Swim tracker question for Tethered Swimming

Other than distance and time, I wonder what else you would be able to track. Some folks want to track how many strokes they take to cover a fixed distance, and use this metric, but as you are not really moving this would not be able to be measured in your case.

So, really all you can do is track heart-rate, and that is very difficult/impossible to do reliably in the water, as far as I am aware ...

My suggestion would be to track time and use RPE or Rate of Perceived Effort (Exertion) .
In other words, perhaps swim repetitions in your pool, as you would in a reg pool or lake, but based on time rather than distance. An example might be 10 x 1 min strong with 15 sec recovery, if you are normally capable of swimming at around 2 min per 100 yds etc. This would sorta be equivalent to swimming repeats of 50 metres....

I will let the 'fish' here on BT offer suggestions for swim plans, and opinions on whether your plan to use a tether is suitably efficient.... I will offer you the best of luck in your new pursuit!

You can "track" tempo by swimming with a tempo trainer, but that's only one metric that alone doesn't mean much. if you could somehow attache a pressure gauge between your body & the anchor you're using for the tether (like a fishscale or spring gauge you could inset) that could digitally track pressure change over time you'd have an actual measure of the forward force you're creating with your stroke...that would be slightly interesting.

however neither one of those measures directly or indirectly the drag or quality of your hydrodynamic profile in the water. So while technically you could track some numbers, none of those numbers will tell you much about your effectiveness or improvement.

When you can cover a distance and compare effort or HR with pace, at least you have an indirect measure of force production - drag production...a bigger gap moves you forward faster. Keeping force production the same (effort or RPE can be a proxy), if you swim faster, you've decreased drag in order to do so. You can't measure that when you're tethered.

You could train by RPE or Heart rate and time...but those are fitness metrics, not swim metrics. You can measure endurance as well, but again that's a fitness metric non-specific for your swimming improvement.

I would suggest using the stationary position as an opportunity to film yourself at different tempos, efforts or RPEs, and watch the video to give yourself feedback on technique. Maybe you notice that with a tempo of 45, 50, 55 strokes per minute you have a nice clean entry & extention & good catch, but then the catch deteriorates at 60 SPM or faster. Then you could spend a lot of time working on the 55 to 60 SPM range to improve catch at faster tempos & refilm, etc...




Edited by AdventureBear 2016-07-24 10:13 PM

Thanks for the feedback and thoughts. After much pondering on this subject, I ended up getting a gym membership to a gym were they have a lap pool. I plan to use the swim tether as a 2nd option when they gym is closed only to help build endurance.