Counting Pullups • Hacker News Board

Re: Counting Pullups

#21

Post by ScottWhigham » Thu, Apr 26, 2012, 6:39 PM UTC

davidtanner wrote: post #19

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 p…

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.

Re: Counting Pullups

#22

Post by ScottWhigham » Thu, Apr 26, 2012, 6:41 PM UTC

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?

Re: Counting Pullups

#23

Post by aculver » Thu, Apr 26, 2012, 6:55 PM UTC

camtarn wrote: post #11

zsiec wrote: post #5

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…

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, Di…

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. :-)

Re: Counting Pullups

#24

Post by mahyarm » Thu, Apr 26, 2012, 8:09 PM UTC

ScottWhigham wrote: post #22

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.

Re: Counting Pullups

#25

Post by chwahoo » Thu, Apr 26, 2012, 9:33 PM UTC

loumf wrote: post #10

krosaen wrote: post #3

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.

Re: Counting Pullups

#26

Post by iamleppert » Thu, Apr 26, 2012, 10:16 PM UTC

In the time you spent doing this, you could have probably made your pullup bar obsolete and moved on to weighted exercise.

Re: Counting Pullups

#27

Post by camtarn » Fri, Apr 27, 2012, 9:40 AM UTC

aculver wrote: post #23

camtarn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, Di…

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

Re: Counting Pullups

#28

Post by sireat » Fri, Apr 27, 2012, 10:03 AM UTC

Awesome use of technology!

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.

Re: Counting Pullups

#29

Post by tedmiston » Fri, Apr 27, 2012, 3:46 PM UTC

zsiec wrote: post #20

tedmiston wrote: post #17

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.

We thought so too! http://itunes.apple.com/app/sealready/id520161454

That's got great attention to detail.

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?