This is the second post in a new series we’re coining Yogger 101. In case it’s not obvious, Yogger 101 will cover the basics of all the neat features available in the Yogger mobile App (now available for iOS). The goal of this series is to help new users become familiar with Yogger and be able to take full of advantage of everything it has to offer. These posts will appear on our website AND in our blog feed. at the bottom of the Overview Tab in the mobile app. We will be pushing out more tutorials, tips, and tricks that you can find instantly in the app.
For more tutorials, follow us on TikTok, or Instagram, or Facebook for similar tutorials. Might as well throw LinkedIn in there too.
Without further ado!
I’m back.
… can’t you just leave these blog posts alone?
I cannot. We are connected, like two peas in a pod as they say. Or peanut butter and olives. You need me. By the way, the intro of this blog seems very similar to the last.
Ok, peanut butter and olives don’t go together. And of course the intro is similar, it’s basic 101 Intro, I know it’s not exciting, but its necessary. You weren’t invited anyways, bolded alter ego. Now let’s talk about snapshots!
CAPTURING AND ANALYZING SNAPSHOTS
SNAPSHOT USE CASES
Snapshots aren’t too complicated. Essentially they give you the ability to capture an instantaneous moment of a movement across time. With snapshots all facets of the movement that are quantifiable are captured. For best results these specific ‘moments’ are pose specific. Some simple examples of this are…
- Tracking depth at the bottom of a squat.
- Looking at trunk position at the top of a pull in a power clean.
- Examining alignment in contact point in a golf swing.
- Basically any instantaneous moment of form you’re interested in.
Where to Find the Snapshot Feature
Snapshots can be utilized in both the playback view, and the analysis view indicated by the camera icon. Regardless of the view, they operate the same way.
snapshot button location: analysis view
snapshot button location: playback view
Can we start swinging our arms around now?
Indeed we can, arm circles all around!
For the sake of this walkthrough, we’ll pretend we’re interested in tracking and recording the max shoulder range of motion of an athlete swinging their arms. In reality this could be snapshots of different single reps across a set, or even snapshots of a specific movement across different weeks or months! And now that we know how to get to the snapshot feature, we’ll go through how to record then track the progress over time.
Step 1: Saving a Snapshot
playback button location in the Yogger App
How to pick a frame in analysis view
Once we record our video, we can navigate to a frame we want to capture.
In the playback view you can do so using the forward and back arrows in the playback panel. You can navigate frame by frame to the one you wish to capture.
In the analysis view, simply drag your finger across the graph to the frame you wish to capture. The video above track with the data.
So in this example let us navigate to the frame where our athlete’s arms are at max shoulder flexion.
Then you press the button?
Yes, just press the button with the camera icon it.
Regardless of whether you’re in the playback or analysis view, that will bring up this pop up to the right.
Here you can give your snapshot a title or ‘bucket.’ Ideally this is a category that you want to save similar snapshots in so you can track progress through these ‘buckets’ of snapshots. We’ll call this bucket ‘Shoulder ROM.’
Aren’t we only interested in shoulder range of motion? Why is Hip flexion and extension in there?
Thats… that’s actually a good question. Thank you, for being a useful literary device.
So there is a reason for that! When you save a snapshot, all the biomechanical data that can be saved, will be saved. When you go back to track progress this will allow you to isolate many joints, compare right vs. left etc.
You may be tracking only shoulder range of motion in this example. But our bodies are more than one joint! This will give you the ability to look at big picture and notice changes outside of a single scope of focus. This will be especially useful for compound movements.
Press the button again?
Now press the save button! And let’s repeat this process for the next two reps in the video so we can see how we track progress.
Step 2: Tracking Progress
If we navigate to the progress tab, we can take a look at the snapshots we just recorded. First we can select from the category we made and saved the snapshot to up top (a).
At the bottom of the view (f). is all of the snapshots we collected, we can individually examine them by pressing the magnifying glass. Or if we have many snapshots, we can press touch the picture to get an indicator in the graph of what data that snapshot represents.
Initially the graph will have no data, but we can fix that! The next step is to select which measurements you want to inspect and select those in the select measurement view. We can navigate there by pressing the ‘Select Measurements’ button (e).
This goes back to that excellent question you had.
It was bloody brilliant. There’s a lot of options to select from.
Where are you from again? And that’s correct, there are a lot of options to select from. Again for a compound movement we can select multiple joint angles to look at. But for this one we’re only interested in shoulder flexion and extension and let’s take a look at both sides.
So now we’ve selected our category of snapshots and the ranges of motion we want to check out. The graph should populate with the data pertaining to the joints we selected.
In the big image above you should be able to see
Looking at the graph
1) The three reps we record as three consecutive data points (b), (c), and (d).
2) The data for the different joint angles represented by the different lines (indicated below the graph).
Step 3: Data Based Conclusions
What does it all mean?
Now comes the tricky part, deciding what information you’re trying to glean from the snapshots. There is most likely a reason you decided to create a category of snapshots and take different snapshots in that specific category. So you might have something in mind. Again, for this example let’s say we’re primarily interested in two different groups of data.
1) Symmetry: Right Shoulder Flexion vs. Left Shoulder Flexion
Starting with symmetry, at first glance, we can definitely detect some asymmetry in the ranges of motion. Tracking across the x axis of reps, for each rep the right shoulder appears to reach a maximum degree of flexion consistently higher compared to the left.
2) Differences in Range of Motion Across Reps
Comparing reps we can observe another trend. The second rep overall had a noticeably lower max range of motion for the shoulder bilaterally. With observing reps over time, we could infer things such as fatigue, track consistency, and make larger observations on why there are potentially outliers.
Applications
Depending on your situation, these observations could have many implications. Being able to quantify asymmetry or look at difference between reps can help guide decision making in training or rehabbing. Snapshots can also give you the ability to track how the intervention is working, and notice real progress based on data.
are we done?
We are done. Snapshots are pretty simple, and also pretty intuitive. Hopefully this post gives some insight into how snapshots work, but more importantly can give some inspiration for applications in your own training, with your clients or business.