Warning: These goggles will transform your swimming!
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Tech-shy swimmer, Rowan Clarke, tells us how the new FORM Smart Swim 2 PRO goggles revolutionised her swimming – and her feelings about swimming technology.
Love it or hate it, technology can be life-changing. And we’ve discovered a bit of swimming tech that’ll transform your swimming. A pair of incredibly smart goggles that act like your own, personal coach in the pool and open water.
Having never used any swim technology, we were amazed by what these goggles can do – and pleasantly surprised by how comfortable, easy and unobtrusive they are to wear. Here’s the lowdown.
Are smart swimming goggles useful?
The critical element with technology is that it augments your life in some way. In other words, there’s no point in having smartphones, watches, goggles or whatever if they don’t make life better or easier.
Swimming tech is behind other tech because we swim horizontally in an alien environment, which makes it challenging to work with. So, other than tracking your time, distance or route via Strava or equivalent, there aren’t many options for truly beneficial swim tech.
I’ve never used any technology when swimming. I’m not interested in my pace, and I can plot distance and time using an online map and an analogue watch.
However, I am interested in swimming more smoothly, improving my technique and getting more from my swim workouts. And that’s precisely what FORM’s incredible new Smart Swim 2 PRO goggles do.
How do they help?
FORM uses what it calls Augmented Reality (AR) swim tech, which includes a patented Waveguide display. Their award-winning innovations make swimmers faster, more efficient, and more engaged. Think real-time performance metrics like heart rate tracking, in-goggle guided workouts, virtual coaching through HeadCoach™, and accurate open-water navigation via SwimStraight™.
You can then use the back office features in the accompanying app to pick your workouts, training plans and goals.
The goggles help your swimming in so many ways. But it doesn’t feel overwhelming. Quite the opposite – the soft, subtle display shows you the metrics you choose to see, unobtrusively guiding your swim.
Tailored for you
We loved being able to customise our goggles. From choosing which one of the five nose bridges gave us the best fit, to picking the display and which eye to view it with, you can tweak the goggles to suit you.
After getting the fit just right, I flipped the display to my left eye to accommodate my (really bad) astigmatism. This meant that I could see it more clearly.
The display hovers in the middle distance in front of your eye. It shows up clearly against cloudy or clear water. In addition to the orientation, you can also adjust the display brightness to suit you and your surroundings.
Using the app, you can choose guided HeadCoach™ sessions or enter your own sessions – brilliant if you work with a swimming coach. I could load up my Catch Virtual Coaching sessions, for example.
Your virtual swim guide
We wondered how the SwimStraight™ feature would work while swimming a loop in open water. But this was pleasingly simple. After following the in-goggle instructions to switch on and calibrate SwimStraight™, you’re ready to use the feature.
Imagine a circle showing degrees – a bit like a protractor in geometry. Straight ahead is 0, to your right is 90, behind you is 180, and to your left is 270. You then sight the buoy you’re swimming towards, note the number on your goggles and keep the pointer on that number. Helpfully, the goggles remind you when to sight for safety.
We loved using the info to play with intervals, lengthening and strengthening our stroke, and following a pre-set training session.
Calm swimming
A surprising benefit was how hand-holding we found our smart goggles. The display gives a calming focus, making you feel less alone while swimming.
If, like us, you enjoy getting into that flow state when you swim, we recommend using your FORM Smart Swim 2 PRO goggles for training sessions, and then enjoying some tech-free ‘naked’ swims. With the technique improvements you get from HeadCoach™, it’s interesting to see how much smoother and easier those tech-free swims become.
It’s also a good idea to swim without them so you don’t become dependent on them. And, while they’re as low-profile as they can be, you’d choose to race in smaller goggles.
We absolutely love these goggles – they’ve become an essential part of our swim routine. They’re comfortable, incredibly durable and don’t fog up like normal goggles. This is swim-transforming technology, and we’re total converts.
Read Rowan’s interview with FORM’s founder and CEO, Dan Eisenhardt, here.
FORM Smart Swim 2 PRO goggles, £279
