The £20 Tool That Tracks Effort

I was scrolling Instagram for the first time in a while and saw an ad that almost took my money.

They showed this weird tool you place on your barbell, machine, etc. that measures distance and rep speed.

The thing that stopped me was the £100 price tag and expectation of a super pricey monthly subscription.

It got me thinking though.

For starters this only looked good to me because of what it measured. Effort. As much as I’ll recommend guys use video to gauge this, a tool can be way more convenient.

Odds are you’re going to be less intrusive and find it way easier to strap a device to something than to setup an entire tripod system to record yourself, and then watch that footage.

So I got to work on my fix.

This isn’t entirely built out yet, I’m going to get real DIY with this and make a physical product that anyone can recreate, but for starters I’ve managed to crack the most important part of the tool.

Look it’s good because of two reasons.

1. You can gauge effort through rep speed

2. You can guarantee standardisation through rep distance

Standardisation makes sure you’re not just doing partials without noticing, or giving up early on a rep, that’s cool.

But most machine/lifters have already got that side mostly nailed.

Luckily enough the side focused more on effort has an entirely free way you can do it.

Truthfully the ~£20 DIY tool I’m making is just adding distance to rep speed.

So, here’s what I managed to find for my first tests.

There’s a completely free app you can add to your phone which takes advantage of all the sensors your phone comes with.

If you go to your Appstore and look for “PhyPhox” you should be able to find it.

Sure this app is for Physics majors or something… But no one uses more practical application of physics than science based lifters. It’s kinda the biggest stereotype of this niche 😬

So once that’s done you’ll be able to see the raw sensor “Acceleration (without g)”.

Using this, ensuring you’re starting your sets/reps with a proper pause and tempo, you’ll end up being able to view a graph of your set.

It’ll show exactly what your rep looked like, it’ll help you quantify velocity loss.

If you see a very consistent bar speed on your set, there’s one of two things happening.

1. You either didn’t put much effort in or

2. You didn’t place your phone on the thing that moves…

So give that tool a bit of a try.

Go find out just how hard you’re pushing it.

Comparing graphs might also be able to reveal where you’re cheating in movements, pretty cool stuff.

Enjoy this tool.

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher