Review – FINIS TEMPO TRAINER PRO

The FINIS TEMPO TRAINER PRO is a waterproof metronome for swim cadence/stroke-rate training that you put inside your swim cap.

Positives: It does the job. If you buy into the swimsmooth line then you’ll find that sorting your cadence out will play a key part to improving those stubbornly plateaud swim times. You can look at your average stroke-rate at the end of a lap or set or session: that won’t be anywhere near as helpful in enabling you to INSTANTLY maintain/change your stroke rate as the FINIS. The FINIS REALLY helps.

Negatives: It’s expensive for what it is and there are some people trying it on with SILLY prices (GBP/USD30 is about right). A metronome costs about GBP5 so you are paying the additional GBP25 for the waterproofing. It’s also a bit big and a re-designed one would easily be very significantly smaller. Whilst it is comfortable in your swim cap you need a big cap to ensure that you keep the FINIS in your cap and not have it floating around in a lake (you won’t find it even though it’s yellow and floats).

Comments: It’s very simple to use and it has 3 modes controlled from the 3-buttons, although MODE 1 is the only one I find useful for swimming where I set it to beat out every time my right arm needs to pull. Interestingly, you can time different aspects of your stroke to coincide with the beep and it really does help you focus on that one part of the cycle – I was surprised. It also helps to focus the beep on an aspect of asymmetry you might have and, again, I found it help me focus on changing that. Very fine levels of time difference can be set and the beep is easily heard. It’s actually a great thing to focus on sound and timing for once rather than that line on the bottom of the pool. It’s one of the more useful pool gadgets I have alongside pull buoy and paddles.

Alternatives: None that I know of.

Detailed Review: Maybe to follow. There is not that much detail to write.

Approximate prices are shown below