SpeedEndurance.com » Fitness Testing

InsideTracker: How to Track and Improve your Testosterone & Zinc levels, Naturally

Jimson Lee — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:00:26 +0000

This is Part 4 of a multi-part series. Part 1 discussed Testosterone Creams & Gels: Victor Conte Revisited.

Part 2 discussed How To Increase Natural Testosterone, Naturally. Part 3 covered Sleep Deprivation and Testosterone Levels.

In all the years I’ve coached, it’s amazing to see how many people are willing to put stuff INTO their bodies to improve performance, but never take stuff OUT for proper analysis.

Moreover, people are conditioned to take supplements to raise or decrease their serum levels for optimum performance, instead of looking for natural, holistic methods. The answer isn’t always pills. (see articles on natural remedies and smarter food choices).

I am a firm believer that injuries and illness are the primary reasons why athletes retire from a lack of motivation. Thus knowing what’s going on inside your body is equally important as what you are doing outside at the track.

As I am approaching 50 years old, it’s normal that I go for routine medical tests to detect anything that is less than optimal. As an athlete, I like to track Testosterone, Zinc and Magnesium levels, for example. Other biomarkers include Vitamin D, Iron, and Creatine Kinase.

InsideTracker

I started using a service called InsideTracker and I highly recommend it for athletes and everyday people. If you live in the USA, you are probably familiar with LabCorp for blood and urine testing. There are over 1500 labs nationwide.

Here are some of the things I look for:

track key vitamins, minerals and other blood serum levels that may affect or identify performance issues.
repeat visits to show progress or decline
solutions with natural foods, as well as supplements (sometimes you may have to take supplements or you will overeat just to get sufficient levels, and that’s bad)
reputable testing lab

Getting a single blood test is one thing, but making dietary and lifestyle changes based on the results, and then re-testing is where the magic comes in. Why go through the trouble of improving yourself if you can’t test to see if it works?

I visit USA at least twice a year so visiting a LabCorp is not an issue. But if you have your blood results from another service or country, you can input them and get historical data. Canadian results are a bit trickier because we use the SI units of measure.

You can’t improve what you don’t measure.

InsideTracker, My Case Study

I know there’s a lot of concern over the privacy act, and particularly medical results, but I feel this service is worth sharing. Let’s take a closer look. Your mileage may vary, because InsideTracker customizes your recommended zones based on your age and other factors on your user profile.

Testosterone

Since the title of this article is How to Track and Improve your Testosterone levels, naturally we’ll start here.

Note my results are in conventional units (ng/dL), and not SI Units (nmol/L)

Normal total testosterone levels range from 300 – 1000 ng/dL, with 500 – 700 ng/dL considered normal for young, healthy men from 20 to 40 years of age. Men should monitor this carefully by the age of 50.

Also note Insidetracker’s recommended levels of 496 – 1197 mg/dL based on my user profile. So my results don’t qualify for external testosterone!

But they do give great suggestions on increasing my testosterone levels naturally, and not through pills, creams and injections.

Here is a screen shot or “dashboard” of their recommendations. As you can see, there is a biology snippet to show the importance of testosterone, as well as tips & suggestions to improve it.

Click on Image to Enlarge

You can’t see this on the screenshot, but you can click on the text (which are hyperlinked) for more information.

And finally, you have food choices to increase or decrease depending on your results. In your profile, you can choose food recommendations, or both food AND supplement recommendations.

Vitamin D

One of the mistakes I did on my month long road trip was forgetting my multi-vitamins, and that includes Omega3-6-9. Also, I currently do NOT take Vitamin D supplements.

Here are my results (conventional units, not SI units)

According to MedlinePlus, the normal range of calcidiol is 30.0 to 74.0 ng/mL. The normal range varies widely depending on several factors, including age and geographic location. Insidetracker’s recommended levels of 40 – 60 ng/mL based on my user profile.

My results are a shocking low 10.6 ng/mL

Gee, you think I should start taking Vitamin D? We know the correlation between Vitamin D and testosterone (see the importance of Vitamin D in section 2 of the article). As explained in the dashboard, it’s hard to increase Vitamin D levels with natural food, cod liver oil excluded, so I think I’ll be making a trip to the Farmacia.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Zinc and Magnesium

Now, just to show you I am NOT in desperate ill health and soliciting donations (even though Mark Hancock thinks otherwise), here are screen shots of my Zinc and Magnesium levels. According to the charts, I am in the optimized zone for these two important minerals. You think this has to do with me being a regular advocate of ZMA?

Click on Image to Enlarge

Conclusions

Like a graph with a single data point, this is just a baseline. But this is something that can be measured and improved upon. I will take these recommendations this summer and retest again in the fall. Then we’ll see how I improve based on InsideTracker’s recommendations.

For more information, visit http://www.insidetracker.com/

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

Free Sports Analysis Software

Jimson Lee — Tue, 01 May 2012 08:00:00 +0000

If you liked the article on the free open source program called Kinovea, here are 3 more!

Free is good.

LongoMatch

http://longomatch.org/

LongoMatch is a free video analysis software for sport analysts with unlimited possibilities: Record, Tag, Review, Draw, Edit Videos and much more!

LongoMatch has been designed to be very easy to use, exposing the basic functionalities of video analysis in an intuitive interface. Tagging, playback and edition of stored events can be easily done from the main window, while more specific features can be accessed through menus when needed.

LongoMatch can be used for any kind of sports, allowing to create custom templates with an unlimited number of tagging categories. It also supports defining custom subcategories and creating templates for your teams with detailed information of each player which is the perfect combination for a fine-grained performance analysis.

LongoMatch can be used for post-match analysis supporting the most common video formats. But it can also be used for live analysis, capturing from Firewire or even without a capture device, being able to import the video file after the analysis. This feature allows decoupling the capture process from the analysis, but having it ready as soon as the recording is done.

The results of the analysis can be presented in several formats, exporting the key plays to a new video file or generating statistics reports. With LongoMatch you can easily create video highlights in a few steps, directly from the analysis window or using playlists. Rendering jobs can be queued, making it easier to create videos at the same no time.

Time is important and coding fast even more, so in LongoMatch most action can be performed through shortcuts. The video player can be completely with the keyboard, supporting frame-stepping and slow motion. LongoMatch has also a tool for exporting sequential snapshots and a powerful drawing tool.

LongoMatch is licensed under the General Public License (GPLv2), and therefore it’s free to use and redistribute. Under the woods, LongoMatch is powered by excellent open source projects, such as GStreamer, Gtk and Mono.

SportsTracker

http://www.saring.de/sportstracker/

SportsTracker is an application for people which want to record their sporting activities. It is not bound to a specific kind of sport, the user can create categories for all sport types such as running, cycling, swimming or tennis.

The main advantage is a good overview of your exercises and you can easily create diagrams and statistics for specific time ranges and sport types. In the calendar you can also track your body weight or create note entries, e.g. the training plan or upcoming sport events.

All the application data is stored in XML files. So it should be easy to access it with other tools or to write importers and exporters for other applications.

If you own a heart rate (HR) monitor with a computer interface you can display the recorded exercise files and evaluate the diagrams with the integrated ExerciseViewer application. You can organize them by attaching the recorded files to the exercise entries. When adding new exercises you can import the data from the recorded exercise files.

ChronoJump

http://www.chronojump.org/

Chronojump Boscosystem measures, and manages sport short-time tests. Chronojump is a free solution used by trainers, teachers and students. You have to buy (or build your own) hardware: a 50ms (jumps in contact platform) version or 10ms (run between photocells) version. Otherwise, the software is free.

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

Mechanical Determinants of 100m Sprint Running Performance

Jimson Lee — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:00:00 +0000

My good friend Bret Contreras wrote a fantastic review on the JB Morin’s Mechanical Determinants of 100-m Sprint Running Performance study, also known as the “Christophe Lemaitre study”. You can read Bret’s review here on his Blog.

Before I summarize the main points (you can read the original research and Bret’s critique on your own), I want to emphasize 2 points.

One is nothing beats 8 years of consistent, injury-free training with a well structured annual plan which includes proper biomechanical analysis and some form of strength training.

Second, you will from time to time get freaks who have won the “genetic lottery of life” (to quote Sebastian Coe). Some may play football, some may run track, and some may be an unknown shepherd in Argentina.

I love reading research papers, and I like to understand what athletes are doing (both biomechanically and physiology, and maybe pharmacology) to get them better year in and year out. But when you get an athlete like Usain Bolt or Christophe Lemaitre who throws your study off the charts, you have to ask (1) what are they doing right and (2) do they have a genetic disposition for that sport?

Here is a chart of Asafa Powell and Carmelita Jeter’s Personal Best by Year from this article, which demonstrates both genetic ability, consistent training, and great coaching. Imagine turning down Asafa Powell at Age 18 when he “only” ran 10.50? It’s like Decca records rejecting the Beatles!

The Christophe Lemaitre Study

Again, read the original sources for more information.

SUBJECTS:

The researchers examined 13 subjects. Nine of them were P.E. students who had been exercising regularly (including sprinting) over the past six months but were not sprint specialists. Three of them were National level sprinters in France. And one was Christophe Lemaitre.

RESULTS (specific to Christophe Lemaitre):

His effectiveness of force application onto the ground is much higher than his peers.
He produces much higher relative net horizontal force and power throughout the sprint.
The velocity component of his force-velocity profile is much higher than his peers.
And his step rate is higher than his peers.
His contact time is lower than his peers. (I’ve discussed this in depth in the Ralph Mann discussion)

QUESTIONS TO ASK:

What training methods best produce horizontal force and power during sprint running?
What muscle groups are the most concerned? JB Morin and his group are currently testing the hypothesis that the hip extensors (glutes and hamstrings) play an important role in this forward orientation of the resultant force.
What are the best cues for sprinting to allow them to increase horizontal force and power?
Does each sprinter have an optimal force/velocity profile, as recently shown for vertical jump performance by researcher Pierre Samozino?

These are excellent questions to ponder for future blog posts, so stay tuned!

Final Thoughts

To quote Gerard Mach, if at the end of 4 years of coaching (assuming a large group of athletes) you don’t have a handful of male athletes running 10.50 for the 100 meter sprint, something is wrong with the coach, training program, or both!

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

Usain Bolt’s Leanness Ratio, or Reciprocal Ponderal Index (RPI)

Jimson Lee — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 08:30:00 +0000

One of the Fitness testing ratios people love to throw around in the gym is BMI or Body Mass Index.

To calculate your BMI, simply divide your body weight in kilograms with your height in meters squared.

I am 1.83m and 85kg, which is 85 / (1.83)² = 25.4 BMI

(6 feet tall is 72 inches x 2.54 cm/inch)

“Science” tells me in order to be considered healthy by the “scientific community”, your BMI should be between 18.5 and 25. Should your BMI fall higher than 25, your will fall into the category of “overweight”. If you have more than 30, you will be considered obese. If your Body Mass Index is more than 40, you fall into the extremely obese category, putting you at much higher health risks than most.

Ha! So I am overweight?

Maybe… check out my photo here, along with Usain Bolt’s.

The Reciprocal Ponderal Index

A better way to determine body types and possibly screen for sprinting success is the Reciprocal Ponderal Index.

It is simply the height divided by cubed root of weight.

Ponderal Index = Ht (m) / Cube Root of Wt (kg)

At 1.83m and 85kg, that’s 183 / 85^1/3 = 41.62

So is 41.62 good?

Not according to this upcoming research article.

They found athletes with a “leanness ratio”, or Reciprocal Ponderal Index, of greater than 44 seemed to be the most successful. Of course they cited Usain Bolt, Christophe Lemaitre, Carl Lewis and Linford Christie. They didn’t quote Andre Cason.

So, what is YOUR Reciprocal Ponderal Index?

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

The Interference Effect: Can you Train Strength and Endurance Concurrently?

Jimson Lee — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:00:00 +0000

Should Decathletes run 7 miles on Sunday morning just to improve their 1500m time?

Can you train both short-to-long and long-to-short at the same time?

Can you train for strength AND train for endurance, for example, the STREND event? (i.e. 5 weight events followed by a 5k/3 mile run?)

And don’t get me started on Crossfit!

Can you Train Strength and Endurance Concurrently?

Interference call in Hockey

The answer is, of course you can, but is it beneficial? Will it work? Is there an interference at the muscle fiber level? Or, more specifically, at the molecular level?

Time an time again, I hear this argument.

Here’s my take…

Take the 1st Law of Thermodynamics:

Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. You only have certain amounts of energy. I do weights after the running workouts and the weights are nowhere near my max. Weight Training and Olympic lifting is not my sport… I want to run fast.

But when I got injured, and stopped running, my weight numbers exploded! I could never bench 3 plates (i.e. 140kg or 315kbs) until I actually stopped running.

All the energy I was consuming was now going to the weight room.

Before I go into the discussion, we need to talk about Charlie Francis “vertical integration”. Many others have plagiarized this concept but basically it’s doing all components of training all the time.

We do speed, speed endurance/special endurance, aerobic conditioning (via tempo runs), weight training, Olympic lifts, plyos, med ball, core all year ‘round. In a given week, we cover them all.

By knowing how this works is important in setting up your annual plan and determine what exercises you need to do for muscle adaptation.

Concurrent Strength and Endurance Training

There is a great read titled Concurrent Strength and Endurance Training: From Molecules to Man by Gustavo Nader.

Basically it says to avoid combining hypertrophy strength training (i.e. 10+ reps) with high intensity endurance training. That’s mainly where you’ll see an interference effect. Low intensity endurance combined with hypertrophy strength training (10+ reps) is acceptable. As well, you can combine max strength training (5 reps or less) with high intensity endurance.

Why is this?

Without going into biochemistry and physiology in detail, hypertrophy training and high intensity endurance training both stimulate peripheral adaptation. That’s interference.

Also, high-intensity endurance training increases capillary density as well as the mitochondria density… which are reduced in hypertrophy training. Again, that’s interference.

This is why I am surprised when I see baseball players train (this is February… Spring Training!). A lot of them, especially pitchers, do a lot of cardiovascular endurance training when the sport is clearly power and speed. Baseball players should be doing more plyometric, explosive weight training and short intervals on the track.

I’m not saying baseball players should NOT do cardio, but watch the intensity.

To close out this discussion, it really all boils down to 2 factors when designing a training program for any sport:

Volume x Intensity

Comments, anyone?

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

What is the World Record for the Plank?

Jimson Lee — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:00:00 +0000

At SpeedEndurance, I like to cover strength endurance just for fun.

One of the popular articles on this Blog is my former training partner Matt Bogdanowicz and his 60 second pull up record. (It has since been broken, but hey, records are made to be broken) This challenge was a training prep for his 30 minute pull up attempt back in 2007.

And then we have the amazing Alicia Weber who continues to set records in every strength and agility record out there… and she’s a woman!

In fact, last week Alicia Weber performed 802 consecutive perfect push-ups in one hour. After finishing the push-ups, Weber performed a plank exercise while reciting a published poem!

What about the Plank?

I wrote about the effectiveness of the plank in a past article Isometrics and Ab Core Exercises – The Hidden Secret? and how I thought (at the time) 2 minutes was a great milestone. Beginners can aim for 1 minute as a goal.

And the World Record for the Plank?

(**SPOILER ALERT – see below the video for the result**)

Click here for the video on YouTube, or use the player below.

The new world record for the plank is 1 hour, 20 minutes and 5.01 seconds set by George Hood in 2011.

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

The RedBull 400 meters… Uphill!

Jimson Lee — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

The Alpe Cermis is the toughest race in the Cross Country Skiing World Cup. It’s the final stage of the Tour de Ski, a 9km course just outside of Trento (Trentino) Italy, with a total climb of 495 meters!

Just search Google for photos and videos, and all the skiers literally collapse in exhaustion at the finish line.

But how about the ultimate 400 meter sprint?

The RedBull Uphill 400 meters

How about an uphill 400 meters with an incline grade of 45 degrees? Most good treadmills can only go 30 degrees if you are brave enough to try it.

We’ve seen climbing stairs up the CN tower in Toronto, as well as the Empire State building in New York.

But nothing can compare to running UP a ski-jump ramp.

And that’s exactly what happened.

The RedBull 400 meters was held on a ski-jump in Tauplitz near Bad Mitterndorf in Austria. You have to run on grass, stairs, and then smooth cement where the ramp is usually covered in ice and snow. The use of hands on the rail is highly recommended!

They even have a relay if you can’t do the entire run by yourself. The runner with the last leg up the cement slope is allowed to chuck the baton once he or she have received it. Smart advice, as you will need both hands!

Check out the video on Vimeo below!

Alicia Weber, where are you?

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

Calculating 100 meter Potential from 30 meter Flys

Jimson Lee — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:45:00 +0000

Friday’s article on Calculating 400 meter Potential stopped at 60 meters.

So to continue the downward spiral, I will show some extrapolations from 30 meter fly times or running start.

You can use the Freelap to accurately test 30 meter fly times.

I wrote a lengthy piece on What is a good time for 30 meters for Soccer and Football a year ago, which accounts for the acceleration.

If you want to do this test with blocks, then I add 1 full second for acceleration out of the blocks, as referenced in the Valeri Borzov – Training Procedures in Sprinting article

Calculating 100 meter Potential from 30 meters

First number 30m fly time (seconds), second number 100m time using blocks. (Add 1 second if you use blocks)

3.30 = 11.99
3.20 = 11.67
3.10 = 11.34
3.00 = 11.00
2.95 = 10.84
2.90 = 10.67
2.85 = 10.50
2.80 = 10.34
2.75 = 10.17
2.70 = 10.00
2.65 = 9.84

So, to break 11 seconds for the 100 meters, you’ll need to run at least 4.00 for 30 meters with blocks, or 3.00 without blocks with a flying start.

Speed does not lie.

How do you stack up?

Just to put this in perspective, from above, world class elite sprinters go under 3.70 with blocks or 2.70 with a running start.

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

Calculating 400 meter Potential [Video]

Jimson Lee — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:30:00 +0000

I did a 10 minute video on Calculating 400 meter Potential, giving conversions for 200m, 100m and 60 meter times.

The indoor track competitive season has begun, so if you just ran a 60 meter indoor, read on.

Scroll below, or click here for the video on YouTube.

Here is the presentation in PowerPoint with the transcript of the 12 slides on AuthorStream. You can also download the PPT or Video file (MP4 version) or get the transcripts from that link as well.

Below is the executive summary and charts.

URLs referenced in the video:

http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/technique/109-Frank_Dick.pdf

So it all comes down to raw speed, and since you are not running all out for 400 meters, that differential is called “speed reserve”, or your top speed minus actual running speed. A better “speed reserve” means you don’t have to run as fast, effort wise. You’ll be in a world of hurt if you go all out for the entire race!

Working backwards, you can take your 60 meter time, which will hurt a lot less than a 400m (trust me on this!) and calculate 100m, 200m and 400m potential.

I made a chart, and the shaded area were my range of times.

If you want to break 50m, I’m looking for:

60m in 7.4
100m in 11.32 -11.40
200m 22.59 – 22.99

UPDATE: In the chart below, I am only using the 1.54 factor for the 200m. Otherwise, I would need another set of 4 columns for the 1.53 factor (2 for 200m, 2 for 400m), so I left it out for the sake of simplicity. I forgot to mention it on the video.

Calculating 400 meter Potential Chart

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

NEW: fitnessMeter for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

Jimson Lee — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:20:00 +0000

Sten and I would like to thank all the beta testers who took the time to evaluate the latest fitness tester for iOS devices. You may recall we had a call-out for the iPhone, iPad and iPod FitnessMeter: Beta Testers Wanted.

The company, Appmaker, also makes the iPhone sprintTimer – Photo Finish & Race Timing.

The fitnessMeter 1.0 for iOS are innovative tools for measuring fitness levels. The Fitness app is for for coaches and individuals to allow automatic measurement of athletic performance in five categories:

Flying Sprint
Sprint & Shuttle
Vertical Jump
Repetitions
Beep Test.

Capable of providing results for more than 20 standard tests and exercises, the app uses the device’s camera and/or accelerometer to achieve an accuracy of +/- 0.02 of a second, leveraging technology from their sprintTimer app.

Measuring conditioning, fitness, and performance accurately is challenging, particularly when the subject of measurement has no one available to lend assistance. fitnessMeter employs motion detection technology to supply results that are more accurate than a stopwatch through use of the device’s built-in camera. Following selection of one of the five categories pre-programmed into the app, the user simply aligns the device, which will then automatically signal the start of the test and save the results.

Feature Highlights:

fitnessMeter is a versatile, configurable tool for fitness testing
Flying Sprint uses the camera to measure the time between two points, similar to two timing gates
Sprint and Shuttle functions like a starting gun plus a timing gate using the camera
Vertical Jump records a short video where you can easily measure the jumping height
Repetitions counts and times various activities like sit-ups, push-ups, step-ups, etc.
Beep Test takes a picture at each turn, which makes it easy to keep track of the results

When the Flying Sprint mode is selected, the app simulates two timing gates and measures the time between two points. It can be used for either measuring top speed or acceleration. Users set the running direction in Set Up, and then place the iPhone parallel to the track with one red line at the start of the timing zone and one at the finish. This requires the iPhone to be about the same distance away from the track as the running distance and therefore works best for 10m – 20m sprints.

In Sprint & Shuttle mode the app acts like a timing gate plus a starting gun. It has a number of settings that makes it possible to use for both conventional sprints and different agility tests. Users set the number of passes before stopping the clock and if the timer should start at the gun or when the runner starts moving.

Examples of tests can be run in this mode include: Conventional Sprint, 20-Yard Agility Test, 20-Yard Shuttle, Pro Agility Shuttle, Illinois Agility Test, Agility Shuttle Run, 505 Agility Test, Agility T-Test, 3 Cone Drill/L-Drill, and the Lane Agility Drill.

Selecting Vertical Jump mode, users can choose to use either the camera (back or front) and record a video or the accelerometer. The camera is generally more accurate, but the accelerometer is quick and easy to use. When using the camera users must place the iPhone/iPad vertically and fairly high up (it is not necessary to see the whole body). The horizontal distance to the spot they want to jump from (usually 1-3 m), is entered into the text field at the top of the screen. Then, users start the video, jump straight up, and stop the video. Next, users scroll the video to a frame where they are standing upright and place one of the arrows over a point on the body. Finally, users scroll to the frame where they are at their peak and place the other arrow on the same point. The result is displayed in the same units used for the distance. Long jump, stride length, etc., can also be measured in this mode. Alternatively, users can select the accelerometer-based test and jump with the iOS device in their pocket.

In Repetitions mode, users can measure time and reps of such as exercises as Sit-Ups, Push-Ups, Step-Ups, Chin-Ups, Rope-Skipping, etc. Either the camera (back or front) with motion detection or the accelerometer can be used. The camera is generally more appropriate, but there can be instances when the accelerometer is useful, for example, measuring small quick motions like skipping rope. fitnessMeter can be set to stop after a certain time or a certain number of repetitions. There is a setting for fast repetitions (for both camera and the accelerometer), but the default setting covers most normal workouts. Users can switch to the front camera in the camera view, which is useful when users are testing themselves.

Lastly, Beep Test mode follows the original MSFT-Test ( a common aerobic endurance test), but can be configured to fit alternative procedures. Users tap Config and Edit to change the number of shuttles and speed for each level. Users can also let fitnessMeter save an image at each beep to keep track of a large group of runners by going into Camera Settings and choosing Half or All. Half means that every second lap is covered, which is useful if the camera only points towards the starting line. When the test is stopped, a video with all the pictures is presented. The video can then be saved to the common picture folder.

"fitnessMeter is an advanced timing and measurement tool for fitness testing," stated Sten Kaiser of Kaiser & Kaiser. "It can be applied to many different kinds of activities and is aimed both at coaches and at individuals who want to test themselves."

Device Requirements:
* iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch (video camera equipped is preferable)
* Compatible with iPhone 3Gs/4/4s, iPad 2, and iPod touch 4
* iOS 4.0 or later (iOS 5 tested)
* 1.0 MB

Pricing and Availability:
fitnessMeter 1.0 is only $1.99 (USD) and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Health and Fitness category. Review copies are available upon request.

Purchase and Download on iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=477488986&mt=8

Click here for the YouTube Video:

For more information on the fitnessMeter, go to:http://www.appmaker.se/fitnessMeter or contact Sten Kaiser at sten@appmaker.se or call +46 70 357 36 72.

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