Swimming has long been low tech, the least connected of modern sports. Being fully immersed in water creates significant challenges for collecting even the most basic metric (heart rate) and prevents easy reading of data during a workout. Though products made by major manufacturers such as FitBit, Garmin, and Polar incorporate water resistance, most cannot record heart rate during swimming. And while standalone fitness apps such as Strava and TrainingPeaks include swimming options alongside the other sports such as cycling and running, competitive swimmers rarely use wearable devices.
But that could be changing. Two weeks ago, SportTechie spoke to Dan Eisenhardt, whose company, FORM, is building augmented reality swimming goggles. Yesterday, we caught up with Russell Mark, USA Swimming’s high performance manager, to talk about the future of the sport and the analytics startup, Aspiricx, that he advises.
Now we introduce you to another swim-tech entrepreneur, Hind Hobeika, whose company, Instabeat, has created a small device that clips onto the side of swimming goggles. An optical sensor reads a swimmer’s heart rate from blood flow in the right temple, and displays it via colored lights in the swimmer’s peripheral vision. Green means the heart rate is in the correct training zone, blue means it has dropped too low, and red means it has risen too high.