Beast Sensor Fitness Tracker+ review

Geschatte leestijd: 5 minuten In recent years, the applications of apps and wearables for sporting purposes have exploded. Many of these apps are mainly intended for long-term cardio activities, such as Runkeeper, Nike+. Even the recently released Apple Watch in the Netherlands with a built-in heart rate monitor does not seem intended for serious strength training. The Beast Sensor aims to change that. The Beast Sensor is an activity tracker aimed at strength athletes.

Beast Sensor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2rWPyqtS2I

The Beast Sensor was developed by 3 programmers in Milan. It is an Indiegogo project (similar to Kickstarter) that recently raised $60,000. With the Beast Sensor, you get direct real-time feedback during the fitness exercises you are doing with your own body weight, dumbbells, kettlebells, and fitness equipment. You can select the feedback you want to receive: strength, speed, and explosiveness. This way, you gain insight into how you perform the exercises and can achieve your fitness goals faster. At least, that’s the idea.

How does the Beast Sensor work

The Beast Sensor is nothing more than a small accelerometer equipped with a magnet. The accelerometer connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth, and all data is projected in the Beast App. The data is collected with the Beast Sensor, which you attach to the barbell, dumbbell, or kettlebell using the magnet. When training with your own body weight, you can use the Beast Vest. The smart software in the Beast Tracker and the Beast app make it possible to map the following aspects of your training:

• The speed at which a repetition is performed
• The strength generated during a rep
• The explosive force generated during a rep
• Calculating your 1RM
• The number of reps per exercise
• Total training volume
• And much more

Beast Sensor review

The hardware of the Beast Sensor is a small accelerometer equipped with a magnet. By attaching the sensor, depending on the exercise, to your wrist, vest, or weights, you can measure the speed at which you perform an exercise (repetition).

Software of the Beast Sensor

In combination with the built-in algorithms and the accompanying app, this allows you to measure various aspects of your training, including:

• The speed at which a rep is performed
• The strength generated
• The explosive force generated
• The number of reps per exercise
• Total training volume (total number of reps multiplied by the weight used

The theory

In theory, these are mainly aspects that are interesting for explosive sports where the speed at which you generate strength is as important or more important than the amount of strength you generate. This may be more suitable for people practicing explosive sports and less interesting for people training for muscle mass, for example. However, data about your training can also be very insightful in the latter group.

Training with the Beast Sensor

When you receive the Beast Sensor, you cannot use it immediately. You need the app to display the measurements. To use the app, you need an account. For this, you need to email an activation code (found in the box) to the manufacturer. Then, you should expect 24 hours before your account is activated, and you receive the account details by email. Even after activation the next day, I still couldn’t use the Beast sensor because I tried it with a third-generation iPad and then a Galaxy S III. Both apparently too old to pick up the sensor’s Bluetooth. I ultimately tested it with an iPhone 5s.

Cycles & Workouts

You can use the time before you can get started well. You can create your workouts on the website thisisbeast.com. First, you create a so-called “cycle,” a collection of workouts that you will do in a self-specified period. Within that cycle, you can create “Workouts.” For example, I created a cycle for a month. Within that, I created workouts such as “Chest and biceps,” “Back and triceps,” “Legs and shoulders.” When creating the workouts, you can specify which exercises you will do in that workout. Beast already has some exercises in the list, but certainly not all, so you will have to add exercises yourself. It is therefore easy to add all of these first under “Exercises” (if they are not already in the list). After that, you can distribute them over workouts that you can spread over a period. Because you specify on which days within the cycle you do which workout. You then send this data to the app so that the training is ready when you use the app in the gym.

Registering reps: varying results

When creating the exercises, you can also specify how the sensor should be attached. If you use it for clients you guide. This can be on the weight you move, such as dumbbells, barbells, and the discs of cable machines. You can also attach it to the supplied wristband if the exercise requires it (for example, dumbbell curls with an elastic band). In all these cases, however, the registrations I made during the training were not particularly accurate. In one exercise, every repetition was measured, in another not one, and sometimes a few. This while the sensor seemed to be attached in exactly the same way. This was the biggest downside of the sensor, at least in the setup I used (using the iPhone 5s). It was not clear to me whether this was due to the Bluetooth connection, the sensor, or the algorithms that determine whether a “rep” has been done.

Cumbersome when training yourself

If the Beast were to work flawlessly, it doesn’t always seem ideal for your own workouts. Continuously having to work with your mobile phone is a big distraction, although it did become accustomed after some time. This problem does not apply to trainers who take care of all these matters while their client can concentrate on the training. Those trainers could gain a lot of insight from Beast’s data.

Reports

At the end of a training session, you naturally want to see the data from the training. However, this cannot be done in the app. All your data is sent to Beast’s cloud. You then have to log in to the site with your account to see the data. There, Beast shows its strength in a beautiful representation of your training results. Above you see the results of bench pressing with dumbbells. You see the total number of repetitions of all sets as measured by the sensor. By hovering over the bars, you can see details about that set. I started with a warm-up set with 20kg. Those first four yellow bars are the reps in this first set. In practice, however, I did 20 plus five “delayed” (very slow execution). Only four of these were measured. Of the second set with 32kg, 13 repetitions were measured out of 15. Here, I made the mistake of not changing the weight in the app to 32kg, so the software cannot calculate the real power either. In the third set with 38kg (weight now adjusted in the app), only 2 of the 12 repetitions were measured. Then you’re disappointed when you’ve squeezed out that last one, and the app “rewards” you with 2 reps. The fourth set with 42kg according to the app showed my best rep (based on the data I entered, including the wrong weight in the second set). In that one, the sensor counted four of the eight repetitions made. The second recorded repetition (the 21st recorded repetition of all sets) showed the greatest measured force taking into account weight and speed. In the fifth set with 50kg, two out of the five repetitions were measured. A beautiful representation of incorrect data.

Teething problems

The idea is nice, but the execution leaves something to be desired. Both the main points such as the reliability of measurements, but also things like the app interface. It is not very intuitive; for example, you have to go to the details of a rep from your previous set to select a new exercise. Also, the app sometimes tends to crash, which is very annoying when you were just about to start your next set.

Conclusion

The Beast sensor was a startup project by a few enthusiastic guys in Milan. I think the current product shows the potential of the sensor. By working on reliability and user-friendliness, the gentlemen can create a very interesting fitness tool. Currently, we are still testing the Beast sensor with an Android device.