Structural Balance Testing App

Client

Unity Gym (2021)

Product team

1x Lead Product Designer (me)
1x Lead Product Manager
1x Lead Software Engineer

Opportunity

Louie Simmons was famous for saying “a chain is only as strong as the weakest link.” He is exactly right. One's strength and performance will always be limited by their weak muscle groups, and will be maximised when the strength of all muscles are in balance with each other. Structural Balance Testing is a process that helps identify exactly that.

Members of Unity Gym train in 12-week mesocycles before performing a formal structural balance test to identify weak areas in their performance. They then take that data and use it to inform their training program in the next mesocycle.

Today, the process of recording test data and interpreting results is cumbersome and painful. Members do all of this on Excel, a tool that isn't ideal for the job. They do this in conjuction with running a metronome app in the background to keep track of time during concentric and eccentric movements of each exercise.  

Two buddies and I wanted to better understand the problems around structural balance testing today. After doing a round of generative user research with members of the gym, we found an opportunity to make it easier to perform structural balance tests, record test data, create actionable insights that inform the next training mesocycle, and keep track of progress over time. 

This is an ongoing passion project.