With the beta release of our new Calendar app, we have made a big step in the direction of helping sports club managers organize their daily business and level up in their training quality by reducing the burden of administration. But there are so many more ways that Sportlyzer can help you develop your club. Let’s have a quick overview what Sportlyzer does.
Sportlyzer is pleased to announce the launch of the beta version of our newest app Calendar for coaches and club managers. Sportlyzer Calendar is a huge step in simplifying your club time, event and participation management. You can plan and visualize your workouts, competitions, other events and track attendances. As with all Sportlyzer apps, Calendar is effortlessly synced with our other apps through the club central database to ensure maximum functionality with minimum effort.
We are guilty as charged of not reporting about Sportlyzer’s progress. With this post we hope to make this up to you. And as you can see below, the news are awesome:
It’s time to get back to you with new updates. Many cool things are still in progress and new ideas are piling up faster than we can process, but meanwhile we would like to give a short overview, what we have been up to within last few weeks.
Now you can compare your training plan and progress! Check out your profile page to see the graph. And, of course, don’t forget to peek how your friends are doing – you can see their graphs, too!
Our Forum is finally up! Forum.sportlyzer.com is waiting for your questions, ideas, feedback and any other interesting sports related stuff. It’s directly connected to Sportlyzer, so you don’t need a separate account or log in once you are already in Sportlyzer. How cool is that? You can also access our forum directly from Sportlyzer.com by clicking “Forum” in the footer.
New, updated Facebook share. Now you can share detailed workout/competition info and new cool icons to characterize different workouts. Give your friends an opportunity to see how are you doing and join you!
And last but not least – we updated Sportlyzer’s time zone logic. Your time zone will be now updated according to your location. However, we suggest checking your account’s time zone settings. Especially if you didn’t pay much attention to it on your first log in :).
There are many other improvements done by our tech team to make your time in Sportlyzer more enjoyable but the list with all those smaller and bigger changes would take forever. We suggest you to use this time for working out instead. And, don’t forget to post your workout info to Sportlyzer and share in Facebook!
We have received quite a lot of questions about how to read the data in heart rate monitors and how to match this data with Sportlyzer’s workout entries. As every heart rate monitor is slightly different and manuals may not always answer to those questions,we decided to cover this topic with a blog post.
To know your time spent in each zone, you have to enter your aerobic and anaerobic threshold data into your heart rate monitor. In most cases you can enter them as heart rate limits, whereas Limit 1 is your aerobic threshold and Limit 2 your anaerobic threshold. If you don’t know or remember your heart rate limits, you can find them in Sportlyzer. You can find them in ‘Settings’ – ‘Profile’. Limit 1 equals to max value of Zone 1 (aerobic threshold) and Limit 2 equals to max value of Zone 2 (anaerobic threshold). Please keep in mind that in order to get accurate results, you have to enter your registration data correctly!
After setting your aerobic and anaerobic limits, your training intensity will be divided into three parts:
Zone 1 – below Limit 1;
Zone 2 – between Limit 1 and Limit 2 and;
Zone 3 – higher than Limit 2.
If your heart rate monitor supports .gpx, .tcx or .hrm file type, you can upload the files manually to Sportlyzer. In case your heart rate monitor doesn’t support uploading file types or you are unable to connect your heart rate monitor with your computer, you have to edit the limits manually. Simply check your training time in each zone, usually referred as below zone (Z1), within zone (Z2) and above zone (Z3), and write your workout data accordingly to Sportlyzer. If your workout consisted of some low activity time period (e.g. between ballgames, between running sessions etc.), subtract this time from Zone 1 and add it as Zone 0. Some heart rate monitors do it automatically, so if there is a difference between your recorded total training time and time spent in zones add the missing time to Zone 0.
The explanations above should cover most of the heart rate monitors. However, if some of you still face difficulties while matching the data with Sportlyzer system, please let us know and we will try to find a solution.
As many as half the people who start training drop out again within six months – and the most frequent reason given is lack of time. If we looked closer, we’d probably see that in most cases it’s more a matter of managing the time available than having no time at all. Let’s have a look where can you find time to keep yourself more active. Here are some small steps to help structure your life and give you back control.
Active transportation: Could you walk or bike to school or work? If you take the bus, could you get off a few blocks earlier and walk the rest of the way? When you go to the mall, could you park your car in the furthest corner of the lot and walk the extra distance? Could you take the stairs instead of an elevator?
Exercising cues: Could you remind yourself to exercise a little more? People use cues and reminders to make it a bit harder to forget about exercising. For instance, they keep a pair of walking shoes in the car to be ready whenever they find a few minutes to walk. Or they take their sports bag into the office to remind them to finish work on time and get to the gym.
Make it social: What about making exercise a social activity? Is there a badminton club or hiking group in your neighbourhood? Or could you initiate a lunchtime walking group at work? Even if you just all walk to a restaurant a bit further away and back – it all helps make exercise social. The routine on one side and the support of a group on the other may be just what you need to help you stick with a new activity.
Active TV watching: Could you get active while watching TV? Some former couch potatoes have started to change by just using hand weights (or cans of beans or packs of sugar) while watching TV. Would some yoga or core-strength exercises be something you could do during your favourite show?
Put it in your calendar: Lastly, could you plan your workouts and other physical activity in the calendar? Many people schedule physical activity as they would plan any other appointment during the day. It’s all too easy to change vague plans every time something else comes along—so we end up with a permanent lack of time, but specific plans with times and details make it a little bit harder to skip exercise.
I was in Copenhagen Nov 6 – 9 to introduce our forthcoming Sportlyzer service. The feedback was great – many business people and investors are already anxious to use it themselves. Thanks to everyone who was there for your warm welcome and enthusiastic reception. I was also impressed by the triumph of bicycles in Denmark.
Sportlyzer got a lot of valuable feedback at the Venture Academy and the Nordic Venture Forum, and especially from Patrick Polak from Newion Investments who is a true business-holic and an energetic idea generator. I also got useful advice from Ciara Byrnes from Venturebeat and Chris Mottes from Six Ravens Capital. And my sincere thanks to William Stevens from Europe Unlimited and his contributing team for organizing a great event!
I really enjoyed meeting Christian Birk from Endomondo, the company providing the best sports tracking mobile apps in the world (sorry, RunKeeper :)). Congratulations to the Endomondo team for winning their presentations’ panel and I hope their homepage facelift turns out to be a hit.
I also attended Startupbootcamp Investor Day as an observer and must admit that the level of company presentations was impressive. Thanks to Michael Backes from eVenture for the inspiring discussion about Sportlyzer’s strategy.
But the greatest impression I got, was from the Danish people – 76% of people get some physical exercise at least once a week, which puts Denmark in the top 5 in Europe. And it is not only leisure time activity, many people use bicycles as their everyday transportation.
It’s a really impressive sight in the morning when hundreds of people ride towards their offices. And there are gentlemen in suits and ladies on high heels. The infrastructure for that is great and my advice to other governments and municipalities around the world would be to go to Copenhagen and see for themselves how cycle paths are laid out in the capital city. Simply wonderful!
I’m sure that I’m not the only one who would like to get some easy practical tips from everyday bicycle users:
– How do you overcome bad weather so that you don’t ruin your clothes?
– How do you take your children to kindergarten?
– How do you carry your laptops and other luggage with you?
Everybody knows that exercising is good for you. Many of us know how great the endorphin rush is after a workout. Yet many people seem to prefer taking prescription drugs to get some similar feeling rather than to get active. Is there a way to overcome that gap between thinking and doing?
In this post and those that follow, I am going to outline the main reasons people give for being physically inactive and offer some long-term solutions to the challenge of reaching a proper level of physical activity.
Let’s take Lee, a software developer – young, slim and generally in good health. He doesn’t really see any need to go out there and break sweat. Moreover, even the thought of going running is pretty unpleasant for him. Working with Lee as an example, we can get to the root of the Million Dollar Question of exercise psychology: Why do people exercise? One way to find it out is to ask: Why don’t people exercise?
For many individuals, exercise is neither pleasant nor exciting. For instance, running really isn’t much fun when you first start or only do it every now and again. Sometimes the very fact that it is a natural activity means that people don’t have enough information about how to run at the right intensity level, with the correct technique, or about comfortable equipment. The cornerstone of a healthy lifestyle is the choice of an enjoyable form of exercise and workout type.
My first piece of advice for Lee would be to start by choosing moderate-intensity activities he would probably enjoy the most. Exercise is voluntary, remember it’s supposed to increase the quality of life, not increase stress and discomfort! So for Lee the best start on the road to sustainable fitness would be to identify 3 or 4 physical activities that look like fun, and just try them out without pressuring himself over the coming two weeks. Do you know any cool workouts you could suggest to him?
A great article about Sportlyzer by Arctic Startup: Estonian Inner Circle and Sportlyzer Close Seed Rounds
Sportlyzer, a newcomer in sports web applications working on an intelligent online fitness instructor, closed venture capital investment from Estonian Development Fund and a private angel investor Rein Lemberpuu. Sportlyzer has made its goal to become the leading online fitness advising artificial intelligence in the world.
In August 2010 Estonian Development Fund and private angel investor Rein Lemberpuu made a seed capital investment into a sports technology company Sportlyzer that is developing a social web application for workout tracking and consulting. Sportlyzer’s uniqueness stands in workout and motivation management algorithms that give birth to a digital online fitness instructor. Rein Lemberpuu, former CEO of Playtech Estonia, head of Supervisory board at Sportlyzer, explains his investment into Sportlyzer: “I invested into Sportlyzer because I find its idea contributing to community and the team has potential to build a major leader in the area of fitness-management applications.”
Sportlyzer focuses on fitness level exercisers with sedentary work style. Online application helps to find workout buddies, manages exertion and motivation if needed. As Kristjan Port, the director of the Institute of Health Sciences and Sports of Tallinn University and the author of Sportlyzer’s workout management algorithms, states: “There are huge crowds of health level exercisers working out and taking part in sports events. Isn’t it surprising and paradoxical, that still they are so alone in their workout management. At the same time our team has the ability to support them with useful technology for that. I find it really inspiring and contributing to solve such a challenge.”
The first target markets of Sportlyzer are UK and USA. “There are many reasons for that: there are well developed fitness infrastructures, our target customer proportion in both populations is high, we are familiar to their cultural background, and of course, English is the No 1 language in the Internet,” says Tõnis Saag, the founder and teamleader of Sportlyzer. “It takes a little time until public launch, but it is already possible to subscribe to private bet at www.sportlyzer.com.”
Sportlyzer was founded by Tõnis Saag and an internet entrepreneur Jüri Kaljundi (CV-Online, Nagi, Emp.ly, Talentag) in July 2009. Soon the team was joined by Kristjan Port and a well-known sports psychologist Aave Hannus. The project was funded by Enterprise Estonia to develop the algorithms and in August 2010 Sportlyzer raised seed capital. Tõnis Saag is the manager of the company and the supervisory board consists of Margus Uudam from Ambient Sound Investments, Rain Rannu from Fortumo, Andrus Oks from Estonian Development Fund, Rein Lemberpuu and Jüri Kaljundi.
Contact: Tõnis Saag, tonis.saag /at/ sportlyzer.com, +372 5690 4988, Skype tonis.saag