Three Years Later, I Kept My Promise: Vimo Swim in Alicante

Three years ago Rafa told me that the device I wanted to build for myself was something the market actually needed. He was one of the first coaches who said it out loud, and he said it before we had anything worth showing.

In September 2026 I came back to Spain with two Vimo devices in my bag. Not to demonstrate them. To leave them there.

Why Alicante

When I say Alicante I am simplifying a little. We spend most of our time around Elche and Santa Pola, away from the centre.

We come here regularly with Total Immersion Polska and Paweł Lewicki. A few swimmers joined us this time because they wanted to swim in open water in the Mediterranean.

The place works for a simple reason. Everything we need sits close together:

• the sea, a few minutes away
• open water conditions that change from day to day, including waves
• a pool for the days when the sea is not an option
• far fewer people than in central Alicante
• enough infrastructure to combine pool work and open water in the same day

That last point matters more than it sounds. A camp where you have to drive an hour to reach the water loses half a session every time.

The coach who waited for Vimo

I met Rafa Aledo about four years ago. He understood the idea behind Vimo the first time he heard it.

He told me that if he could build something like this himself, he probably would have, because the tempo trainers on the market did not do what he needed.

One moment from an earlier camp stayed with me. Rafa brought two bags.

In the first bag he had more than a dozen tempo trainers that no longer worked.

In the second bag he had the ones that still worked and that he was using in training.

He showed me how many devices he had gone through over the years, and how much money that had cost him.

That was the moment the project changed for me. Wanting to build a device for myself is one thing. Watching an experienced coach who had spent years looking for exactly this solution is something else.

It was one of the first times I thought: we are really going to build this.

Three years later

There were more camps after that, more conversations, and eventually our first prototype.

The prototype did not meet our expectations. We needed more time. Then we needed more time again.

In September 2026 I finally came back to Spain and handed Rafa the first two Vimo devices.

The difference is important to me. I did not show him Vimo. After roughly three years of waiting, those two devices became his.

We tested them together in normal training, in the pool and in the sea, not in a demo set up to look good.

Group control and five channels

The feature that impressed Rafa most was group control.

Normally, when a swimmer wants to change tempo, they pull the device out from under the swim cap, change the setting, and put it back. On its own that takes a few seconds. In a session where the coach changes the exercise or the tempo every few minutes, with a whole group in the water, those seconds turn into a real interruption.

Vimo works differently. Every Vimo can act as a transmitter. The coach uses one device to change the tempo on the others. There is no separate remote to buy, charge or lose.

Vimo also supports five independent channels. The coach can split the group into up to five sets, and each set can swim at its own tempo at the same time:

• group 1 on its own tempo
• group 2 on another
• and so on, up to five

Nobody has to take anything out from under a swim cap. The coach changes the setting and the group keeps swimming.

Thirty devices and Spain

After we tested the devices together, Rafa decided to order 30 of them. He is also becoming our main ambassador in Spain and in Spanish speaking markets.

The number is not the part that matters to me.

Rafa was one of the people who, years ago, helped convince me that this device should exist. Now we can develop and test it together with him and with his swimmers, in a club that trains every week, not only at camps.

We are already talking about coming back, possibly later this year, with a larger batch of devices and a proper group test.

Why we keep coming to these camps

These trips are not only swim camps for me. After several months of intensive work on Vimo, they are a way to get away from the desk and the lab.

The rhythm is simple, and it is the same every time.

We fly out on Thursday and, if the conditions allow, we swim in the sea the same evening. Friday and Saturday start early: the first open water session around seven, breakfast in a small local place afterwards, then a long break in the middle of the day. Around noon or one we go to the pool, and in the evening we swim in the sea again. That can mean three sessions in a day. On Sunday we swim in the morning and fly back to Poland in the afternoon.

Changing perspective

Months of work on electronics, firmware, enclosure design and everything around them leave you very close to the product and very far from the water. These trips fix that. They also put Vimo where it belongs, which is in the water.

Swimming with good swimmers and coaches is worth the trip on its own. You watch them, you learn from them, you talk about training and you see how differently people approach the same thing.

More than that, this is where we learn what Vimo users actually need. Not in the lab. In the water.

Vimo is only the beginning

This trip closes one stage and opens another. Next year we want to do much more with Vimo in Spain.

Around the device we are also thinking about training content. One idea is TEMPO Academy, which could become part of our platform later on. It is an idea, not a date.

The priority now is simpler: get Vimo into swimmers' hands, start selling, and collect real experience. We want as many swimmers and coaches as possible to use the device, test it, try things we did not plan for, and tell us what works and what does not.

The goal is to reach a point where the hardware is mature enough that we can put more of our effort into the value built around it. One direction is an online academy created with good coaches, including Total Immersion coaches, from Poland, Spain and, in time, other countries.

Patience and precision

Vimo has taken several years already, and it will take more.

Swimming rewards patience and precision. You do not fix your catch in one session, and you do not get a stroke rate right by trying harder. Building a product like this asks for the same two things.

Three years ago Rafa and I were talking about a device that did not exist in any usable form. In September 2026 I put the first two into his hands.

Now we will see where we swim next.

If you are interested in Vimo, or you would like to test it, get in touch. At this stage we are especially interested in swimmers and coaches who genuinely want to use Vimo in training and help us test it in real conditions.