Speediance recently unveiled Gym Monster 3, Gym Monster Ultra, Gym Nano and a much bigger AI strategy for the future. At its latest launch in Los Angeles, BOXROX tried the new equipment and spoke to the team about the next steps for the tech and its team.
Speediance is best known for Gym Monster, its compact home training system built around digitally controlled cable resistance.
Xiaoya Lin, Head of AI Product at Speediance Intelligence Lab, and Hongbo Wei, Head of Brand and Global Operations at Speediance.
There was plenty of new hardware to learn about and experience, including Gym Monster 3, Gym Monster Ultra, Gym Nano and Speediance Strap. But much of the presentation focused on what Speediance is focusing on behind the equipment.
At the event I spoke to the Speediance team about four technologies in particular: Votus, Oryn, Somni and AEVIS.
4 Main Technologies
Votus analyses movement. Oryn is focused on decision making around training, nutrition and recovery. Somni is a research project exploring how decisions made now might affect someone’s physical state later. AEVIS is being developed as the layer that transfers information between each of the former.
Speediance Brand Director Sean Wade described Votus to me as the eyes of the system, while Oryn is closer to resembling the brain.
One of the most interesting demonstrations for me was the Votus technology.
Votus, Your Phone Becomes Part of the Gym
Speediance showed Votus analyzing an individual exercising whilst using the camera on a standard smartphone.
From that video, the system can reconstruct all the movements in 3D and analyze exactly how each exercise is being performed. Speediance also demonstrated how this system can be used for velocity based training, adding repetition speed and movement data to the information normally recorded during a workout.
This was an excellent demonstration of the direct use cases for the technology. Most connected fitness equipment is already very good at counting things. It understands the resistance that has been selected, the number of repetitions completed and the total duration of the respective workout.
It is much harder for a machine to understand the form of those repetitions. Utilizing a phone camera gifts Speediance another source of information in a simple manner, without asking somebody to attach sensors to their body or buy another piece of equipment.
For anyone training at home, I see the appeal. You can follow a program perfectly well on your own, whilst the tech can keep you on the straight an narrow when performing every rep. Feedback that allows you to see when your form breaks down, exactly when you experience technical failure, can help you to work out your appropriate limits and level up your training accordingly.
Speediance is currently demonstrating Votus as part of its own fitness ecosystem, rather than offering it as standalone software for use across conventional gyms.
Oryn
Oryn focuses on the decisions that surround a workout.
It focuses on exercise, nutrition and sleep. Speediance argues that a fitness system should understand more than just the workout somebody has asked it to create. The team was clear that it does not want to build another general AI assistant.
“We call it ‘know everything a little’, but now our proposition is from ‘know everything a little’ to ‘know one thing completely’,” the Speediance team told BOXROX, “The one thing means fitness.”
That could mean keeping a session exactly as planned. It could also mean changing the training load or putting greater emphasis on recovery. None of that will sound especially unusual to a coach. Training has always been adjusted according to fatigue, recovery, sleep and everything else happening in an athlete’s life.
What Speediance is trying to change is how much of that information consumer fitness technology can process itself.
This became clearer during the AEVIS demonstration.
AEVIS
The example Speediance chose involved a user telling the system that they had an upcoming six hour round trip drive.
AEVIS took the journey into account and adjusted the planned training load, while placing greater emphasis on sleep and recovery. Information from the subsequent workout, including movement footage and heart rate data, could then be used when considering the next session.
It was not the most dramatic demonstration of AI at the event, but it was one of the easiest to relate to. People miss sleep. Work runs late. Travel gets in the way. A hard session leaves you more tired than expected.
A training plan written on Sunday does not know any of that unless somebody updates it. Speediance wants AEVIS to retain enough information for those changes to become part of the next decision.
Somni
A highly interesting technology, Somni is still earlier on in its developmental stages.
Speediance calls it a human state world model. The research looks at how different choices could lead to different outcomes around fatigue, sleep, appetite and someone’s capacity to train. Rather than attempting to predict one certain outcome, Somni is designed to consider a range of possibilities.
One member of the Speediance team described the wider ambition as building a system with “eyes” and a “brain” that could eventually help users focus less on reviewing what has already happened and more on what they should do next.
There are obvious limits to what can currently be claimed here. Somni is a technology preview and Speediance is clear that it is not a medical device. It was still an interesting inclusion in the launch because it showed the long-term time horizon Speediance is focusing upon.
Large swathes of fitness technology tells you what you did yesterday. Speediance is researching whether that information can eventually help its software help its users to make more useful decisions about tomorrow and the future.
Testing Gym Monster 3 and Gym Monster Ultra
For all the attention dedicated to software, Speediance had also brought a substantial amount of new hardware to Los Angeles.
Gym Monster 3 delivers up to 220 pounds of digital resistance across 19 cable positions.
Gym Monster Ultra increases that to 260 pounds, with 33 cable positions, a vertical high lat pulldown, a multi grip pull up setup and an adjustable thigh restraint.
The first thing I noticed when I tried the equipment was the resistance itself. I told the Speediance team at the time that it was incredibly smooth and easy to use, probably the best cable resistance I had ever tried.
That matters more than some of the specifications when you are standing in front of the machine. Digital resistance can offer all sorts of training modes, but none of them are particularly useful if the cable does not feel good to work with.
The other advantage of controlling resistance digitally is that it does not have to behave like a conventional weight stack. The machine can alter the way resistance is delivered throughout the movement and use software to create training modes that would be difficult to replicate with plates.
Gym Monster Ultra tops out at 260 pounds, which means stronger athletes are going to exceed what it can provide on some exercises. I asked the Speediance team about that directly.
“People will ask, ‘260 pounds is not enough. My squat is like 300, 400. Can you support that?’” they told BOXROX. “We are still developing and we’re trying to break that limit.”
It is an important consideration if Speediance wants the Ultra to appeal further into the performance market, and for a larger pool of athletes. For many home users, 260 pounds of cable resistance will be plenty. For a strong athlete looking to replace more of their conventional gym setup, it may not be enough.
Gym Nano – A Surprising New Product
Gym Nano offers a very different proposition. It weighs 8.2 kilograms but can produce up to 220 pounds of digital resistance.
It also records velocity and power and can be used for assessments including peak force, rate of force development and left to right asymmetry. Seeing the size of it in person makes those figures feel even more striking.
There are plenty of compact exercise products aimed at travellers. Most involve accepting a fairly obvious compromise in what you can actually do with them. The attraction of Nano is the amount of resistance Speediance has managed to put into something that could realistically travel with you.
It also shows why the company’s software plans extend beyond Gym Monster. Once several different pieces of Speediance equipment are producing training data, there is more information for its wider system to work with.
Speediance Strap Adds Recovery Data
Speediance Strap adds another source of information. The screen free wearable is designed to collect physiological and recovery data between workouts. It uses greenteg Calera technology to monitor core body temperature trends from the wrist alongside other important training and recovery signals.
Wearables are hardly in short supply, so the important part for Speediance will be what it can do with the information, rather than simply the matter of collecting more.
The Strap can collect information in general training, away from actual training sessions. Gym Monster records what happens during the workout. Votus can look at how somebody moves.
Speediance wants its AI systems sitting between these two systems. Not all of those connections exist yet.
The Connections Between Software and Hardware
AEVIS does not currently decide that somebody is poorly recovered and then autonomously change the resistance on their Gym Monster. Speediance describes that deeper relationship between its software and training hardware as part of its longer term plans.
That is worth making clear because there is a considerable difference between what Speediance demonstrated in Los Angeles and what the finished system might eventually be able to do.
What I saw was new hardware alongside, some genuinely interesting technology for movement analysis, optimizing training decisions and recovery.
Sense. Decide. Act. Learn
Speediance summarized the process at the event as four different stages: Sense. Decide. Act. Learn.
The company built its name by putting a surprising amount of gym equipment into a relatively small space. Its next challenge is more complicated, working out what to do with everything that equipment knows about the person that is using it.
We’ll be hoping to run a BOXROX Rated Review on this series soon too. More information on the products can be found at Speediance.com
