Put a sensor on every swimmer and the whole group's heart rate is in front of you in real time. One receiver reads them all, with no per-practice pairing and nothing to drop mid-set. Sixteen swimmers, twenty, your whole group: the deck is covered, and every card lights up in its training zone, in your team's own colors, the moment a swimmer touches the wall.
Built to read your whole squad at once
Other heart-rate setups pair one device to one sensor and tap out after a handful of swimmers. apxswim doesn't. Because ANT+ broadcasts, every sensor transmits and one receiver hears them all, so going from four swimmers to forty changes nothing. Every reading lands on the right swimmer, in the right zone, in your team's own colors, the instant it happens. Hold the whole group on an aerobic set and watch the deck turn one color; send them into a threshold effort and watch it climb, at a glance, no spreadsheet.
Your team's color chart
This is the piece coaches tell us they can't get elsewhere, and it's a big reason apxswim exists. Most heart-rate systems lock every team into one fixed set of zones and colors. apxswim lets you build your own team chart: how many bands, what you call them, and a color or gear number for each. You set it once for the whole squad, and each swimmer's actual heart-rate ranges scale to their own threshold. The default draws on the classic color-zone systems many coaches already use, so it's familiar on day one and yours to change from there. The live deck and every analytic then read in the language of your program.
What you need
Three things, and it runs on standard gear you may already own. No proprietary unit, no lock-in, no waiting on a vendor.
An ANT+ USB stick
A small dongle in your laptop that hears every sensor in range at once.
A sensor per swimmer
Any ANT+ heart-rate sensor. A swim-friendly optical armband, worn on the temple under the cap or on the forearm, is comfortable and stays put.
Chrome or Edge
The ANT+ link runs over WebUSB, built into Chrome and Edge on any laptop.
Dongle: CooSpo USB ANT+ Stick (what we run on deck); any Garmin or "ANT USB-m"-compatible stick works too. Sensor: any optical HR armband that broadcasts ANT+, worn on the temple under the cap or on the forearm and set to broadcast mode.
Heart-rate data you can trust
apxswim is built around how swimming works. Heart rate comes through at the wall and the surface, exactly where you read your swimmers anyway, and apxswim captures it cleanly every time they touch. When a swimmer's head goes under, the signal pauses and picks straight back up as they surface. apxswim logs precisely what it measured and never invents a number it didn't see, so the zones you're coaching to are real. That's the difference between data you glance at and data you act on.
On the deck in two minutes
- Plug the ANT+ stick into a USB port on your laptop.
- Open apxswim in Chrome or Edge.
- Click Connect ANT+ Dongle/USB and pick the stick once. apxswim remembers it.
- Power on each sensor. A card appears for every one the stick hears.
- Assign each sensor to a swimmer from the dropdown. Sensors are remembered after the first time.
- Hit Start session and coach. Readings log automatically.
The first practice is the only setup: link each sensor to a swimmer one time, following the in-app setup guide. Depending on your laptop, you may also click once to pair the ANT+ dongle. After that, apxswim recognizes each swimmer automatically every session, with no re-pairing and no roll call.
The tech behind it: ANT+ vs Bluetooth for swim heart rate →