This is a very good example of a geek's solution to the wrong problem.
The point of pullups is to improve upper body strength and muscularity. Once one is able to do 10-15 pullups in one set with bodyweight the stress of this unweighted movement is insufficient to cause much further adaptation.
At this point the trainee should start doing pullups with added weight and/or do pullups on ropes, a fat bar or a vertical pipe.
So, instead of actually making real progress in improving his grip, upper body and back strength, the OP has managed to spend a lot of money quantifying something almost worthless. That money and time could have been productively invested in buying some sand, putting it in heavy garbage bags and then loading a backpack to add weight to his pullups.
Note: For a cheap(possibly free) pullup training tool simply get a regular claw hammer, use the claw on top of the doorjam(or tree limb) and grab the handle with both hands and do pullups. Chalking your hands will almost certainly be required otherwise they will slip off.
I think you're missing the point. Have you met geeks before? (And I say that tongue-in-cheek!) They thrive on stuff like this. I love it! I think there are some who would say that, if you don't particularly like this type of article, that you may not really enjoy HN overall.
Great article! The process of using hardware to count calisthenics is certainly not trivial. Thank you for sharing your data and process.
Recently my consulting firm was tasked with detecting the calisthenics exercises (push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups) involved in the Navy SEAL physical screening test. After much research, we were able to use the accelerometer and gyroscope on the iPhone in tandem to achieve this. I was surprised at the level of success we were able to attain. You inspire me to write up a bit about how we were able to make this work.
Looks like a fun app, but the description makes my head hurt:
"This is a paradigm shift in fitness apps utilizing the best features in mobile technology moving one step closer to wearable computing to determine the physical conditioning level of athletes who want to test their mettle to see if they have what it takes physically to just get their foot in the door as a potential candidate to become a Navy SEAL, EOD, Diver, Special Warfare Combatant Crewmember, or AIR Rescue Swimmer? SEALReady guides you through a simulated physical screening test and lets you know how you stack up. It’s an intense mini triathlon without the bike but throws in a 500 yard swim using only a side, combat swimmer, or breast stroke, a minimum number of calisthenics, but you want more to score, and a timed GPS run."
Something like this might be clearer - it outlines what the app is actually for in the first couple of lines, and misses out all the empty buzzwords (paradigm shift? really?):
"Do you have what it takes to become a potential Navy SEAL, EOD, Diver, Special Warfare Combatant Crewmember, or AIR Rescue Swimmer? Check your physical conditioning level and test your mettle with SEALReady. SEALReady guides you through a simulated physical screening test - a 500 yard swim, calisthenics, and a timed run - and lets you know how you stack up."
A good copywriter could probably get that even snappier.
Oh, also, having your customer review be made from the same account name as your HN account doesn't make it look very convincing ;)
Yeah, I also work for the consulting company that developed this app and I couldn't agree more. I do feel compelled to say for our own sake that we do, in fact, advise our clients on things like App Store descriptions and app icons, but we don't always succeed. :-)
Hah, yes, I'm very familiar with that problem - my first ever commercial site got all its reasonably tight copy replaced by rambling lists of features and buzzwords from my boss's "marketing guy who really knows what he's doing"... :P
So very cool. I think there's a big future in automated personal metric tracking like this. Keeping a log of everything you eat is an incredibly powerful tool, but too onerous for most to keep up with - imagine if your glasses automatically recognized everything you ate and logged the calories / estimated nutrition?
One way a food journal helps is by stopping you from eating bad things (because you consider the food before you eat it). I wouldn't want to remove all of the friction here (for weight-loss anyway). Help in getting it right and avoiding bad choices would be great, though.
I think the friction of reporting could be replaced with slicker access to information. For example, a taskbar or smartphone widget that tells you how many calories you have left to consume, some sort of UI giving you information as you are selecting a meal (rather than later during self-reporting), or emails/text messages when you go over your target.
Also, transparent information gathering could be useful for later investigations. For example, you might eat normally for two months and then analyze which calorie sources you'd be most willing to sacrifice.
My first thought was that this could be done (with less work) using a smartphone's accelerometer. That said, I definitely dig the setup. Thanks for the mention of Phidgets.
How do you handle the accelerometer differently for the different exercises (swim, push-up, curl-up, pull-up, run)? And how are you able to support swimming?
How practical is the pull-up bar though? All I can think of is that Far Side cartoon (you know the one with the guy on the floor after hitting his head doing pullups), which Gary Larson said is his only cartoon based on personal experience.
I am trying to decide on the best approach on getting some sort of pull-up bar inside an apartment with ceilings that I can reach on my tiptoes.
My first thought is that this should absolutely be sold along with every pullup bar. I wonder if the author has tried to contact them.
To take this to the next level I would want geofenced app integration so that if I started to slack off, and I was home, I would get a reminder to go do some pullups.
This is so freaking awesome - I wish I could upvote this 10 times. This kind of work is a perfect representation of the hacker mentality. Props to the author, really cool stuff.
The article mentions having "no room for a weight set". Why not just get adjustable dumbbells like the ones Bowflex makes? They take up very little room and you can certainly figure out lifting routines that hit all the key muscle groups within your equipment/space constraints.
I had no clue that wifi weight gadgets existed - I must own one now! I do notice that both FitBit and Withings have their own wifi-enabled scales. The Withings is $168 and the FitBit is $129. Anyone have a suggestion for a specific model?
From what I hear, they're identical. The whitings although seems to have a display with more resolution, and since it's been around longer, more integration with other apps.
I should plug my own startup: we have vision processing algorithms designed for exercise tracking on mobile devices. If you pointed you phone at yourself, we could track this kind of stuff. Email if you're interested in sdk access.
The point of pullups is to improve upper body strength and muscularity. Once one is able to do 10-15 pullups in one set with bodyweight the stress of this unweighted movement is insufficient to cause much further adaptation.
At this point the trainee should start doing pullups with added weight and/or do pullups on ropes, a fat bar or a vertical pipe.
So, instead of actually making real progress in improving his grip, upper body and back strength, the OP has managed to spend a lot of money quantifying something almost worthless. That money and time could have been productively invested in buying some sand, putting it in heavy garbage bags and then loading a backpack to add weight to his pullups.
Note: For a cheap(possibly free) pullup training tool simply get a regular claw hammer, use the claw on top of the doorjam(or tree limb) and grab the handle with both hands and do pullups. Chalking your hands will almost certainly be required otherwise they will slip off.