InstaBeat
I love swimming as much as I love data.
One of my favorite things about swimming, however, is how simple of a sport it is. (Ultra)Marathon Swimming in particular celebrates minimalism: a cap, goggles, a speedo, optional earplugs and grease is all you can wear during a crossing.
On top of this minimal gear I build my training around my gps watch: it’s an extremely useful tool that keeps track of distance and time. Two of the most important pieces of information you need. In previous posts I looked into this data to understand the patterns and changes in my training plan.
A year or so ago I saw a few swimmers trying out this heart rate measurement device on their goggles and I rolled my eyes… Yes I am quite adverse to novelty (maybe my European roots show more than I think…) and I am quite passionate about keeping swimming simple. I’ve always thought of gadgets as stuff Triathletes (which are often amateurs in terms of swimming experience) use. I don’t even wear my beloved gps watch when I’m swimming in a pool: I thought I couldn’t use any further tool.
Then, on a Sunday morning, Hind (founder of Instabeat), was asking swimmers if they didn’t mind to help testing a prototype for the same device during swim practice. With a (somewhat condescending ) shrug I agreed.
The device fits on the right side of the goggles and shows little LED lights in the lower corner of one’s vision. A sensor on the temple records heart rate and the color changes with intensity:
- Blue for low effort
- Green for mid effort
- Red for maximum effort
additional granularity is added by the number of lights: one vs. two for higher effort.
By the end of warmup I was already intrigued. I realized that the warmup set had always been a bit of a blind chore for me, while having a ballpark estimate of my activity level turned it into a more practical activity. I swam in increasing intensity until I smoothly transitioned from the blue to the green, turning a gut feeling into a precise measurement.
As we progressed in the practice I started playing with the zones, pushing all the way up to red on the sprints, keeping up in the higher range of the green light for the distance part and monitoring my recovery between sets. It’s so easy to be fooled by sensations and think we have fully recovered: you can’t lie with your heartbeat!
Since then I’ve been fully convinced to add this gadget to my (very exclusive) toolbox! Having a real time tool without having to rely on feeling or having to count your heart beat after the fact is an invaluable advantage.
Instabeat’s strength (compared to other tools and solutions) is to be simple and minimal, fitting on your favorite goggles and not cramming in extra information (e.g. exact heart rate would be very hard to read through fogged up goggles). Being an add on also means that you can retire a pair of goggles and attach Instabeat to the next pair, or easily switch between tinted and clear goggles.
After your swim you can look at your effort and see which parts of the workout challenged you the most and where your recovery was challenging or easy.
I’m still tinkering with this new toy, so keep an eye on this blog as I’ll tune my zones better and I’ll start running some visualization/meta-analysis across multiple sessions, to look for a general improvement or for different patterns between Open Water and pool, etc.
Post Scriptum
I have to admit that another huge factor that made me like Instabeat is how much it reminds me of Dragon Ball Z… I know… #nerd
