from Hacker News

Counting Pullups

by afx2in on 4/26/12, 1:03 PM with 26 comments

• by davidtanner on 4/26/12, 5:40 PM

  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 pipe.

  So, instead of actually making real progress in improving his grip, upper body and back strength, the OP has managed to spend a lot of money quantifying something almost worthless. That money and time could have been productively invested in buying some sand, putting it in heavy garbage bags and then loading a backpack to add weight to his pullups.

  Note: For a cheap(possibly free) pullup training tool simply get a regular claw hammer, use the claw on top of the doorjam(or tree limb) and grab the handle with both hands and do pullups. Chalking your hands will almost certainly be required otherwise they will slip off.

• by zsiec on 4/26/12, 2:21 PM

  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 was surprised at the level of success we were able to attain. You inspire me to write up a bit about how we were able to make this work.

  If you are interested in this app, feel free to check it out here: http://itunes.apple.com/app/sealready/id520161454

• by krosaen on 4/26/12, 2:19 PM

  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?

• by tedmiston on 4/26/12, 5:33 PM

  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.

• by sireat on 4/27/12, 10:03 AM

  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.

• by Florin_Andrei on 4/26/12, 2:52 PM

  Raspberry Pi + Phidgets = next step from Arduino + shields.

  Provided the Phidgets work well with Linux, which is not clear to me ATM.

• by iandanforth on 4/26/12, 4:11 PM

  My first thought is that this should absolutely be sold along with every pullup bar. I wonder if the author has tried to contact them.

  To take this to the next level I would want geofenced app integration so that if I started to slack off, and I was home, I would get a reminder to go do some pullups.

• by jenius on 4/26/12, 5:34 PM

  This is so freaking awesome - I wish I could upvote this 10 times. This kind of work is a perfect representation of the hacker mentality. Props to the author, really cool stuff.

• by omgsean on 4/26/12, 2:20 PM

  This is great. I would absolutely buy one of these.

• by ssharp on 4/26/12, 3:56 PM

  The article mentions having "no room for a weight set". Why not just get adjustable dumbbells like the ones Bowflex makes? They take up very little room and you can certainly figure out lifting routines that hit all the key muscle groups within your equipment/space constraints.

• by ScottWhigham on 4/26/12, 6:41 PM

  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?

• by acgourley on 4/26/12, 5:26 PM

  I should plug my own startup: we have vision processing algorithms designed for exercise tracking on mobile devices. If you pointed you phone at yourself, we could track this kind of stuff. Email if you're interested in sdk access.

• by trafficlight on 4/26/12, 3:38 PM

  Very cool. I had no idea Fitbit had an API.

• by iamleppert on 4/26/12, 10:16 PM

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