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My understanding from reading some posts is the heart rate monitor is turned off automatically while in a swim exercise session. I'd like it on. Thanks.
No heart-rate = swimming not counted towards Active Minutes? Swimming does not register any time towards my active minutes – I assume this is because the heart-rate's not monitored.
The system knows exactly how long I've swum for (e.g. 30 minutes non-stop), how far I've swum, my lengths per minute (all recorded pretty accurately – this part is impressive), plus my age and weight (and gender), it doesn't take much maths to work out I must have been "active"!
Thanks to JvdMaarel for this workaround for swimming. I have an Ionic which allows me to choose from many types of exercise. If I understand you right, I can choose "Workout" as my exercise activity which will yield the necessary readings of heart rate and calories expended. I don't mind losing the number of lengths and distance because I'm counting as I swim anyway, changing up my stroke for each 10 or 20 lengths of the pool.
enable heart rate tracking on the charge three in the swim mode to more accurately account for calories burned. currently the calories burned during the swim application is grossly in accurate.
Heart rate while swimming and having it count as active minutes just makes sense!! I swim everyday and would really like to know if I’m hitting my heart rate targets while training
yes that is precisely why I switched to the charge three. The Fitbit people have assured me that they are working on this I am amazed that it was not an original feature. I swim laps four nights a week and with the charge three as it is currently constructed I get no active minute which makes no sense I also do not get an accurate account of the calories burned.
By the way, with the workaround, even distance is logged, instead of what I mentioned before. It is only shown in overview screen though, not in detail screen.
I changed from Polar to Fitbit when Charge 3 came out. I assumed that it would register my swim workout like my Polar did am so disappointed that it does not. Can’t this be changed?
i made the same switch from Polar to charge three with the same assumption. The Fitbit people are supposed to be working on this but I have not heard anything yet.
The HR monitor does work in water already. I know that because auto-swim tracking doesn’t work on my device (Support call loaded) so my device either goes into running or workout mode. When it does that the HR monitor enables itself and tracks your swimming Heart Rate (because it thinks your running or doing a workout). So it’s there. It works. Now there’s all this ‘doesn’t work accurately in water’ talk out there but my experience is that it works +/- 10% accuracy which is way more accurate than the lap tracker which is turned on. In any case, you could create a toggle switch for the HR monitoring in swim mode and declare a “in Beta mode, use at your own risk” statement when the user toggles it on.
I would also like for my swims to register as active minutes for the purposes stated by previous charge 3 users. It can tell I swam for X amount of time and x distance so it should tabulate to "active."
Main goal - swimming tracked as active minutes. Accurate distance and understanding how hard I was swimming so to me this is heart rate. I understand that it is not as accurate as when not under water but when I am in auto-detect mode it is picking up on something and I find this more helpful than swim mode.
Thanks for taking us swimmers suggestions seriously. We know we are more niche than runners maybe but hopefully our voice matters.
I only got this watch because of the swim tracking feature and like many other users I'm disappointed that it doesn't accurately measure my effort in the water. I really hope the issues can be resolved.
I have swum with Charge 3 three times last week. I switched from Charge 2 two weeks ago.
I let the device to auto-detect my session instead of manually start the 'swim' tracking.
Here are my findings:
1) It DOES track the correct distance. However, I must get out of the pool immediately when I am done. If I hang around and float to relax, etc., it counts as a lap every time I switch the direction.
2) When synced later, it shows the HR. I believe they are reasonably accurate as HR goes down when I switch from freestyle to breast stroke, then goes up when I go into butterfly. Or, when I had the entire pool to myself, HR was pretty steady where when I had another swimmer (good one) in the next lane, my HR went up and down more often because I subconsciously compete...? Overall, it seems to follow the swim patterns of each day.
3) The only stat which seems totally messed up is the calories burned. I swam 45 minute non-stop and it showed 115. If I manually log the identical swim session, it usually gives me 280 to 300. However, this doesn't bother me as I am not counting calories. My sole focus is HR during my swim.
Now that I read as "Charge 3 doesn't track HR during 'swimming'", I am intrigued to try manually logging as 'workout' when I begin swimming next time in order to compare the heart rate charts.
Are there any other persons who feel like the auto-swim track is tracking HR reasonably correctly?? Or, am I being fooled feeling like it's tracking reasonably accurately???
My charge 3 does auto recognize swimming with HR! Although sometimes the HR is not reliable due to the water. But that's ok with me I can live with that.
If I enter a swimming exercise it just counts laps and disables HR which is unfortunate. Better would be to keep doing HR and indeed state something like "HR not accurate during swim"
So yes I am in favor for this feature request and it seems quite easy to realize.
Additionally to this step counts during recognized swim activities should be ignored.
I'd also like to see this enabled.I accept that their may be inaccuracies whilst swimming, but I doubt they're as big as the current inaccuracy! For my next swim I will try one of the workarounds given in this thread (by users, not by fitbit themselves, I note!), as I find the HR information far more important than having the app count lengths for, which can quite happily do myself.Perhaps an engineer can explain the likely issues with HR monitoring whilst swimming, including the likely degree of error? Would some degree of smoothing whilst in swim mode help?
I'm new to feature suggestions - how can we tell how likely fitbit are to follow up on this? I upgraded to the charge 3 specifically for this feature, only to find that its worse than useless 😞
I was somewhat disturbed after I tried my usual swim routine, this time with manually logging in as 'workout'. According to Fitbit, the HR monitoring is supposed to be disabled while it's under 'swim' mode (even though it does show the HR chart after auto-swim), so this 'workout' mode should've worked. I have swum several times with auto-log and have seen the HR charts in the report. They did look reasonably accurate as far as the patterns are concerned (I've posted a few days ago).
Now, the HR chart of the exact same swim routine (1800yd) under 'workout' showed about 10-15 bpm higher heart rate throughout. So, which is more accurate? Or, neither of them is reliable??
I am beginning to think that upgrading to Charge 3 was a huge mistake. I was totally happy with Charge 2 other than the inability of tracking my HR during my swim. With this much uncertainty, I can't say that I am pleased at all...
I'm disappointed that the Charge 3 cannot monitor heart rate while it is in swimming mode. That is why I bought the 3. I already had the 2, which I loved. The advert was intentionally misleading. What is the point of the waterproof if you can't use it to track water exercise?
I would like the heart rate monitor turned on while in swim exercise mode at the very least. More so, I would like it to work properly.
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