SwimStraight™ Updates, Garmin Fix, TriDot Workout Import, and Much More!
With Summer in full swing in the Northern Hemisphere, we have another jam-packed software release that’s now available, bringing more great updates and feature improvements to your FORM Smart Swim goggles. Grab your goggles, it’s time to update them!
What’s covered in this update:
- SwimStraight™ Improvements
- Garmin Open Water Connectivity Fix
- TriDot Partnership
- HeadCoach™ Skills in Workouts
- Onboarding Updates
SwimStraight™ Improvements
It’s been fantastic to hear all your great responses to our new SwimStraight™ open-water swimming feature. We’re so pleased to hear how it’s helped you in your regular open-water swims and during your races and events.
“…I have to compliment you on a superb product, definitely the best bit of kit I have bought. Did T100 London today. The swim straight function is the best thing since sliced bread. I knocked almost 8 minutes off my swim time.”
Along with the glowing reviews for SwimStraight, we have also greatly appreciated your feedback on this feature, with there being two aspects that you haven’t loved so much - failed calibrations, and frequent and slightly abrupt sighting reminders. Good news, we heard you and have immediately acted on this feedback.
SwimStraight Calibration
Concerning SwimStraight calibration, we have made this process simpler by removing the fourth calibration step but, more importantly, all calibrations will now pass with this latest update (i.e. say goodbye to the dreaded ‘calibration unsuccessful’ message, forever! 👋). This was always the plan but we needed to make sure we had a consistent swim experience before we could release this functionality. Whether you’ve had issues with calibrations or not, know that using SwimStraight will be a much smoother experience for you now.
Sighting Reminders
First, we should explain why we included those sighting reminders. At FORM, we strongly believe in safe open-water swimming, and regular sighting is essential to this. In the open water you should always stay aware of your surroundings, and our following open-water guide shares some great rules to practice safe open-water swimming. Even if it’s a body of water you’re familiar with, you must take the necessary precautions, as at our local lake last week, for the first time in five years, a large log was floating in the main swimming path and was a dangerous hazard.
With our sighting reminder, we intended to bring in a function that is an unobtrusive reminder for those who already incorporate sighting as part of their open-water swimming. For those who are still building that habit, we aim to proactively support it with sighting reminders so that you take the opportunity to look up during your swim. It is important to know where you are, but also what’s around you, ensuring you’re aware of your surroundings at all times.
Having said that, since launching SwimStraight and receiving your feedback, we put our heads together to address your comments and find a suitable balance between your feedback and the safety of our swimmers. In this update, we have added a new subtle blinking arrow that will appear after 20 seconds of swimming without sighting that is displayed while the SwimStraight compass is still visible. If you do not sight in the following 10 seconds, the ‘Sight for Safety’ reminder will appear.
We know this may not completely satisfy everyone, but we feel this update strikes a good balance, while we will continue to listen to feedback about the new experience that’s now available.
Garmin Open Water Connectivity Fix
Recently Garmin made changes to their firmware which broke your open-water swim experience when connecting a Garmin smartwatch with FORM goggles. Specifically, the goggles and watch would lose connectivity as soon as you started swimming.
Good news. This is fixed in the latest firmware update.
To access this fix, please:
- Update your app to the latest version through the App Store or Google Play Store
- Sync your goggles to the app and accept the prompt to update them to the latest firmware version (3.3.109)
TriDot Partnership
Without question, FORM goggles are the best way to follow and execute swim workouts. We also appreciate that your swim workouts can come from a lot of different places.
TriDot, the Official Training Platform of IRONMAN, is a leader in the space of training and coaching. We are very pleased to be working in partnership with TriDot and together we’ve now made it possible for TriDot customers to import their swim workouts directly into the FORM app and goggles so you can elevate your training and get more out of your swimming. At the pool, get your lap-by-lap instructions as you swim and swim your TriDot workouts exactly as intended.
For more information on our TriDot workout import integration, click here.
HeadCoach™ Skills in Workouts
With FORM, every swim you do is a step towards realizing your goals in the water.
Each swim, we’re able to analyze a huge range of data based on your swim mechanics, and like any good swim coach, we aim to make sure that you are effectively doing the right things at the right time when swimming, including enforcing technique work during your swims (which is often neglected). Our HeadCoach™ features do exactly this, and in our latest release, HeadCoach ensures you now can keep focus on elements of your technique in your workouts.
Previously, you could only receive automatic skill suggestions from HeadCoach™ in Free Swims. You’d be asked if you’d like to receive HeadCoach coaching throughout your swim as you start a swim, and then receive instructions and tips on how to improve your technique in real-time. Having heard, from you, how great this feature is in Free Swim mode, we wanted to make these features available across our workouts too.
Now, across all FORM workouts, HeadCoach will automatically suggest skills to work on during your swim, unless you have already pre-built one or more skills into your workout. At the beginning of your workout, HeadCoach will ask you to confirm if you want to enable skill suggestions during your drill set or main set. This approach now ensures you can focus on the needs of the warm-up and then get prompted to work on technique at the right moments during your swims.
If the timing of the suggestion isn’t right for you, you can always defer to another set or turn off the suggestions for the remainder of a swim.
Onboarding Updates
We understand there is a lot to learn when you first start to use FORM Smart Swim goggles. New metrics, reading the display, and consuming all of your swim data back in the FORM app can be overwhelming.
We’ve now created a more guided onboarding process, breaking down the most important aspects of FORM for new users: getting the right goggles fit, how to go for your first swim, and what to look for when you sync your first swim, and the key areas we want new users to understand and gain confidence in.
To support this goal we’ve now added new video content during our onboarding process that explains everything from how to start an open-water swim to how to review your HeadCoach™ metrics.
We are always looking for ways to improve and make you a faster swimmer.
If you’re already very familiar with FORM but want to check out our new onboarding content, you can view our new videos here.
Update Now!
As you can see, we’ve been busy working hard to bring these new features, updates, and enhancements to you, which are now available through the FORM app. Be sure to sync your goggles to complete this update, and of course, let us know your feedback! We always love to hear from our swim community about your experiences, and ideas on how we can look to improve.
