Problems with Pool Swim

Pool Swim activity is troublesome.  First it would not collect OHR data.  Fixed that by going into OHR widget settings and turning on "collect HR data during swimming".  However, today at the end of my swim the Pool Swim activity crashed the entire watch.  I hit stop on the activity and before I could "save" it, the watch crashed.  I got lucky.  However, HR data was collected in the swim activity but not on the watch.  My HR has a blank during that time.  Also the Pool Swim activity claims I burned 50 calories even though I had an average HR of 119 BPM for and hour and 17 minutes.  Not logical.  So my pool swim activity did not add to my Intensity Minutes, Heart Rate, nor Calories.  How do I fix this so that I get credit for my swim workouts?

  • It has been this way for well over a year with this watch. The watch reboots every time I swim, loses data, stops part way though activities... all sorts of issues.

  • Exactly. There is even a bug you can easily reproduce: After ending and saving a pool activity, if you choose to have a look at it and press delete, the watch restarts. And this happens every time.

  • My best work around so far is to record my start and stop time, distance for my swim and manually enter the activity in Garmin Connect.  That accounts for my calories.  My Instinct Solar gathers the OHR data.  What I do not get is average HR and anything to do with my sets in terms of speed and exertion.  Best work around so far.  I wonder if the Fenix watches have the same bug.

  • My last 2 pool swims started off fine .. but somewhere around 2/3 of the way through .. my watch stopped tracking the swim. When I finished and got out of the pool the activity had already stopped and it had gone back to the watchface.  The swim was recorded as an activity but it had been cut short.  I can't see how I could have accidentally hit the buttons while swimming. Any idea what triggers this?

  • I have seen this issue too, it usually kicks in at about the 1000m point… my wife gets this behaviour too (on top of the crashing). 

  • Software update 16.50. My instinct solar crashes at swimming when I press the stop button, then it resets and finally loses the data. I don't see any solutions to this bug. Can someone from the users or Garmin give a solution to this problem?

  • Discovered two ways to get workout into Garmin Connect.  First way to is enter a Pool Swim manually.  You need start time, workout duration, pool length, number of lengths swam.  This approach is simple but Connect does not gather heart rate zone specifics and miscalculates calories burned.  Second and better way is to create a user defined activity with no GPS.  Called mine Swim.  Type was "Other".  Just start and stop this activity with your workout.  When it loads into Connect edit the activity.  Change the type to Pool Swim.  Connects claims you will lose some data.  Just hit continue.  Then enter number of lengths and Connect calculates your total distance.  Connect accurately estimates calories burned and time in HR zones.  I still think the HR is low and messy but that is another issue with the Instinct.  You get none of the auto detected stroke counts etc; but that stuff was never accurate for me even when Pool Swim activity worked.  What I do not know is if any of this is fixed in the new Instinct 2 or Fenix 7.  The Garmin swimming chest strap HR monitor is not compatible with either Instinct or Fenix multiport watches.

  • Spent an hour online chat with a Garmin tech yesterday.  All they cared about what the stability of the Pool Swimming activity tracker.  Discovered that if you swim slower than 45 second per length, the watch will likely not count that length.  That is the source of my undercounting.  I am not very fast in the pool.  Also, the calorie estimator is off by 60% between entering a manual activity and allowing the watch to track the activity.  Manual entry is higher.  More than double.  Asked Garmin and they shrugged and replied ... different algorithm.  Evidently calories burned is not based on HR.  Not happy with the math these guys are using.

  • Same problems here. And to complete the "list", after the recent update installed yesterday, today at the swim exercise, every time i used the LAP button to count the REST time the activity stopped unexpectedly so I need to start a new one. To solve the problem: stop to use the LAP button :(