Anytime you can find a way to add meaningful structure and data collection to your training—that’s a win.
Unfortunately, most wearables and data tracking systems wind up frustrating users from an ease of use of implementation standpoint and/or major in the minors by getting clients overly focused on metrics that don’t add a ton of value.
When it comes to adding any type of diagnostic or tracking tool into training workflows, it’s critical that the added effort is worth it. This means it needs to bring real value to the table by helping coaches and/or individuals make better informed training decisions.
It also needs to be as seamless as possible from an integration standpoint. All too often tech companies come in and try to “disrupt” the fitness industry when in reality they bring in too much hassle and white noise.
All that to say, it’s refreshing anytime innovation brings structure, coherence, simplifies the training workflow, and adds meaningful data that athletes & coaches alike can make actionable training decisions from.
The Beyond+ app is exactly this type of innovation.
What Is Beyond+?
Simply put, Beyond+ is the partner training app to the VOLTRA I by Beyond Power.
This pocket personal trainer does everything from simply counting reps all the way to delivering key metrics on strength, power, velocity, and much more.
It’s an example of measurable tech that can both simplify the coaching process for trainers, help monitor client progress over time, and keep users engaged in their own training journey.
How does it do this? Let’s dive in.
How Does It Help with Workout Planning?
For one, it helps intra-workout by counting users sets, rest periods, and reps. Despite the joke being that trainers are glorified rep counters, in a group setting—a feature like this is actually incredibly helpful.
As a coach, you'd rather be paying attention to form and exercise execution across multiple athletes at multiple stations. Beyond+ can help athletes on a VOLTRA I station track their own sessions, enabling coaches to survey the larger group training landscape. This can also be helpful for home gym setups.
But that’s literally just the most minor detail. Many are huge fans of how it can be applied to create client profiles to track individual athletes’ data sets over time. This helps keep clients engaged by showing them meaningful progressions in their routine over time. This is more than positive reinforcement, though—in the training and rehab process, this helps coaches gauge when athletes may be ready for higher levels of output.
That said, being able to measure themselves against other users keeps things fun and encourages higher levels of output via competition.
This is actually helpful if one wants to do velocity based training and similar autoregulatory living sets. Rather than have a programmed number of reps, coaches or users can kill the set when the velocity drops by a certain amount (usually ~15-20%) when that’s the adaptation we’re chasing.
One of the coolest features is the workout builder. This empowers users to create custom routines they can go back and remeasure their progress against.
This has been a long-held staple from CrossFit and has made its way into some home fitness routines as people are encouraged to beat times as well as weight moved. It also creates potential standardization workouts team sports coaches can use to put an entire team through.
Of course, many of the modes are going to have data unique to each resistance type.
One of the more slept on features is the range of motion insights. Range of motion may not sound like a revelation, but it’s actually a major topic in fitness and performance right now.
For example, if muscle growth is the goal—most research points at the necessity of more full ranges of motion and resisted eccentrics as the sweet spot. Lengthened partials (partial reps at end range of motion) are a component of this. In this case, we may want to ensure we’re getting full R.O.M. (range of motion) to maximize muscle growth.
Beyond hypertrophy, if someone is wanting to do loaded mobility work—achieving a desired R.O.M. and not going to shallow or too far into ranges is the move to work joints from their optimal angle for meaningful mobility.
For performance, if we’re working a movement that I need to “rebound” out of for sport—say like a vertical jump—too full range of motion may be problematic. With these types of movements, the goal is to intentionally yield or relax into the eccentric portion of the movement (as opposed to resisting it like when hypertrophy is the goal) while muscles maintain something of a concentric orientation (more shortened position).
This promotes the right structural alignments so that athletes can redirect force or rebound out of a given position. In this vertical jump example, think of an athlete intentionally yielding into it before rebounding back out of it.
Takeaways
The bottom line is that—unlike most wearables and measurable fitness tech—Beyond+ actually helps users gain helpful insights into meaningful metrics, structure workouts, stay engaged, and keeps coaches organized.
Because it’s built into the VOLTRA I as a feature, it makes it’s integration a no-brainer for anyone who has access to a unit.
And better yet, it's still in active development! For feature requests, feel free to join the conversation over on Beyond Power's reddit (r/BeyondPower), or drop us a line via our contact page.
