Garmin to add advanced Pool Swim Features
Source: Doesn’t want to be disclosed
Warning: This information is approximately correct.
Garmin is introducing new features based on send-off times, making training sessions more personalized and efficient. Some of these features exist on watches to some degree and where that’s the case the newness comes in how that feature can be used to plan a workout. Here’s a look at what’s coming:
Definition: “Send-Off”
Runners typically use a fixed rest interval between efforts but swimmers often use a send-off time where the gap between start times of each successive interval is fixed ie the recovery time varies. This changes the difficulty for swimmers of different abilities but helps coaches better manage lane discipline with multiple swimmers.
For example, if you set a send-off time of 3 minutes and then complete your previous swim step in 2 minutes and 30 seconds, you’ll have 30 seconds of rest time. Complete it in 2:45 and you only have 15 seconds rest. The watch will count down the rest time and advance automatically.
Rests based on send-off times should come after a distance-based swim step.
Pool Length Flexibility
Garmin’s updated swim workouts allow you to select a send-off time for one type of pool (meters or yards) but the watch automatically adjusts the send-off time based on the actual pool length when you execute the workout; for instance, a send-off time of 2:00 minutes/100 meters will adjust to 1:50 minutes /100 yards.
So if you train at multiple pools of different lane lengths, the same pre-defined workout should work at all pools.
If you’re unsure of your pool length, you can still complete your workout as the device will accommodate the unknown length and adjust accordingly. I’m not entirely sure how that would work in practice! Comments are welcomed below.
Critical Swim Speed (CSS) and Send-Off
For swimmers focused on their CSS, Garmin provides options for CSS-based send-off times. For example, a workout can include CSS+30 second send-offs. If a specific CSS value isn’t available, the device will use a default CSS of 2:00 per 100 meters.
EG, if you set the CSS-based send-off time to “CSS + 30 seconds,” and your CSS is 1:45, then you will have a send-off time of 2:15.
This feature is useful for coaches managing multiple swimmers, as it customizes the workout based on each swimmer’s ability.
Personalized Rest and Send-Off Times
A fixed rest time lets you set a standard duration for your rest break. Your watch will count down from your selected rest time to zero and then advance automatically.
New Metrics
These new metrics appear to be added on watches: Circuits, rounds, CSS-Based Send-Off Time, send-off time, and a few others.
Individual Medley Support
New metrics are added for more serious swimmers training for IM and these metrics include: IM by Round; Reverse IM Order (RIMO); and IM by round stroke types.
New Watch Feature
The Send-off rest period is ended by pressing the bottom-right button.
Take Out
Garmin has made some nice changes here for self-coached swimmers and swim coaches.
These changes are highly niche and represent those features that non-Garmin watches will probably never include, except where the non-Garmin watch supports 3rd party apps (like Apple or Suunto)
Often Garmin brings out new features to be the headline on a new watch. I don’t know if these new swim features indicate if either the Garmin Swim 3 watch or a new triathlon watch like the 755 AMOLED is inbound. My bet would be on the latter, ie a smaller version of the Forerunner 965, but that’s just speculation at this stage. That said, I wouldn’t bet too much at this stage!
Last Updated on 21 January 2026 by the5krunner
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tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. ID
maybe we will see 965s pro and 965 pro with new heart rate sensors and the news you write about. Isn’t that a natural guess?
that is possible for sure
there isn’t a smaller format high-end forerunner and there isn’t one that uses the latest gen5 elevate sensor.
Man, don’t get my hopes up for a 755 (Or 765?). Last year finally I gave up waiting for a successor for my beloved 745 🥲.
Regarding the feature: I’d also assume that Garmin reserves such things for new watches and eventually adds some of it to their “older” models.
Runners use “send off” times too! It’s not always a fixed interval and Garmin definitely should provide it for running. I often used this structure for out and back intervals
fair enough.
i’ve never really come across it. is it for convenience? or based on any training science? I’m genuinely asking not being funny.
as a counter example, variable recovery based on ‘something’ vaeriable like HR/Smo2 is based on science
I wish they would allow smaller pool size. I swim at home but the smaller setting is already too big. Maybe calibrate in a big pool, I don’t know. Right now, I have to set up the swim activities to double the size of my pool so then I can edit the workout and divide the distance by 2, it’s probably not accurate but it’s the best I can do (also annoyingly more often than not it syncs right away to Strava and Strava doesn’t let you edit swim workouts after the fact and doesn’t resync after I edit in Garmin Connect).
would be nice Garmin would consider basic stuff like pool lenghts of half yards/meters like Polar allows.
Nice updates to one of the best pool tracking
I have a garmin swim 2, and just noticed the new app update.
There is some things that I don’t understand.
Now I can add the type of goal (difficult, resting, maximum, etc) and the type of exercise (normal, legs, arms) but then I receive a warning saying that that features are not supported on my watch.
And the thing that really bothered me the most was the change on the minimum of fixed resting times 🙁 usually my coach send me fixed resting times of 5 or 10 seconds but now the app is saying that it should be at least 15 seconds and I don’t know how to overcome this.
Can anyone help me?
Two years on and send-offs still haven’t shipped in Connect’s builder, which tells you where pool swimming sits on Garmin’s priority list.
For anyone landing here from Google: you don’t have to wait for Garmin. I built AquaPlan (aquaplan.fit — founder, so obviously biased) exactly because of this gap. You write “5×100 on 1:30” like you’d see it on a whiteboard and it exports to the watch as a structured workout with the interval structure intact. The masters-swimming concept of leaving on a send-off has existed for half a century; it’s wild that the biggest sports-watch maker still doesn’t speak that language.