The Best Ways to Track Your Swimming Workouts
Olivier Poirier-Leroy
Author, swimmer. Obsessed with helping swimmers level up in the water (and life).
Looking for ways to accurately track your efforts in the pool? Here are your best options for tracking your workouts.
There are a lot of excellent reasons to hit the pool to swim. Unplugging from your smartphone. Respiratory training. And the limitless ways you can train and the countless sets and workouts you can do to get a great swim.
But with all those laps, turns, and “on the red tops,” another issue presents itself: accurately tracking all of your laps, sets, intervals, and results.
In this guide, we will look at some methods for tracking swim workouts, from high-tech gadgets to more traditional approaches, ensuring that you can a way to track your swimming that matches your goals and needs.
Let’s dive in.
How to Track Swim Workouts
Here’s an overview of the most effective and accurate ways to track your swim workouts:
Next, we will examine each method, highlighting key pros and cons. By the end, you will have a clear idea of the best way to track your swim workouts.
1. Swim watch
Swim-specific watches have become very popular in the water for tracking swim workouts thanks to their exceptional accuracy and detailed workout tracking.
Watches like the Apple Watch, Garmin Swim 2, Garmin Forerunner 935, and Fitbit Versa 2, track a wide array of swim workout metrics, including distance, stroke rate, type of stroke, pace, SWOLF, calories burned, and much more.
Swim watches are also an excellent way for swimmers to quickly view heart rate, making them the perfect tracking tool for those who use heart rate zones during their swims.
When it comes to the best overall swim watch, the Apple Watch continues to be my favorite watch for swimmers.
The native workout tracking app is very robust and will cover the needs of a majority of swimmers. The casing on the watch is hydrodynamic and the device is waterproofed for swimming.
The Swim app on the Apple Watch is exceedingly accurate, noting when you are doing different strokes and even when kicking on a board (few watches and apps do this accurately).
Swimmers seeking detailed tracking or custom training plans can use third-party apps like Swim.com or MySwimPro with the Apple Watch. These swim apps are especially ideal for swimmers who want to take advantage of customized training plans and struggle to come up with workouts on their own.
However, for accurate tracking alone, the built-in Workout App on the Apple Watch is more than sufficient.
2. Smart swim goggles
Smart swim goggles are a type of swimming goggle that features a heads-up display on the inside of the lenses, detailing and tracking your swim workout in real time.
Smart goggles are especially great for swimmers who prefer to swim for a specific amount of time, number of laps, or even calories burned. The amount of trackable data smart swim goggles provide is a bit mind-boggling.
The FORM 2 Swim Goggles, the first and still best smart goggles for tracking swim workouts, track everything you can think of with your swim workouts, including:
And much more.
Additionally, the heads-up display in the FORM 2 Swim goggles can be configured to show the things that matter most to your swim training.
With smart goggles you not only see the swim workout unfold in real-time, but you can review the reams of data and metrics with the companion FORM app once you’ve toweled off.
While not inexpensive, the FORM 2 Swim Goggles are essentially accurate and can also be used to upload your swim workouts or follow made-for-you swim training plans by FORM’s expert coaches, including former Olympic athletes.
3. Print your workout
Tracking your swim training and staying on task doesn’t require a gadget or expensive smart watch.
One tried-and-true method is printing (or writing) your swim workout on a piece of paper and sticking it to a kickboard (or the bulkhead) at the end of your lane.
Having the swim workout, including repetitions, rounds per set, intervals, and respective goals means you can worry less about remembering the whole workout and focus on executing a great swim workout.
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Two ways you can implement this with your swim training:
Slide the workout into a plastic sheet protector. We the back slightly and the moisture will suction to a spare kickboard or even the bulkhead.
Go au naturel with the paper. Print (or write) the swim workout, get it a little bit wet, and slap that bad boy against a kickboard and prop it up at the end of the lane.
Having the swim workout in your face, at the end of the lane, and pre-written, is an excellent way to keep yourself on task and
This method has another benefit beyond being inexpensive: Intentionality.
All too often, swimmers will show up to the pool and swim according to how they feel in the moment.
Writing up the workout beforehand, or the night before when you will really be ambitious with scribing a big workout, helps keep you pushing towards your goals in the water.
4. Finger tracker
Finger lap counters are a low tech wearable that swimmers can use to track swimming workouts. They are compact devices that are worn on the finger and can track a handful of training metrics like laps, splits, and overall time spent in the water.
Finger trackers are great for swimmers looking for a minimalist approach but still want to keep an accurate accounting of things like distance and lap times without larger and more expensive devices.
The SC Sportcount 200 Lap Counter is the best option for this type of swim workout tracking device. Each time you turn or stop at the wall, lightly press the button on the tracker and it logs it for you.
Once clipped to your finger, it can be configured to count up to 200 laps or split times and the battery life will literally last several seasons worth of swimming.
5. Swim logbook
Physical logbooks or training journals remain a favorite for many competitive swimmers.
Lots of swimmers, from novice age groupers to experienced Olympians use traditional swim logbooks to log, measure and track their swim training.
For example, Olympic champion and popular swim YouTuber Cody Miller uses an old-fashioned logbook to track his swim workouts.
“I log all of my workouts. I log the volume, I log the type of workout we did, I log the sets,” said Miller.
Logbooks allow for personalized tracking of sets, times, and notes from your swim workouts. The written experience of putting pen to paper after swimming is also a great way to mentally let go of a disappointing practice or main set.
The best logbook for competitive swimmers is YourSwimBook, a 10-month logbook that helps swimmers focus and track on the things that matter most.
YourSwimBook was made by experienced competitive swimmers (the author) for competitive swimmers to track and excel with their swim workouts.
6. Pace clock
The pace clock is every swimmer’s training partner from their earliest days in age group swimming. Mastering the pace clock is part math and part
Setting intervals and using the pace clock allows swimmers to time repetitions, track rest periods, and monitor splits. Using the pace clock is also an excellent way to stay focused and engaged in your swim workouts. Nothing quite motivates a swimmer like wanting to get more rest at the wall.
A way to track your swim workouts and reduce losing count is to use offset intervals.
For example, if your main set calls for 20x100 best average. You could set an interval of 1:45, which would make it easier to track and count. Every four reps would be a full go around the pace clock. The whole set is five go arounds of the pace clock.
Or let’s say you are doing 30x50s. Set an interval of 1:05. Instead of using the top as your send-off, the send-off progressively moves around the circumference of the pace clock, making it easier to track and not lose count.
The pace clock is one of the best tools swimmers have to track and monitor their swim workouts, and just about every pool has one deck-side.
Wrapping Things Up
Tracking your swim workouts is vital for improving performance in the water, regardless of whether you are aiming to go to the Olympics, want to lose some weight, or crack a new personal best time at the end of the season.
Technology like swim watches, apps and smart goggles can give you the insights to fine-tune your swimming while low-tech, old-school tools like printed workouts and a swimmer’s logbook can help you stay motivated and focused in the water.
By choosing the methods of tracking your swimming that best suits your needs, you gain the valuable intel to get the most out of your time in the water.
Happy swimming!