Swimming problems (S9PP)

[Александр Даниленко]

In this post I would like to state several problems I found, using S9PP for swimming:

1) If I press lap button, but don’t swim, it always shows me zero lap time:
https://youtube.com/shorts/5i4HtbmXeTE?si=6jEiXovxk6pSy9Pf
As you can see from the video, when I switched to other sport (in this case circuit training), it always counts it as it should. Moreover, even in “Openwater swim” it works correctly.
You may ask why it is matter and why I need this. The watch doesn’t have “drill mode”. So, I would like at least to have possibility to control my intervals time while doing swimming drills.

2) In the app there is a tab “manual”. It shows some distance, which is not related to the real swam distance at all.
Manual vs Intervals
On this screenshot you can see ‘‘manual’’ vs ‘‘interval’’ tabs for the same training session. And I really don’t understand what distance is shown in the tab ‘‘manual’’.

As I noticed, this thing with the distance happens, if I use “structured workout”.

So, actually problem 1 and 2 have the same origin. Lap button does’t work properly, but with “structured workout” it kind of tries, but does it in a weird way.

3) Style detection is wrong in most of the cases.

For example: Breaststroke style detection

In this part of the training session swam:
300m breastroke hands with paddles
300m breastroke hands
10*100m breastroke

For both 300m watches detected the style correctly, as you can see on screenshot.
However, despite 10*100m breastroke, watch detected all of them as freestyle.

Another example:
Backstroke style detection
In this case I swam 1000m backstroke non-stop, but in most laps watch shows me everything, but not backstroke.

4) Absence of drill mode.
For some reason the watch doesn’t have drill mode, so if I swim drills or with kick board, I have to use "Aerobics’’ to have recorded at least time and HR for that part of training session.

Briefly everything what I was talking about is shown in the video: https://youtu.be/omDtSU5Cjwk

As I see from google, old suunto ambit had drill mode and also you could teach it to detect swimming styles:
https://www.suunto.com/en-gb/Support/Product-support/suunto_ambit2_s/suunto_ambit2_s/swimming/swimming-drills/
https://www.suunto.com/ru-ru/Support/Product-support/suunto_ambit2/suunto_ambit2/swimming/teaching-swimming-styles-to-suunto-ambit2/

Sad there are no such options in newer models.

5) The problem I mentioned here:
https://forum.suunto.com/post/157370

6) Another problem from here:
https://forum.suunto.com/post/155207

P.S. I think worth mentioning just in case, especially in relation to the style detection - I think my swimming technique is good and stable enough to be detected correctly:
https://youtu.be/Xa8NyG3dsws?si=oZy5OX2oyNG1o8Ih

[Александр Даниленко]

One more bug about swimming - watch doesn’t save some of intervals or showing it wrongly sometimes.

Examples:

1) Swimming session #1

In this part of swimming session I swam: 1000m freestyle hands, 1000m freestyle and 200m relaxed. The watch counted it all correctly, except last 200m, but this is not what I want to show here. For some reason the info for all these intervals wasn’t recorded. You can only see 325m recorded in intervals, despite the whole distance counted by watch is 2250m.

I see this kind of problems pretty often. I thought that it happens because I use multi-sport mode for swimming (it is shown in the video further), since I want to record drills (watch can’t count them properly).
The interesting thing is that during the training session intevals were displayed correctly, but wasn’t saved.

2) Swimming session #2

Here I tried to record the whole swimming session as “swimming” only, but again something weird happened with intervals info. You can see in the beginning it is recorded as 465m, despite is was (400m medley swimming + 600m freestyle drills). Moreover, how 465m could be counted in 25m pool?

F.Y.I. I use basic “Swimming pool” training mode from the watch.

Here is the video, where everything, what is explained above, shown:
https://youtu.be/V3ClROqC42k

[Ze Stuart]

@Александр-Даниленко this might not make you feel better, but every watch I’ve used has had problems with swimming detection: Garmin, Apple, Suunto all produce pretty random results.

For accurate swimming tracking, Form goggles have been the best for me.

[Александр Даниленко]

@Ze-Stuart I had cheap Huawei Watch Fit before. They weren’t perfect in this (for example, they could detect freestyle as butterfly). But they never detect breaststroke or backstroke as freestyle or butterfly, as S9PP do.

Also, I still see several bugs here, which I described, not related to style or distance detection.

[AntoniusGaius]

@Александр-Даниленко Little bit off topic but… Have anyone some thoughts what shows this magic metrics in SUUNTO indoor swim mode? It is present in S 9PP and S5P as well. It shows current interval time and length (not always correctly detected). But this moving star around the display is confusing and I found literally nothing in manual, web, YT or other source. Thanks for info.

[inkognito]

@AntoniusGaius https://youtu.be/VVqiBwylhpM?si=H_RC8__C_c9OkLKm

[AntoniusGaius]

@inkognito I see… Pace clock. Thank you for link. I’m not a swimmer so I have never seen clock like this…

[Александр Даниленко]

@AntoniusGaius this is watch like the one, you can find in some swimming pools:

It is usually used for interval swimming. You can count rest time with it, also manually measure you HR for 10 sec, which is common even now, since HR sensor on the watch isn’t accurate enough, when you are in the water.

[Александр Даниленко]

@AntoniusGaius also, what I noticed with this feature in Suunto, when you end your interval, watch show you with a red mark when your interval was ended, so it is easier for you to understand when you have to start your next interval, if you swim something like, for example, 10×100m with 30s rest time.

[AntoniusGaius]

@Александр-Даниленко Nice. I have noticed that. First useful sugestion. Thanks a lot.
I saw this kind of clock yesterday on our local pool where was swiming club training. They have brought it with. They were swiming in waves or something

[Александр Даниленко]

I found one more problem with swimming mode.

If I press lap button, but don’t swim, it always show me zero lap time:
https://youtube.com/shorts/5i4HtbmXeTE?si=6jEiXovxk6pSy9Pf

As you can see from the video, when I switched to other sport (in this case circuit training), it always count it as it should. Moreover, even in “Openwater swim” it works correctly.

You may ask why it is matter and why I need this. As I mentioned in this post previous, the watch doesn’t have “drill mode”. So, I would like at least to have possiblity to control my intervals time while doing swimming drills.

[Ars Vitae]

@Александр-Даниленко The bad news is that I think all Suunto watches have a problem with distance measurement and style recognition in swimming. These algorithms need to by fixed for there to be any point in using them. At the very least, I would like to see the distance counting fixed.

[Александр Даниленко]

@Ars-Vitae for me distance counting works ± good, if I swim normal swimming styles. Sometimes it is off, but usually ok.

What problem do you have there?

[Ars Vitae]

@Александр-Даниленко When you do leg exercises, for example, does it also count the distance well?

[Александр Даниленко]

@Ars-Vitae with leg exercises no, of course. But they are not supposed to do this, since watch expect you to do some hands movements.

As far as I know, almost no other watches can count legs, except apple watch. Also, some people say samsung now can, but no official confirmation.

Garmin and Huawei, for example, can’t.

[Ars Vitae]

@Александр-Даниленко The fact that other watches can’t count it doesn’t convince me. The counting is supposedly based on the accelerometer only. Why not add GPS, a bit more battery consumption, but you can measure the interval swum. In other exercises, for example for technique in each style, despite the movement of the hand, once it measures, once it does not.

[Александр Даниленко]

@Ars-Vitae gps won’t work if you do indoor pool swimming.

I think the best way to do it like Garmin do and how it actually was in old Suunto watches - to add “drill mode”, which show you time, HR, but then you just write the distance manually.

[Ars Vitae]

@Александр-Даниленко It depends which pool building, in many cases in gyms the gps works just fine. It can be in error to a few metres, in such conditions 25m should be counted as distance covered.

[Александр Даниленко]

Again reporting the same super annoying bug

If during the swimming I switch to other sport activity (for example, circuit training to track time and HR while doing drills), and then back to pool swimming, the watch doesn’t save my intervals for no reason. Sometimes they do, sometimes not, what make them unreasonable for “multisport” trainings.

Multisport training:

Last “pool swimming”:

Despite I did intervals and the watch shown me intervals distance and time, they didn’t save them for no reason 🤬