Tracking (our)Systems
Shining some light onto the crossing point of technology and stats.
We are in the middle of a revolution of the times and you might not have even noticed yet. This is not the revolution you will hear pundits on FoxNews and CNN rambling endlessly about. This one is taking place in bedrooms, on golf driving ranges, and on arms across the United States.
The driving range on a Wednesday at any PGA Tour event is stirring with activity. Final touches put in place for the host facility, coaches providing last minute words of encouragement for their players, and equipment representatives ensuring each player has the proper tools needed to take home the $1.2 million prize for the winner. Sitting on the turf next to each of those billboard-esque staff bags embroidered with player names and their sponsors is Trackman. Bright orange and about the size of the average coffee table book, these doppler radar launch monitors are hard to ever miss again once you see them the first time.
On the 9th floor on W 25th Street in New York City, a team has been working tirelessly for years, hoping that bedrooms, much like those PGA Tour driving ranges, will eventually have their Hub be a standard issue item like pillows, nightstands, and phone chargers. We are talking about Eight Sleep and their smart sleep Pod technology.
What does this have to do with a revolution? We are talking about the modern way that people will track their lives. What they track, how they track it, and the outcomes they seek will be vastly different from years past.
Type “@levels”, “CGM”, or “glucose monitor” into the search bar on Twitter and be ready to question every food decision you’ve made in your life, especially the past week. Most people’s thoughts lean towards pregnant women with gestational diabetes or their great uncle, who has struggled with his weight since your earliest memories, when hearing the phrases glucose monitor or blood sugar level. Levels, another New York based startup, has their entry in the medical/fitness wearables market, a continuous glucose monitor(CGM) affixed to upper arms that tracks blood sugar levels throughout the day and provides a daily average metabolic score through their smart app on your phone. What does this mean? As Twitter user Nat Eliason(@nateliason) says “..you can see what your diet is doing to your blood sugar. Very common blind spot for most people and have a huge ROI if you learn how your body responds to different foods in that way.” Put the food scale into the garage sale pile and let’s step into 2021.
How do all of these examples play into the revolution mentioned above? One of my favorite phrases, that I believe was most famously said by Donald Rumsfeld is “There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” Eight Sleep believes that tracking your sleep through the night, the tosses and turns, heart rate variability(HRV) is important to improving health but that it starts with the temperature of your mattress. Imagine getting into bed after a long day and feeling a mattress as low as 55 degrees beneath that fitted sheet. We live in Houston, TX and not to surprise anyone but it’s brutally hot and humid outside. My wife and I like our room as cold as reasonably possible with a top sheet and blanket to warm up with. This means we set the home thermostat at 65 degrees at night and use the ceiling fan. We have no complaints but there do exist nights when this 1984 home just can’t cool down quickly enough to be in our prime comfort zone at night. Eight Sleep could change that and the quality of our sleep. It’s not cheap but it’s no more expensive than the average mattress you will find in your local strip center mattress chain. Before Eight Sleep and a few of their competitors, we looked at A/C temperatures, pillows and mattress toppers from Bed Bath and Beyond that sold dreams of being cool through the night. Did it deliver? One could make an argument either way but I’d be interested in trying the new thing. The new approach.
When Fredrik Tuxen set out to provide better ball tracking for golf, he turned to doppler radar based technology, similar to that used to track ballistic missiles in defense systems. Now for $25k one can track a golf ball through the air with the accuracy of 1 foot per 100 yards and also have accurate ball and club data such a launch angle, spin, angle of attack, club face angle, and club path through impact. As they like to say “Why guess when you can measure?”. This started a new age of golf. One where golf coaches didn’t necessarily require high speed video to improve students. Once we had new data, we could change the way players got to those endpoints and change it faster.
We are at this point in time when efficiency and visionary thinking is providing leaps and bounds changes to many industries. Our society is constantly questioning the longtime tracked metrics: high school test scores, daily calories, 7 iron swing speed, and my wife’s favorite “How tired are you this morning?” The new leaders like Matteo Franceschetti of Eight Sleep and Sam Corcos of Levels are driving the change. They want you to learn and know how that ham and cheese sandwich changes your body and what a 5 degree difference in mattress can do to your heart rate. Next time you have a moment, consider how you track your life and see if it correlates to your goals. Are you reaching them because of what you think is important or in spite of it? Is a new approach needed? One addition that can provide exponential results to your health, body, and golf handicap. Seek it out and at least enjoy experimenting with the new thing.