Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth — Mike Tyson (written on the wall of the Delray Beach Boxing Club)
In one of my favorite episodes of Billions called “Fight Night”, two employees at Axe Capital get into the ring for a price fight (the background story not too relevant for this article). Neither character is a professional boxer — or, even an athlete — and the fight quickly devolves into foot stamps and limp punches weakly thrown into the air.
When I first watched this scene, I didn’t understand this rapid slide to exhaustion. Both looked relatively fit. Surely, I would last longer.
Then I actually went to a boxing class.
This morning, at 10am, I put on boxing gloves for the first time at the Delray Beach Boxing Club. The training, I was told, is similar to how professional boxers train — and it included a mix of warm up, bag time, running and exercises for the core (situps, planks, etc.). After about three minutes, punching the bag with a simple right left combo, I can feel a sharp pain in my neck already growing, sweat pouring down my face, and the feeling that I just ran five miles. After about 10 minutes, I struggled just to keep my arms up as Justin, the trainer, taught me at the start of the class.
I made it through the hour — barely — and realized I needed to sign up.
The first lesson was simply how to hold my arms, with shoulders tucked in, hands covering my face, and on the second punch a turn (“like swinging a bat”) of my hip. With each punch, I was to snap my hand back in position — one two, one two — as if my fists were on a rubberband. Like learning to drive a car, it was difficult for me at first to keep several things in my mind at the same time — snap back, hands up, turn on punch two, don’t overextend the body, breathe, be mindful of where my feet are. When the class started and other students besides me were instructed to punch low, two times, and high, two times, I couldn’t keep up. Justin walked over and graciously acknowledged my performance with “let’s just keep with the one-two”; I struggled to simply keep my shoulders from collapsing.
Thoughts on how markerless technology could help
Standing in a single position, a camera could be set up to capture my form and analyze the correctness of each punch — did my hip turn at the optimal rotation, are my feet where they should be, are my hands high enough by my face.
By analyzing speed and accuracy (i.e., an optimal form biomechanically), the system could help track when I’m losing steam — a metric which I can use to visualize tolerance. The weakness in my arms and shoulders were clear signs my home workouts — consisting of dumb bells and a treadmill — were not strengthening the right muscles (too heave a focus on biceps, probably). While paper and pen could help me keep track of what exercise I should be doing to strengthen a particular muscle group, a motion capture system could help me track both the quantity and quality of these exercises — creating an objective link between the strength of my punches in front of the punching bag and exercises at home.
Of course, once motion is captured as data, you can then gamify the experience — creating, say, competition between new members of Delray Beach Boxing Club (with leader boards, positioned by age and experience cohorts). Additionally, any training at home — captured via the ClubReady mobile app (used for scheduling) with an API running Ideas Lab’s analytics — could be captured and compared against performance in class. With data, trends could be observed, and trainers could comment on individual performance far beyond what they could when in the context of a group class.
And that sharp pain my neck — something I’ve felt for several weeks now — may not have been so severe so quickly if I was not throwing improper punches. Injury prevention using artificial intelligence — a holy grail within the markerless motion capture space — is yet another use case for our system.
Historically, the technology which has analyzed motion has been reduced to physical sensors applied either to the athlete’s body in the form of attached sensors, through “smart clothing” or, most often, in the sports equipment itself. Over the past several years, the space of “markerless AI” — leveraging computer vision and training the system to recognize specific points of the body without any physical sensor — has emerged following research from several universities. More recently, a crop of mobile-based, markerless AI systems have emerged across various sports domains.
However, for the majority of these products, accuracy is either limited or unproven, providing a ‘good-enough’ metric which suggests a level of objective analysis. Still, professional-level markerless AI remains largely in the confines of biomechanics labs with high-priced cameras surrounding the athlete outside of his or her natural setting. Ideas Lab is seeking to bring this professional-level analysis for athletes, anywhere, anytime.
What We’re Looking to Build
Sam Gilbert highlighted in his Science of Striking how specific biomechanics can be translated into efficient punches. Our vision is to build an automatic way for boxers, at any level, anywhere and at anytime, to access advanced analytics leveraging only their smartphone — or in the case of boxing gyms, a tripod or fixed camera setup within the gym.
While there are some B2C applications possible, for our boxing product we are seeking a B2B approach. Our vision is fivefold:
- Enable boxing gyms to provide a platform for digital engagement with customers practicing both in the gym and at home (especially post-COVID).
- Gamify the experience by leveraging data to allow customers to compare their power, accuracy and performance with one another.
- Provide a mechanism for boxing gyms to offer a premium service to its customers by offering a set area within the gym to fight in a given area.
- Integrate multiple stakeholders in improving the performance by providing a set of objective analytics that can be leveraged in multiple scenarios and by various personas (e.g., coach, physical therapist, etc.).
- Enable gyms to position themselves as digital-native and data-driven, combined with the personal experience of one-to-one or in-group coaching.
At this stage, we are specifically seeking validation of both our technology and the value fighters can get by applying biomechanics to both specific boxing motions as well as training and strength conditioning.
Below are three examples of videos processed through our system.
This video above leverages player ID and body pose AI. One application could be two fighters getting in the ring and boxing against one another, with our system scoring specific movements. Boxers who are training to strengthen a specific body part or region could additionally view data which can show graphically areas of potential weakness, fatigue or opportunities to improve strategy. For gyms with multiple locations, players can track their movement continually no matter where they are (and which, of course, could extend to training at home).
Our current uploader processes a) number of punches and b) punch speed but we are seeking feedback from the market to identify which motions are of most interest to coaches and other professional boxers.
Our beta product consists of an uploader system where users can upload videos and have their punches counted along with punch speed. Currently, we can track specific body points throughout the video. In the graphic above, the line graph is tracking the boxers right elbow, for example. Our system can process up to 25 data points.
We are at the beginning stages of our product and we are excited to work with a potential beta partner as we iterate the product and plan for an official launch later in 2022.
ABOUT IDEAS LAB
Ideas Lab is an innovation lab and start-up studio building proprietary artificial intelligence, machine vision, and human motion analysis technologies. Today, while developing a suite of AI-based solutions, we are building a network of corporate and academic partners with whom together we will improve human performance in the many ways people move, perform and play!
Visit us to learn more about Ideas Lab today!
