Swimming with Charge 3

[tutu24]

Due to bad knees, I do most of my exercising/walking/joggin while in the pool.   My one disappointment with the HR that I now wear is that I can't wear it in the pool, and thus don't get credited for activity I do while in the water.   Does the Charge 3 track physical activity such as walking, jogging while in the water.

[NellyG · Accepted solution]

That is a difficult question. Yes you can wear it in the pool without doubt. No problems there. The problem is that when you are in the water walking or jogging ALL wrist worn trackers struggle to pick the steps up. This is because in the water your arm movements change from normal walking or jogging movements and because of the nature of water the footfall vibrations are greatly reduced. So yes you can wear it, and yes it will pick up steps, but probably not all of them and maybe not most of them. It really depends on you actions in the water and what the tracker is able to pick up.

[Rar923]

I was wondering the same thing as the original poster.  Would the Charge 3 be able to pick up any calorie burn for water activities such as water aerobics or even treading water based on heart rate?  Is there any exercise benefit in being able to wear it in the water?  

[KateFitbit]

@Rar923, @tutu24  Charge 3 automatically recognizes and records high-movement activities  like swimming through the SmartTrack feature. You can also set it to track specific exercises like swimming where you can see real-time stats, including heart-rate data, calories burned, and elapsed time, and a post-workout summary on your wrist. For complete workout stats, you can review your exercise history in the Fitbit app.

@NellyG thanks for the great input! 

[Rar923]

I don't swim laps, but I attend water aerobics and tread water for cardio.  Would the Charge 3 work for these water activities.  

[sbradfor]

I've always wanted a fitness tracker that would count my swimming activity.  Will the Fitbit Charge 3 finally do it?  The problem I've run into in the past, is they all want Olympic size swimming pools.  Mine is 32 feet long and was considered to short to track the activity.  

[RouXRi]

You can set the distance of your pool to detect laps and etc.

[SunsetRunner]

Would you  e so kind as to explain how this done please. I have the charge 3

[H2Ox]

What is the best exercise setting to use for deep water aerobics? Swim? 

[Gormeau]

Hi RouXRI
Where can you change your swimming pool size... I Can't find where..
I swin in an Olympic One, in France, 50meters long and Fitbit is set to count based on a "regular" one (25 meters), all my records are wrong and I can't find where is this setting
Merci beaucoup
Thomas

[Gibby36]

How do i see my heart rate when swimming I wore it today but all I saw was lengths and distance and a graph but not mu h info on it? No post workout summary on fitbit... Directed to mobile exercise tile for details 

Thanks 

[Zengirl23]

Hey @Gormeau !

You do like that on your tracker : "activité" -> "natation" -> then you swipe up (balaye vers le haut) and change "longueur de la piscine" 😉

[StephiWeffi]

Go on to you Fitbit and click on exercise. Then swipe across until you get to the swim page. Swipe up from there and you will see ‘Pool length’ tap on that to change the length. 

[Big_Fella]

@tutu24 As a fitness tracker in water the Charge 3 is not fit for purpose. Features like lap tracking and auto-swim tracking dont work for example, and HR monitoring is not enabled in swim mode. There are Fitbit support recognised bugs around the swim tracking piece that I’ve had confirmed in writing. So if working out in the water is your thing, wether that be swimming, walking or otherwise, the Charge 3 is probably not for you.

[Big_Fella]

@RouXRi The lap tracking feature is 30% to 70% inaccurate and I’ve had it confirmed in writing by Fitbit support that it’s a known issue they won’t be fixing in the near term

[Big_Fella]

@Gibby36 Fitbit disable the HR function when you have the device in swim mode. However, if you manually put the device in running or workout mode IT WILL do heart rate monitoring which my rough tests using a radial pulse check indicates it’s +/- 10% accurate. Keep in mind that there are a number of bugs and odd things going on with the swimming aspect of the Charge 3 so if you need a water device that works well (and to specification) in a water environment the Charge 3 is not for you at the moment.

[Gibby36]

Thanks for the info, unfortunately I've already got the charge 3. I've
worked out how to switch timer off and it gives me figures to work with.
The figures aren't as accurate as I'd like but on the 3 occasions used it
seems the inaccuracies are consistent 😉

[ebygomm]

My Charge3 is about 98% accurate for counting lengths, and it appears to track my heart rate too. Where does it say that heart rate is disabled. I never set it to swim mode, always just let it auto detect.

[Gibby36]

Hi there

I did timed sessions but it didn't do my HR but next time I'm going to let
it auto detect.

I'll let you know how it goes
Thanks

[Gibby36]

Hi there, 

When I set timer for swimming it didn't give me my heart rate and said I'd only used 57 calories for the 20mins swim

Thanks