DuoSwim: Swim Workout App

I’m back in the pool after 5 years thanks to this app. The plan I’m on is exactly what I need, it has great structure and the watch app is perfect for guiding me through a workout. I really like that it has some dry land workouts too.

I shouldn’t have to pay $90 a year just to get some basic advice on what sets to do. That should be free.

Was in the market for an app to help with swim technique and workouts. I got an e-mail to try 14 days free. The sign up process was very difficult and once I confirmed my free trial, I could still access nothing in the app without the free trial offer popping up continuously. I went into my apple account and sure enough I was already subscribed. I canceled and deleted it. An experience like this so early on as a user is a turn off and frankly annoying. Going to try a different one instead.

Overall great app. I signed up for a free trial and after using 3 times bought a year’s subscription. Three areas I’d like to see improvements. One, the ability to see on my watch what is coming up next. I don’t see the next set until the final 10 seconds begin to count down and, if I need to put on or take off fins for example, I fall behind. Second, if I do fall behind it would be great to be able to pause or restart the set. As it is, I just usually skip one interval to get back on track. And lastly, sending the workouts to my watch (Apple SE) is glitchy at times and I need to reset the watch and/or my phone (has happened twice in the first 4x using it). But overall great and something I expect to use ongoing.

There are a lot of apps in the virtual swim coaching space, some better than others. For the price, Duo is a cut above the rest for variety, creativity, intensity and consistency of workout. The new Apple Watch interface is also sleek and has all the information I want to see while swimming a workout. I gave a 4 instead of a perfect 5 because I had a few critiques that I’m hoping can be addressed by support. The first and most frustrating for me is the integration with apple’s fitness tracking. Duo will log the workout in apple fitness STARTING from the moment I conclude a guided swim. The result is a logged work out with all the prescripted output metrics like distance swum and calories burned, but with all the live heart rate tracking missing. I know the watch is tracking my heart rate live while I swim because I see it in the interface. But the recorded workout shows my heart rate as my BPM for the hour following the conclusion of the workout. This is the major concern that I will like fixed as it makes it very difficult to empirically track my training progress. Another set of features that I would like (that exists on swim trackers less expensive than this one) is: rest detection and pace tracking. With rest detection, health metrics can be stratified into active periods and resting periods. That way things like active heart rate or resting recovery rate can be calculated to add more rich metrics to the fitness tracking. With pace tracking I can see what MY average pace was (instead of the average pace of the whole workout) and I can see my splits for pace work during the main set of a work out (I’m not particularly concerned with what my pace is during the warm up set). Additionally, would it be possible to add an option to change the vibration intensity? It is not strong enough for me to feel while I’m moving. So if I am off pace and miss an interval, I won’t know until I look at my watch on the wall. The time need to read the watch is time I could spend playing catch up so I don’t miss the next interval. Finally, and I know this one is splitting hairs, so believe me it doesn’t influence my rating, I wish there was an option to create custom workouts. I really appreciate the new Apple Watch interface and sometimes if I find a really interesting set, I would love to write it up and run it as a guided swim. This feature exists in other apps in the market.

This app has many nice features a lot of other apps don’t have, but it doesn’t have many key features that I think are crucial for a good swimming app. These include: - The ability to review your splits after your swim - The ability to track your splits over time (ie. Compare your splits on your last workout to splits from the same workout over the past few weeks) - Measuring heart rate while you are swimming - The ability to send your own workouts from your phone if you want to

After using this for around a month, I switched back to MySwimPro since their system is smoother, but I genuinely love what Duo is doing by competing with SwimPro. There’s just a few things this app does that, if added or fixed, would make this THE swim app, undercutting SwimPro: - On a guided workout, there’s no way to resync the watch timer with your pool’s pace clock. If you accidentally start it not exactly on the :57, you need to rely on the watch’s timer or be off set the entire workout. The same is true of if something in the lane takes you off pace (someone joins the lane, choking on water, suit malfunction, etc); you’re just stuck. Adding a “restart set” or “restart rep” button would be a massive improvement. - The sets themselves are solid, excellent even. The problem is that the training path sets don’t change (or mine is bugged) from day to day; I was on Varying Pace for three days before I juststarted using the set library. - Tracking is inconsistent, more inconsistent than using the Apple Watch’s swim workout tracking alone. A 1400yd swim might be recorded as 1000yd, heart rate data isn’t recorded, times are wrong sometimes… It’s just janky. Sending a workout to the watch takes a few tries, but I don’t fault Duo for this since every phone-watch connected app has this problem from time to time. Swim Duo is an excellent app and what they’re doing is important; it just needs another round of deep cleaning. I’ll be back‽

This app has everything you need to improve your swimming, whatever skill level you are currently at. With an easy-to-use interface, excellent features, and top-class advice, it’s got all you need to succeed in the pool. Would highly recommend if you want to become a better swimmer!