BSX Insight adds instant, needle-free aerobic threshold monitoring, ships in March

That’ll make for some weird tan lines.

i wanted one til steve made a compelling point.

I don’t want to buy one, but if a coach offered this as a service to help you fine tune your zones that would be interesting. Perhaps get a reading three times a season.

@Sam, can you please explain to us, readers of BR, how Lactic Acid is a Myth? And then tell me where I can find one of these Sceinticians so we can have a basic discussion on Lactic Acid.

One statement I am wondering about is, the mention of correlation of heart rate with power output to LT1. Open to gain some education about this, but it is my understanding that heart rate will rarely correlate with power (from a mid to long term perspective). This is because your fitness is ever changing. For any random day, your heart rate and time in zones may or may not correlate with power zones. This tool seems to provide an ability to gain a snap shot of current fitness. So, maybe I am seeing an argument for wearing this thing for all training rides.

I think the general population would benefit from just a consistent riding program to get faster. Maybe pro athletes can benefit from this high level of feedback.

Does this company have a data set showing precision/accuracy, and dare I say repeatability? Not sure the third is even possible.

Why the difference in price for the running and cycling versions and forgive my ignorance but wouldn’t your lactic threshold heart rate be the same?

I wonder could this be used to measure the impact of a lactate pill like sportlegs.

@Andy – if devices like these satisfy whatever urge inspires masters level racers to dope, I’m all for it.

They’ve updated the firmware that includes the new dual measurement into the first units that will ship by END OF MARCH.

Great ! Rings a Bell ?

@codyish I’ve been called many things in my life, a pedant is definitely one of them. I just hate glucose molecules getting such a bad rap no matter what form they’re in, be it complete, lactate or toast.

@greydog DCR’s experience showed it to correlate well with a traditional lactate threshold test, if not beat it http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2014/09/bloodless-lactate-threshold.html

@edge your LTHR will be different for each sport, but generally quite close http://www.trainingbible.com/joesblog/2010/03/physiological-fitness-lactate-threshold.html

@Rico I’d imagine it would hurt their sales quite considerably.

@Andy if you find tech takes the fun out of YOUR riding, don’t buy it. Those of use who compete and don’t enjoy being stabbed in the ear while trying to fall off an ERG would quite like this, hence why I’m buying one.

Following a certain (nameless) physician/cyclist who helped write an important power training book on Facebook and he’s been experimenting with sensors like this (as well as others). His results indicate that the levels of “lactic acid” (I’m not sure that’s the term he used but bear with me here) vary by muscle AND by location on said muscle – big surprise right. His posts seemed to question the reliability of a non-intrusive device mounted on the calf.

He’s smarter than me so take that for whatever you want.

@david
“If you find a coach that offers this you’ll know to steer clear of them. Of the things that smart clothing can do, this is possibly the least useful from a training perspective. You’re better to take the risk of being an early adopter of the 4iiis powermeter which is a similar price.”

Perhaps there is a slight misunderstanding of what the device is and what it tells you.

It is a device about the size of a car key that slides into a calf sleeve so technically it is wearble tech, but not smart clothing.

Here is a little background and details on what it is and how it works.

BSXinsight is the first ever wearable lactate threshold sensor. It uses the gold standard performance measurement technique – lactate threshold – to identify both your current fitness capacity, and to automatically determine your personalized training zones.

BSXinsight is worn on the lower leg by a customized calf compression sleeve and uses LED lights to “look” into the calf muscle. As the light array passes through your muscle tissue, it’s reshaped by chromatophores (or marker characteristics) of your tissue that are unique to you. This creates a biosignal that’s captured and processed by BSX algorithms to generate your unique profile. Analyzing the signal features in action generates a real-time curve that identifies the two most important events happening inside your body – aerobic threshold (LT1) and anaerobic threshold (LT2).

We look forward to further questions and discussions! Thanks for the comment!

@edge
“Why the difference in price for the running and cycling versions”
The short answer is hardware and technology within the device itself.

Running Edition: measures running lactate threshold to determine your training zones based on pace and heart rate (ANT+)

Cycling Edition: measures cycling lactate threshold to determine your training zones based on power (ANT+) and heart rate (ANT+)

Multisport Edition: measures lactate threshold and training zones for both running and cycling

“wouldn’t your lactic threshold heart rate be the same?”

They will be different in almost all athletes. There are many variables that play into this and it becomes a very lengthy discussion but you would want to know both cycling and running to really maximize your training time and efforts.

Great questions! Thank you!

When you say 97% accuracy, what exactly does that mean?

97% of the tests were spot on and 3% were just wrong, or all the results were within 97% of the blood lactate testing results? If the latter, why not just say the results are +/- 3%? Most power meters list +/- 1.5-2% as their accuracy.

Was the 97% an overall figure combining both running and cycling or would that accuracy value differ if you looked at running vs cycling separately?

@john

Here is a little deeper explanation for you.

BSXinsight is over 95% accurate at identifying lactate threshold. It uses novel algorithms and proprietary machine learning techniques built from literally hundreds (n=800+) of individual athlete tests to achieve this industry standard level of accuracy.

This means that across all athletes whom we’ve tested at BSX Laboratories we were able to identify lactate threshold using BSXinsight with 5% or less deviation from what independent professional assessment determined it to be using traditional blood sampling methods. In other words, those error measurements represent the percent deviation from what the blood tests determined lactate threshold to be using blood draws, and what BSXinsight determined it to be.

This approach is far superior to the basic regression techniques that have been published to date, because it eliminates the need for the identification of a ‘break-point’, which is especially susceptible to bias. In addition, our machine learning techniques are data driven, which allow the system to improve its predictive power over time, as more data is collected with each new athlete that trains with BSXinsight.

Our research team at BSX Laboratories is currently investigating how much of this error is due to true inaccuracies in BSXinsight’s data collection and/or technique vs. how much is due to the increased resolution that our approach has over traditional measurements and therefore represents an overall improvement in accuracy.

In other words, traditional blood sampling is taken every 2-3 minutes. BSXinsight on the other hand records thousands of data points every minute. This gives us much greater resolution and theoretically will allow BSXinsight to be more accurate than the old finger-stick method. We believe any discrepancy between the blood and needless method can eventually be explained by the limitations of the old method. These are things we’re still investigating however.