HRM pro pluss Open water swimming strokes

Hi.

Ive started open water swimming.

I have the fr 255 and a Hrm pro +.

I was believing that the Hrm pro+ should track heartrate and swim strokes. And upload it to the watch after the swim.

I swim with the watch and my phone and clothes in a inflatable swim bag.

Im a beginner swimmer and swim cheaststroke. My arm is not out of the water, so I have to have the watch in the bag to track gps.

When I start the activiy I first wait for gps and hrm pro + connection.

Then put the watch in the bag, and go for a swim.

When I am done and stop the activity, I see hrm data downloading.

When everything is done, I have the pulsdata for the entire swim and gps, but no stroak count.

The hrm pro + can track runcadence and time on each foot when running, I it should use the same accelerometer to record strokes.

Anything I am doing wrong?

Any help appreciated.

  • No option to record strokes by HRM which is in your chest.
    Strokes are detected and recorded by the watch.

  • I see. I was under the impression that the acceleromerer in the hrm pro pluss was able to detect strokes.

    A follow up question. The watch has to come completely out of the water to track gps? With my stroke the watch is not out of the water, so I doo have to have it in the swimbag to receive gps 

    Any way of using the phone as gps, and wear the watch?

  • The watch has to come completely out of the water to track gps?

    Yes

    Any way of using the phone as gps, and wear the watch?

    Some lower-end watches and wristbands without GPS indeed use connected GPS of the phone, but that would not work while swimming anyway, since Bluetooth connection between the watch and the phone does not work underwater anyway too. Generally, all radio signals propagate in water extremely poorly, and the higher frequency, the higher attenuation of the signal. GPS, BT, WiFi, etc, they all use very high frequencies, and already a few millimeters of water are sufficient for shutting down the transmission completely.

  • I used to swim breaststroke in open water as well, with one device using the OWS sports profile on top of a swim float to record a track, a second device using the OWS-without-GPS sports profile on my wrist to record stroke rate, and merged the data later in Runalyze.

    It was a bit of a chore to do, but real nice to see stroke rate under different conditions along my swim routes.

    Maybe you can pick up an older Garmin to use as a second device and experiment with it?

  • Ok. Thanks for all the clarification.

    I guess if Garmin enabeled gps from phone with buffering on the phone untill the watch is available via Bluetooth for open water swimming, I would be good to go.

    The Hrm pro pluss is able to upload hr to the watch when it has Bluetooth. It would be easy for the phone to do that for gps.

    It does require swimming with a waterproof swimbag with the phone, so not sure how many people do that.

    Thanks for the tip with two watches.

    I can swim 1500m breaststroke, but 50m of crawl had me stopped in the pool for several minutes trying to catch my breath. Ive heard crawl is more efficient, so obviously doing it wrong...