movement alone, one example is walking with a Fenix 3 (which I had), it has no built-in HRM and when I walked in a fast pace it used to give me active minutes. What it will not give you without a HRM is double active minutes (which does happen with high HR readings).

    Anyways, with or without HRM you ARE awarded active minutes during pool swims, given of course you are actually active and not just swimming very slowly and constantly stopping for considerable periods.
  • 0 over 6 years ago
    dansebr in my post above I mention that I have received High-Intensity minutes following a swim - so there I think the full picture of how this works is not really given to us by Garmin. As for movement alone minutes - yes these are given as per the info on Scout40000 s link

    I have also had intensity minutes awarded during days where I have done virtually no activity at all above a slow walk - i.e. spent a lazy day in the house listening to music watching TV etc.