Swim Activities on Strava

• Recording Swim Activities
• Indoor Swims
• Outdoor Swims

Recording your Swim Activities

Many multi-sport or swim devices are compatible with Strava. While all these devices are compatible with Strava, some have an easier process for uploading to Strava than others. For a complete list of all our compatible devices, please refer to this article. Here are some of the most popular devices used by our athletes to record swim activities:

• Garmin Swim 2
• Garmin Forerunner 955 and 255 Series, 745, 945/945 LTE
• Garmin Fenix 7 Series
• Garmin Instinct Crossover and 2 Series
• TomTom Multi-Sport
• Polar Vantage 2 and PacerPro
• Suunto Peak 9, 5, 7

The Strava app for Apple Watch can record swimming activities but without GPS (distance and pace will not be reflected on the activity). Athletes can also record swimming activities on Wear OS 3.

Indoor Swims

• Indoor swims on Strava will not display a map, instead, a laps view will be displayed.
• Most devices have an option to input pool length before you start an activity and you will have to hit the lap button to record your distance and time.
  • Please note: You will have to input the pool length before starting your activity. There is no way to update the pool length once the activity is on Strava. 
• Distance is calculated by adding up the laps distance and moving time is calculated by adding up the timer time of any lap more than zero yards.

Outdoor Swims

• Outdoor swims are recorded with GPS data so a map will be displayed on Strava.
  • A GPS-based moving time is used instead of lap time.
  • The pace chart for outdoor swims is built with GPS points although we apply a bit of smoothing. 
• Please note: If you are recording a swim activity in an outdoor lap pool, it is best to turn off GPS and use laps. In order to get the most accurate data, you should treat outdoor lap pools as indoor swims.