Author here: funny you should mention that! Same idea has been on my mind for years at this point.
To me, the holy grail of sports training is to have simple but powerful enough models to estimate power data from dozens of movements, and fit various power curves that match real-world training.
So much promise there.
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As for Stryd: That's so interesting. I'd imagine a lot of the same parallels to cycling to apply? Once you have your running CP/FTP, I'd imagine you could follow the same cycling training plans (relative to your FTP) for the same intended stimulus.
I'm curious though, can you see the Watts/zone/W'bal/etc. values on a watch or something when you're running?
Thinking back, I should also add: if you're interested in how hard a single hit is, then yes joules!
I'm approaching it as a workout, where you're doing dozens of hit. Good idea to have an individual strike joule view to the display though! "carnival mode"
I didn't look into or find any myself, but "power meter enabled" sports like cycling, rowing, etc. have a way to measure the strain/fatigue of efforts relative to the athlete's fitness (FTP). Same would apply here.
There are various methods to measure that strain, e.g. Strava, intervals.icu, TrainerPeak all have their slightly tweaked implementations.
100% agree. And the issue with med-ball slams is they also can just be dropped in a testing setting, and the only power needed to be generated is on the "up" cycle. I wouldn't even trust my own med-ball slam benchmarks from one month to the next, as I'm not confident I slammed them with the same intensity.
I'm curious though, wouldn't a Concept2 ski-erg be the best machine for that job?
>track your one rep max force [...] especially for sprinters
Yeaaah that's the ticket =) One level of abstraction higher: you can think of that 1RM as the leftmost point on the max power curve, i.e. max force you've historically generated, from 5secs all the way to e.g. 60 mins [1].
Both are needed, but for an athlete watts is by far the more useful feedback for training, and following the intended stimulus of workouts.
As a workout, "bike 30 km" is vague and meaningless. "bike 30km in 1h" is better, but not specific to the athlete: some have better cardio than others. Most serious cardio workouts are given in zones: "bike 1h at 60-65% of your functional threshold power" [1] – this particular workout would also be known as "zone 2 training session".
My Samsung computer monitor is also the stuff of nightmares. Same story: useless "smart" UI features. I'm told I can use it as a dozen different things. But it sucks as a computer monitor.
Fine tuning was never really hard to do locally if you had the hardware. What I’d like to read in an article like this is more details into why they’re making a comeback.
To me, the holy grail of sports training is to have simple but powerful enough models to estimate power data from dozens of movements, and fit various power curves that match real-world training.
So much promise there.
---
As for Stryd: That's so interesting. I'd imagine a lot of the same parallels to cycling to apply? Once you have your running CP/FTP, I'd imagine you could follow the same cycling training plans (relative to your FTP) for the same intended stimulus.
I'm curious though, can you see the Watts/zone/W'bal/etc. values on a watch or something when you're running?