VEL
A fitness tracker designed to increase training efficiency in the gym and challenge an athlete’s performance.
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“Focus on the efficiency and interaction of the systems rather than try to target one system for development.”
— Vern Gambetta
A Brief Intro In Athletic Training Periodization
There are a lot of factors that need to be carefully considered and measured during training. Depending on the sport, most athletes are working on improving their skills in several “categories” such as strength, speed, acceleration, agility, flexibility, endurance, power, etc. The list is long and most skills interact with each other, but for this project I wanted to focus on athletes whose main priority is to increase POWER and their training efficiency.
The formula for power is P=FxV (where (F) is Force & (V) is Velocity). What this tells us is that if an athlete wants to increase their power output they need to be able to increase their VELOCITY (speed of the movement) and their production of FORCE (the ability to move an object quickly). An athletes’ strength plays a great role in the production of force but so does the athlete’s intensity at which they produce that force and accelerate through the movement. Intensity is difficult to measure.
All these metrics are difficult to measure without high end equipment, which is why I am focusing this project on collegiate and professional athletes.
What’s on the market?
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Perch
Perch is a stationary device that uses a camera to track movement and speed.
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Bar Sensei
Bar Sensei is attached to the user or the barbell using a velcro strap. This device measures speed & bar movement.
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Tendo
The Tendo is a stationary device using a cable system attached to the bar to measure speed & acceleration through the lift.
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The Powertool
GymAware’s Powertool is a stationary device that uses a cable system attached to the bar to measure speed & acceleration.
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FORM Smart Collar
The FORM smart collar attaches to the end of the barbell and tracks speed, bar path movement, and acceleration.
Design Direction
After completing market research I chose to focus my attention on designing a portable velocity based tracking system. The reasoning for this came to me during my time working as a personal trainer during the Covid-19 pandemic. Athletes couldn’t always attend group workouts and sometimes would have to workout on their own.
The design of this device needed to be…
small enough to fit into a gym bag
strong enough to survive travel and drops in the gym
stylish enough to fit the gym aesthetic.
Taking all these factors into consideration, I knew my form would need to be small and attach to the bar using either velcro, magnets, or a neoprene sleeve.
