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swimming lengths

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i'm doing 800 m at a pool with 25 m lengths i've done the same distance for a few weeks the last 3 sessions the watch tells me i've gone 600m and 525 m and 625m. im an old guy but I can count and I know these are 25 m lengths. it is kind of useless to me if it wont count accurately and that makes me wonder if anything is reliably measured. Is there any way to increase accuracy?

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@PPET pity Sense 2 doesn't show lap count during swimming so you could try to find out which lengths have not been counted and that may have given you idea why was that.

I use Sense and it's last watch that shows lengths on screen. I can pinpoint a few reasons of undercounting laps:

- not strong push-off. New length starts when there is a sudden change in direction detected. Smooth and slow turn around may result continuing the same length by not detecting length.

- (this happened a few times although it's rare) new length from rest doesn't register and watch starts counting when turning around after first 25m.

- swimming with hand paddles or pull buoy may result with slower, less controlled turn and confuse the watch. That was happening a lot to me when using hand paddles, without doing flip turn it was too hard to turn around and easy to confuse the watch.

- drills when not using hands or using hands strange way (not only swimming with kickboard but some drills like side-kick drill which use arms less usual way).

From numbers I see you pool length is set correctly. All I can say is that Fitbit isn't really great as a swim tracker. Swim tracking is there but it's kind of rushed implementation without giving a thought what swimmers actually need. Not much can be done about it.

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thank you that all makes a little sense I didn't realize it was simply
counting lengths by change of direction. I have just restarted my swimming,
didn't go during the pandemic so im slow and havent been doing quick turns
but I will try it with this in mind, again thank you for your help
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Thank you this explanation helps, I have just restarted my length swimming as I didn't go during the pandemic, so I'm slow and haven't worked up to flip turns yet but now I can work on that. thanks again.

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@PPET I rarely do proper flipturn (despite best efforts water still finds its way into my sinuses and I'm overly sensitive to pool chemicals) but at least a strong push-off should be enough. Mind that Fitbits are not athlete watches and I doubt they require a perfect technique to achieve accuracy. Most people don't do flip turns but push-off won't do harm 🙂

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