Like it or not, artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay. When it comes to one new sports app, that might be a very good thing.
AI sports training apps aren’t completely new to the market. For sports such as golf they’ve been used for a while to analyze things like a golfer’s swing. But the soon-to-be-launched BeONE Sports app offers AI-driven sports training with a twist. I teased it last week in my article on former D1 athletes who didn’t go pro.
Meet BeONE Sports and Train Like a Pro
BeONE Sports gives everyday adult athletes like you and me the opportunity to train virtually with high-level athletes–without the high-level price tag. Learn to swing a bat from a former big leaguer, improve your penalty kicks with help from a D1 soccer player, or get skilled at punting a football with data from an NFL pro. The app uses something called comparative training technology to do this.
Comparative Sports Training Explained
What the heck is comparative training? I thought you’d never ask. Comparative training is the secret sauce to the BeONE sports app. Remember the high-level athletes I mentioned earlier? This is where they come into play.
BeONE Sports digitizes top-notch college, professional, and Olympic athletes into their sports app platform. Their catalog of athletes includes former MLB outfielder Zack Granite, and, most recently, Mike Hollis, former NFL Pro Bowler and kicker for the Jacksonville Jaguars. BeONE plans to build up its catalog of athletes even further in the near future.
So here’s how the training works. Any level athlete from beginner to pro can access the digitized forms of accomplished athletes in BeONE’s catalog to compare their form against, thereby comparatively training. Let’s say you want to train with Mike Hollis to become a better kicker. You can transpose your kicking form against his so you can evaluate areas where you might need to change up your form to improve how you kick.
Old-School Sports Video Recording Reimagined
Check out the image below to get a visual. In the center image, imagine the guy behind the quarterback is you. The quarterback overlay in the front of the image is one of BeONE’s athletes. You record yourself and download that quarterback throwing, and the app will, in seconds, map and calculate the differences between your body position and that of the quarterback.
You can see the data points of his form and visualize where you need to make adjustments based on your own form. The blue circles indicate errors in your form. You can click on them and the app will pop up coaching tips to improve your form. Pretty cool, right?
Want to see more of the technology in action? Check out the video below.
The Man Behind the App
The BeONE Sports app is the brainchild of Scott Deans, who I recently interviewed. Scott is a lifelong athlete who was a kicker for Portland State University and had aspirations of going pro. When that didn’t happen, he fell back on his backup plan to be an architect. Scott worked in a unique role with BP, and part of his career trajectory also involved working with nanotechnology and artificial intelligence.
Regardless of where Scott was in his career, sports always remained a central part of his life. He explains how he came back full circle to sports by launching BeONE Sports.
“I had zero access to specialized training,” Scott recalls of his high school and college days as a football athlete. “I didn’t have coaches who could actually train me how to kick better. My parents didn’t have the money to get me special coaches. So back in 1999, I was recording myself and then three hours later watching myself on film, trying to figure out what the hell I was doing on the field.”
Eventually, what Scott learned in his career played a pivotal role in creating the BeONE Sports app.
“Now I’m converging sports with science with global performance…which all converge into my passion which is getting athletes and coaches to the next level. BeONE is a sports organization with cool technology, not a technology firm,” Scott explains.
The Mission of BeONE Sports
Scott further details the objective behind BeONE Sports. “The mission of the company is to globalize access to specialized training and we are a mission-driven company,” he says.
He continues, “There’s a lot of technology out there–fantastic sports technology. Whether it’s motion capture, wearables, sensors, lidar, and radar, there are amazing things going on. But what we’re doing is designing for the most affordable and accessible solution on the planet. It’s not meant to compete at the 1.8 percent level because we believe that the 98 percent of the world can benefit from what we’re developing. We want to build a solution that has the most impact for the most amount of people.”
Elite Sports Training Accessible to Everyone
To meet BeONE Sports’ objectives, Scott wants to make the app extremely affordable. The app is expected to launch at the end of May at a price point currently projected at $4.99 per month. That means you can take advantage of elite-level training for less than $60 per year.
At launch, the BeONE sports app will offer about 12 sports, a mix of both popular and some less mainstream sports. The idea behind offering some of the less participated in sports is that athletes interested in trying them have even less accessibility to training options and Scott wants to change that. You’ll find sports like football, baseball, volleyball, and soccer in the app, but also sports like javelin and high jump.
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Final Thoughts
As a middle-aged athlete myself, the idea behind this app is intriguing and I can’t wait to check it out. I obviously won’t be going pro as a 50-year-old female soccer player, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want to improve. I still play in tournaments, and sometimes games come down to penalty kicks. I’m the first to opt out of taking a PK, well, because I suck at them. Scott explained how I could practice PKs within the app, so I’m definitely going to try it. So keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming review on the Adults Play Sports gear page!
Until then, you can read more about BeONE Sports on their website, LinkedIn, or Instagram pages.
So tell us in the comments below, would you try this out and for what sport?
