Jacob Tober on Metric

Joining the User Friendly podcast from Australia to talk through the inside track on Metric — what we’re building, why we’re building it, and how the app fits into a normal training session.

User Friendly is a show about products and the decisions behind them, so this one leans more into the app side than the coaching side. We get into the problem Metric exists to solve: velocity-based training has solid research behind it, but the hardware that measures bar speed has historically been expensive enough that most coaches and lifters never try it. Putting that measurement into a phone camera — no wearable, no transducer clipped to the bar — changes who can actually use it.

We also talk through what “fits into a normal training session” actually means. A measurement tool fails the moment it adds friction between sets — setup has to be a phone propped against a water bottle, and the number has to be on screen before the bar is racked.

For the deeper technical story of the computer-vision pipeline, read how we built a computer-vision VBT app. New to the method itself? Start with the velocity-based training guide.