Our bachelor student Alexander Renner has published his first full paper. This collaborative study involving twenty competitive powerlifters compared the validity of three smartphone applications for measuring barbell movement velocity during resistance training to a commercially available linear transducer.

The study revealed that the Qwik VBT (QW) app performed on par with the RepOne (RO) linear transducer, consistently delivering accurate measurements across all exercises. In contrast, Metric VBT (MT) and MyLift (ML) showed limited validity, failing to match the performance of RO, except for MT in the bench press. QW emerged as the most reliable smartphone application, with minimal measurement error compared to gold-standard 3D motion capture (Vicon).

These findings highlight the potential of smartphone apps, particularly Qwik VBT, as a cost-effective alternative for assessing barbell velocity in resistance training, making advanced performance analysis accessible to a broader audience.

Link to the open access paper published in PLOS ONE: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0313919