No longer reserved for just Power 5 NCAA football programs or professional athletes, EliteForm’s new Velocity-Based Training (VBT) tech has cast open the doors of opportunity, delivering on the promise of VBT for schools operating within more conventional budget constraints. Perhaps the most significant triumph of EliteForm’s new platform is how – as a camera-based toolset – Lift Tracker and TeamSync are democratizing access to cutting-edge VBT technology.
As the OG disruptor in the space, EliteForm’s well-known Integrated Platform has represented the gold standard in VBT, and for good reason. EliteForm’s rack-mounted hardware and custom software is verifiably responsible for producing multiple champions. Their tech doesn’t just enhance performance; it revolutionizes it.
“VBT has changed the game,” says Eric Overland, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for Concordia St. Paul University. “It’s not about how much you lift, but how you lift it.”
Lift Tracker And TeamSync: Best Friends Forever
The two new iOS apps from EliteForm – Lift Tracker and TeamSync – are to strength coaches what tactics and strategy are to military masterminds. Lift Tracker transforms everyday iPhones and iPads into advanced VBT data capture tools. Lift Tracker represents the tactics of VBT.
At the same time, TeamSync acts as a strategic command center, orchestrating the lifts, analyzing the collected data and transforming strategy using the gathered tactics. Together, the two apps form a novel, robust and cohesive system that delivers deep insight to coaches and athletes of all levels.
By themselves, each app delivers a seamless experience packed with value, but when used in tandem, they become greater than the sum of their parts.
The EliteForm Lift Tracker App — Download For iOS
Lift Tracker stands as the quintessential camera-based toolset for the modern athlete, adeptly transforming any iPhone or iPad into a sophisticated VBT data-capture device. By leveraging the advanced 3D specs intrinsic to the iPhone or iPad’s cameras, Lift Tracker meticulously measures the velocity of the barbell during a variety of lifts, charting each lift’s speed with precision. This vital data not only quantifies progress but also enshrines each ounce of effort into a digital ledger of improvement.
The interface, crafted to produce an intuitive experience first and foremost, offers an inviting and straightforward path for athletes: a quick download, a few taps to register a profile, and they’re launched into a seamless tracking experience where EliteForm’s proprietary software performs much of the heavy lifting.
This minimal setup belies the complex analytics operating under the hood, yet it’s this simplicity that keeps its users returning to the app over and again.
“From the coach’s standpoint of delivering the Lift Tracker app to athletes, it’s very simple,” says Johns. “We just told them, ‘Hey, grab your phones, download this app real quick, and then hop over to Coach Johns to scan a QR code. It’s very simple to use.”
The EliteForm TeamSync App — Download For iOS
If Lift Tracker focuses on the athlete, then TeamSync is where the coaches make sense of it all. The TeamSync app was designed to gather data from Lift Tracker and paint a picture for coaches. Envisioned as a centralized data management platform, TeamSync masterfully corrals the wealth of performance metrics recorded by individual devices. This digital nerve center allows for the aggregation, analysis, and interpretation of key training data, transforming raw numbers into actionable insights.
As athletes push their limits, TeamSync diligently captures each milestone and setback, offering coaches a multidimensional understanding of individual and team progress. It’s not just a tool; it’s a constantly changing assessment informed by every lift, rep, set, setback and triumph it measures. It’s responsible for producing the context from which comprehension and insight emerge.
With a few taps, coaches can establish an account, create a team, define exercises, and upload a roster replete with information unique to the athlete, such as OneRMs. This backend functionality lends itself directly to managing team dynamics, allowing for swift onboarding of new athletes with a simple QR code. The platform’s intuitive interface belies its sophisticated underpinnings, making the addition or removal of devices a breeze. TeamSync easily meets and exceeds that reliable old time-tested standard all developers aspire to: It just works.
“It’s so simple. The TeamSync app allows us to have – at our fingertips – VBT reports on athlete performance,” says Johns. “There are three columns: athletes, devices and results. Athletes is where you upload your roster. That way, you can have everyone in the system. Devices is a QR code that lets us connect iPhones and iPads to our TeamSync so we can track them. Results is two taps away. I hit export, and I get a spreadsheet that I can send to myself over email, or send to other coaches, or whatever it may be. Those results are available anytime we need them, right at our fingertips.”
Velocity-Based Teamwork: A Tale Of Two Apps
The interdependence of Lift Tracker and TeamSync reveals the system’s true magic, with each app playing a crucial role in the streamlined process of data collection and analysis. Athletes, armed with the Lift Tracker app, become active participants in their own development, capturing every nuance of progress with the tap of the screen. Each lift, each push, each pull is meticulously logged, creating a rich database of individualized effort and identifying areas for improvement.
On the flip side, TeamSync offers coaches a panoramic view of individual and team progress by weaving countless data threads into an intricate tapestry depicting preparedness at any given moment. What was once a time-consuming task becomes a smooth, efficient process. The data flows seamlessly from the athlete’s device to the coach’s screen, enabling a safer, more dynamic and highly responsive training environment.
The synergy of Lift Tracker and TeamSync brings about an instant feedback loop that is invaluable to modern training methodology. Athletes no longer have to wait for periodic reviews to gauge their progress. Instead, they receive consistent, real-time feedback, allowing for on-the-spot adjustments to training intensity and duration. This immediate responsiveness is not just about correcting form or pushing limits; it’s about fostering a deeper understanding of an athlete’s true potential and the impact each training session provides. Coaches, equipped with the insights from TeamSync, can individualize their coaching by athlete, making each rep an each set as uniquely productive as possible.
“It’s great for coaching that Olympic weightlifting technique and showing the athlete where in the lift it’s important to be fast,” says Hunt. “I’ve been working with rowers more this year and we are learning the split jerk. It is so important to get under the bar fast, but it’s also important for that little quarter squat, for the athletes to push as hard and as fast as they can. Seeing that number – and trying to make that number go up – enormously improved their split jerk technique, because they would compete with each other on speed of lift. It made them really understand what’s important in the lift. I love that.”
EliteForm Lift Tracker and TeamSync: Where Cost Control Creates Competition
These apps force financial barriers familiar to most high school strength coaches to weaken and crumble, ensuring that the benefits of sophisticated training methodologies are not a privilege arrogated only to the well heeled, but are accessible to any serious strength program.
“I love the idea of all of our athletes getting a chance to have it on their phone,” says Overland. “Maybe a program can afford only four or five of those other mechanical VBT units, but with this, you can get it for nearly every athlete. And not only that, I don’t have to send a $1,500 unit home with a kid over Christmas break to track his progress. He just has it on his phone and keeps it with him.”
This adaptability extends well beyond financial constraints, too; it creates a training environment where competition thrives. Athletes are not just lifting weights; they are competing against their personal bests, against the clock, and against each other, all in a quest to win the lift and see their scores soar.
This competitive spirit, fostered by the use of EliteForm’s Lift Tracker and TeamSync apps, transforms the weight room from a place athletes go to “get it over with” into a bubbling cauldron of progress and self-discovery by informing every rep with new value.
“These athletes love to compete. They came here because they’re competitors,” says Overland. “Us coaches, we’re competitors too. I mean, Coach Hunt and Coach Johns always want to challenge me to how fast we can lift a percentage of our weight. I’ll beat them every time, but it’s fun to compete with each other. I mean, shoot, we’re competitors at heart as well. And the reality is, you put 12 athletes through a lift, and they’re probably lifting at 8-10 different OneRMs. But you apply VBT to it, measure that bar speed, and things kind of equalize between athletes of different abilities. Now, we’ve got an even larger group of athletes competing. I love it for everything we’ve talked about; just putting competitors in competitive situations. Any way you can find a way to get them to compete, why would you not use that?”
