FORM Smart Swim Goggles capture detailed data about your swimming and technique. With HeadCoach™, this data is transformed into meaningful metrics and insights that help you become a better swimmer.

One advanced HeadCoach™ metric is your Time-to-Neutral, which measures how long it takes for your head to return to the water after each breath.

You can find more information about HeadCoach™ and Time-to-Neutral by going to our Introduction to HeadCoach™ blog. In this blog, we’ll explore why Time-to-Neutral matters, share practical tips for improving it, and explain how FORM goggles can support your progress.

What Is Time-to-Neutral and Why It Is Important

Breathing is a necessary part of your swimming, but it can be difficult to keep your breath in time with your swimming, especially as you try to swim harder and faster. Time-to-Neutral measures the proportion of your breathing stroke from when you get your breath to returning your face to the water.

Generally, the less time spent returning your face to the water, the more time you spend in sync with your swimming so that you have a better connection between your breath and your freestyle swimming. This will help you minimize wasted energy when you are breathing and create more propulsion by having your face in the water at the right time for creating maximum power.

FORM goggles track your Time-to-Neutral in real-time. They measure how long it takes for you to take a breath, how much you need to rotate your head to breathe, and the time it takes to return your face to the water - all while you swim.

Moving your head too fast to get your breath, or too slow to return to neutral, can have a disastrous impact on your technique when you’re taking your breath.

By improving your Time-to-Neutral, you will keep your breath in time with the natural movement of your freestyle which will lead to a more fluid, efficient stroke.

At FORM, we measure Time-to-Neutral on a scale of 1-100 to help swimmers easily understand their benchmark and how much they can improve their Time-to-Neutral.

General Coaching Tips

When targeting technical improvements, it’s most effective to start with low-intensity work and ample recovery so you can maintain focus and precision. A suitable set would be 6 x 25s with 20–30 seconds of rest between repeats. This structure allows you to concentrate on optimizing your Time-to-Neutral while minimizing fatigue and preserving quality throughout the set.

To improve your Time-to-Neutral, remember to breathe to both sides, then try these breathing tips:

1. Patiently turn your head to breathe, don’t rush your breath.


2. Don’t pause during your breath and stop swimming.


3. Bring your head back to neutral quickly in time with your shoulder roll after your breath.

When you feel you’ve improved your Time-to-Neutral, you can start increasing the difficulty. It’s best to match the difficulty with what you’re prepping for:

• Getting ready for a Pool Race? Stay with single lengths, but go faster while staying patient with your breath, with lots of rest in between each length.


• Prepping for a Triathlon or Open Water race? Try holding your Time-to-Neutral for longer intervals, such as 100s and 200s, so that you can practice maintaining your technique for longer periods.


• General Technique Improvement? Taking less rest between your intervals will make the end of your sets harder, so you can practice holding good technique even when you’re tired.

Using FORM to Improve Your Time-to-Neutral

You can use FORM goggles to help improve your Time-to-Neutral in real-time by activating the Time-to-Neutral Skill in your goggles. The Time-to-Neutral Skill will give you immediate feedback about where your Time-to-Neutral is and guide you to improve it.

You can activate the Time-to-Neutral Skill in a few ways:

You can keep track of your progress using the FORM App, where you can see your current Time-to-Neutral score, the history of your score, as well as some additional Coaching info about how you can improve your Time-to-Neutral.

Conclusion

By helping you refine your Time-to-Neutral and overall technique, FORM goggles can accelerate your progress toward becoming a faster, more efficient swimmer.