The world of boxing is still very competitive, especially at the Olympic level, but it's never caught up with cutting edge technology until very recently. Anyone who competes in sports knows about tracking devices and how they can keep record of individual results. Since tracking technology became mainstream, it's mostly become relegated to track & field.
Now things are changing with wearable tracking devices expanding to other sports categories. Montreal startup Hykso has set out to revolutionize boxing with their own tracking technology system promising to forever change how people train.
The intent behind Hykso is to create the next generation of super humans in the contact sports arena. All of this started through Hykso's founder, Khalil Zahar, who's a past top graduate and mentor at The Founder Institute.
Zahar's background already qualifies him as an expert in the field of merging boxing with technology. He trained with the best boxing coaches in Canada, though also invented a method to calculate the drift time in electrospray ionization ion mobility spectrometers.
With these combined strengths, it's worth looking at what his Hykso company intends to do and what it could do to bring better boxing champions.
Using a Wearable Sensor
The technology behind Hykso all comes down to a wearable sensor that gets placed in a boxer's glove. This helps track how many punches a boxer makes, yet does so much more. It calculates the speed of the punch, recognizes a punch type, determines striking intensity, and determines the average amount of time between punches.
All of this works in real-time, and the data gets sent to the Hysko app loaded on any iPhone, Android, or other electronic device. What makes this especially useful is the data capacity on the app has no limits, making it extremely easy to gather reams of boxing data for study during training.
It's an inspiring prospect for boxers who've always had to use guesswork to determine how well their training is going.
The proof of Hykso's value comes in recent testing where it counts: On Olympic athletes.
The Canada and U.S. Boxing Teams for the Rio Olympics
Earlier this year, Zahar managed to have the Hykso app tested on the Canadian and U.S. boxing teams heading to the Olympics in Rio. With some boxers from those teams already winning medals recently, it may give the proof necessary toward Hykso's effectiveness.
The benefits for Olympic-level boxers come from being able to immediately dive deeper into data. Boxers gain insights for better goal setting, plus can review performance over a given time.
Through measurement of striking intensity, it gives a visual method to improve punching day by day so boxers gain more strategy above their competitors.
What's even better about Hykso is it goes beyond just these basic features. It offers other comprehensive tools to exponentially improve anyone's boxing game.
Other Features to Increase Performance
This app allows any amateur boxer to follow a pro boxing community online to match up results. It's not only a good motivator, it helps with defining goals. As an addition, it lets you go head-to-head with gym mates for practicing boxing techniques to study the artful nuances successful boxing requires.
What Does the Future Hold for Hykso?
At the time of this writing, the Hykso app is still up for pre-order to the public. Even so, they've already generated $360,000 in sales. Based in Orange County, California, the company was also recently accepted into Y Combinator, a prestigious American seed accelerator.
Once the Olympics end, you can expect to see Zahar expand Hykso into other sports where tracking devices need better data for athletes. The intention is to change the way people train in sports to start creating more super athletes like we've seen in Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky, and Usain Bolt.
