Evaluation of the Finis Swimsense (R) and the Garmin Swim (TM) activity monitors for swimming performance and stroke kinematics analysis

Aims The study aims were to evaluate the validity of two commercially available swimming activity monitors for quantifying temporal and kinematic swimming variables. Methods Ten national level swimmers (5 male, 5 female; 15.3 +/- 1.3years; 164.8 +/- 12.9cm; 62.4 +/- 11.1kg; 425 +/- 66 FINA points) completed a set protocol comprising 1,500m of swimming involving all four competitive swimming strokes. Swimmers wore the Finis Swimsense and the Garmin Swim activity monitors throughout. The devices automatically identified stroke type, swim distance, lap time, stroke count, stroke rate, stroke length and average speed. Video recordings were also obtained and used as a criterion measure to evaluate performance. Results A significant positive correlation was found between the monitors and video for the identification of each of the four swim strokes (Garmin: X-2 (3) = 31.292, pThis research is funded by the Irish Research Council Enterprise Partnership Scheme in conjunction with Swim Ireland (Grant award reference EPSPG\2012\361).peer-reviewe