Analyzing Fighting Forms (cameras, stats, private communities)

Would be cool if gyms sold videos as a standard service.

Just setup a couple flip cams around the room, covering the ring from all angles? When anyone steps into the ring, a recording starts (records to disk). Or maybe you trigger it by pressing a button before you start your sparring session. $2 to 5 bucks to download the giant raw recording via usb or simcard. maybe a couple more bucks for a dvd of it to be burned and delivered – next day. No restriction from recording your own videos for free, with your own equipment. This would just be a for-your-convenience cheapo service.

hmm.
HMMM!

and someday soon, you could setup kinect cameras,which would deliver “bone positions” for each fighter. Little stick figures in 3D space. These could be compared amongst known fighters (“Analysis: your selected fighter, Shawn Waldow, tends to hunch over more at the waist, and keeps their center of gravity over their right foot 60% more than you). Lots of stats could be gathered and then delivered, to help fighters judge their form (and weight shifting, number of attempts to attack verses success, etc.). Perhaps even gathering estimates of projected joint wear-and-tear.

hmm. HMM.

perhaps a normal gym could make everyone sign an release when they join – and then record everyone. You could have video that tracks you across all the machines you used. plus your swimming form, and your racket ball results.
perhaps you could buy videos-and-analysis of other people are your gym. The owners generate extra money off hot chicks, and people end up less motivated to ogle people in-person (just buy the video later).

You could opt-in I guess, because some people would be afraid of nurturing a stalker. You could also opt-in to having a page for other gym members to comment on (correcting your form, making suggestions). Highlight what you want to address (“fat ass”) and see what people thing you’re doing wrong.

The gym could be a hyper-technical real world starting point for close knit community. hmm.

hmm.

… I remember about 5 years ago I thought it’d be wise for NaturalPoint to sell a variant of their full body mocap systems to Taekwondo dojos – so you could send your precise forms to a centralized “master”. (I went to a ceremony with a girlfriend who was into kickboxing, because some master instructor was in town at her dojo. Many students went, hoping he would take a look at their form and offer suggestions. Wouldn’t it be cool if he could receive 3D recordings, without having to fly into town? He could offer feedback weekly. Wouldn’t this elevate a chain of dojos – if they could promise weekly feedback from a master still living in Asia?)

In theory, you could even have your form compared against celebrities (like bruce lee… or jean-claude van damme). Someday you could home and play “marvel vs. capcom 3” and have yourself offered up as a optional character to play against, based on data gathered from that day’s training. etc.

anywho. That never became a product. And now that we have Kinect it seems hard to justify asking people to put on the suit. It’s premature to say the suit isn’t needed (precision is worth the money). but. I’m distracted by wondering which tech would be more interesting to a dojo. hmm.