GymAware Exercise Assist

From the Founder's desk:

GymAware has been collecting velocity data on athletes for years and we’ve seen first hand the challenges coaches face on a day to day basis once they start velocity based training.

Nobody is perfect and everybody makes mistakes  - unfortunately, it’s these mistakes that muddies the way forward for coaches in easily interpreting velocity based data.

Therefore, improving the overall quality of historical results and ensuring that data is not only accurately measured but also correctly labelled was the key driving force behind EXERCISE ASSIST.

This is an advanced feature of GymAware whereby the base algorithm learns the standard movement pattern for each exercise for each individual athlete.

Why do we need to do this:

Measurements made at the individual rep level will be more accurate and at the set level, there will be a reduced amount of erroneous data from movements like the initial positioning of the barbell before lifting, data from un-racking and re-racking movements, bouncing barbells, or just from repositioning following jumping type of movements.

All of these types of movements can be automatically ignored, so that the data reported is only the data of interest. Another important area is maximal effort reps. This is where the movement of the barbell can be very slow (<0.1m/s). Grinding type reps or reps that contain a momentary pause can be better measured using the new Exercise Assist - based algorithm.

In addition, once each exercise movement patterns are understood, GymAware will detect the exercise being performed and prompt your athletes should they select an incorrect exercise. 

The more you use GymAware the more personalized the experience will be for your athletes. 

What is Exercise Assist?

Exercise Assist is an additional feature to the GymAware app that predicts what movement/exercise that you or your athlete is completing to ensure that your data is always accurate.

Exercise assist is only available with one of the Cloud Subscription levels.

Why was Exercise Assist developed?

Many coaches and athletes have had the issue of data being stored incorrectly under alternative exercises and having to manually remember these sets and change them to the correct exercise during or at the completion of a session. 

Exercise Assist was developed to give coaches and athletes more confidence that their data is accurate against the exercises chosen.

Exercise assist acts like an assistant coach to ensure that the right exercise is being selected. This is particularly useful for younger athletes or those athletes that are not as accustomed to using a VBT device during their training.

How does Exercise Assist work?

Exercise Assist works by matching movement patterns recorded by the GymAware to your usual movement patterns for a particular exercise. 

Exercise Assist also matches your movement patterns to the patterns of many of our global users to build a standard range for a particular exercise.

How to operate Exercise Assist

Exercise Assist is controlled by the lighting bolt icon.

When you select a exercise the lighting bolt will be coloured in one of the following ways:

	Orange lighting bolt + Orange Horizontal dashed line  indicates exercise is TRAINED and ON TRAINED means that the system has learned your typical movement pattern for this exercise ON means if you select the wrong exercise, the system can prompt you to select this trained one instead
	Orange lighting bolt only  indicates exercise is TRAINED and OFF this is considered as Exercise Assist as off and the system will not prompt you if you do the wrong exercise
	White lighting bolt + White Horizontal dashed line  indicates exercise is UN-TRAINED and ON UN-TRAINED means that the system is still learning your typical movement pattern for this exercise as you do additional reps, these will be added to the system to predict this exercise if you select the wrong exercise, the system won't be able to prompt you until you have TRAINED an exercise
	White lighting bolt only  indicates exercise is UN-TRAINED and OFF this is considered as Exercise Assist as off and the system will not prompt you if you do the wrong exercise

The "Wrong Exercise" Popup

If you complete a different exercise than the one you have selected on the GymAware app (and both these exercises are trained) you will receive the following "Wrong Exercise" popup.

i.e. completing bench press but having deadlift selected

The first popup you will see will suggest the exercise that the system believes you are doing.

You can choose to ACCEPT this exercise which will update the previous set completed and change your selected exercise for the next set.

If you are completing a different exercise than the one that was suggested, SWIPE RIGHT to view other exercises which you can ACCEPT.

You can also choose to IGNORE which will keep the exercise you had originally selected.