After years of research and working with top teams and athletes, TrainingPeaks is launching their newest feature that will revolutionize how training loads are measured and quantified: the quantified selfie.
Facial Awareness Strain Technology, or F.A.S.T, uses cutting edge facial recognition technology to help you determine the stress of your training. Simply take a selfie with your phone during a workout and load it into the new app. Within seconds the technology will analyze your photo, determine your effort and give you a F.A.S.T. score.
This feature is currently in beta release, but all TrainingPeaks users can test this revolutionary technology by submitting their workout or race photo on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram using hashtag #FASTSCORE. TrainingPeaks will run the analysis and respond with a score for your effort.
So how does this amazing new technology work? “Our app looks at facial deformation by scanning over 700 anatomical data points. We’ve created a proprietary algorithm that utilizes those points to determine the training load you’ve achieved,” said TrainingPeaks C.E.O. and Co-Founder Gear Fisher. “Why just measure what’s happening inside your body? No one is smiling during a tough interval or sprint finish. And if you are, you’re obviously not going hard enough. Your face tells the story of your effort and we’ve just found a way to measure that,” he went on to say. When correlated with power or heart rate you can get a truly revolutionary look at your total body effort.
Handlebar mounted smartphones, while previously the mark of recreational cyclists, will soon be seen on bikes throughout the pro peloton and world class triathletes. One team director who asked to remain anonymous said they would be requiring all their riders to race with a smartphone on their handlebars. The phone will send photos to the TrainingPeaks servers every 10 seconds for real-time analysis. Coaches will have a new mechanism to gauge true athletic output.
“As fans of endurance sports, we all see on television the pain and suffering these athletes go through, so we quantified it, it’s like a quantified selfie, and F.A.S.T. is what we use to measure it. This will be the core feature of the forthcoming WKO4 software and is the next generation of Training Stress Score®” said Fisher.