# Nerd on Bars - Power Analysis

**[Click here to calculate your power using my ChatGPT bot](https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6798d50b18dc81919b14b5667144b43c-nerd-on-bars-bot)**

Hi, I am [Nerd on Bars](https://www.instagram.com/nerdonbars/) on Instagram. I am trying to find new ways to measure athletic performance and visualize them, like measuring [how much Horsepower top athletes generate](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFTHxjlI_DU/).

If you want me to edit your video, please DM me:

- [ ] First, do you actually need an edit? You can calculate your power using **[my ChatGPT Bot](https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6798d50b18dc81919b14b5667144b43c-nerd-on-bars-bot)**. If it is below 1 Horsepower, you might not like the result.
- [ ] Original video/s in the highest resolution, uncompressed. You can use Google Drive, OneDrive or anything similar.
- [ ] DO NOT SEND the video on Instagram DM, the compression makes it look shitty.

- [ ] DM me the following info, as you want it to appear in the video (you can copy and paste to the DM, and fill in there)

Name:
Instagram handle:
Weight (in kg):
Height (in cm):
Class:

"Class" is your creative choice, it can be `BEAST`, `Heavyweight`, `Noob` or something similar, depending on your level of skills and existing narrative.

## Note on my schedule

I have a full-time job and this is a side project, so I may not be reply to you right away, or process your videos immediately. It might take a couple of days, or even weeks 🙏

If I don't reply or take too long, you can calculate your power yourself using the steps I describe below.

## My goals

1. To collaborate with and learn from top athletes.
2. Create great, original ideas and content for athletism.
3. Increase my following.
4. (Secret for now)

in that order.

I will prioritize my work according to that. I will most likely not reply to selfish requests.

## How to calculate power yourself

<!-- If you want me to prioritize you, you either need to have a high following or be very skilled/powerful. -->

I started to receive a lot of edit requests. Until I make an app for this, it would help if you could calculate the power from your video yourself.

**[Click here to calculate your power using ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6798d50b18dc81919b14b5667144b43c-nerd-on-bars-bot)**

Here is a small diagram explaining the basics of what power is. When you do a pull-up, a muscle-up, a deadlift, a snatch, a jump, etc., you are raising:

- a **Mass** $m$ (your bodyweight, a barbell, weight plates)
- to a **Height** $h$,
- while doing **Work** against gravity with a gravitational acceleration $g = 9.81 m/s^2$
- in **Time** $t$.


The Work done is basically how much energy you spent while doing this. You could think of this as the calories you burned while lifting yourself up.

Then think of your power as how much energy you can exert per unit time. If energy is like a car's tank full of gas, then the car's power is how fast it can burn that tank full of gas to turn it into movement. Roughly.

The formula is:

$$
\text{Power (Watt)} = \frac{\text{Mass (kg)} \times g (=9.81 \text{m}/\text{s}^2) \times \text{Vertical Distance (m)}}{\text{Time (s)}}
$$

Note: This gives you average power. If your speed varies during the movement, then your average power will be smaller than your movement's peak power:


For example if your actual speed profile and power profile look like the the filled line, then the average power will be equivalent to the dashed horizontal line.

### Step 1: Get the Mass $m$

This is the pounds or kilograms that are being lifted. Depending on the type of movement, you will take it as:

- Muscle-up (without weights): your bodyweight
- Weighted pull-up, muscle-up or dips: your bodyweight + the extra weights
- Deadlift, clean, snatch, etc.: weight of the barbell + weight of the plates
- and so on.

### Step 2: Get the Vertical Distance $h$

You can either measure this with a tape, or use the following fact:

> Everybody has roughly similar dimensions of arms, legs, torso etc. relative to the whole body:
>
> 

Using the ratios in the table below, you can roughly calculate how high you lift yourself or a weight up during a movement.

But first, the relevant dimensions:


For reference, my own dimensions are: A=2.15m, B=1.80m, C=1.50m, D=1.10m, F=0.75m, G=0.85m, H=0.50m. For A and G, I made my hand a fist and measured from the center of the fist.

When you do a muscle-up, you change yourself from a hanging position where the arms are as high as $A$, to a position when your arms are next to your body, as high as $G$. Therefore, the distance you lift yourself can be calculated as $A-G$. Then, if you divide this by your actual height, $B$, you will get a **ratio** that will roughly give the muscle-up distance for anyone, when multiplied with their height.

| Movement | Height | Ratio to body height |
|-|-|-|
| Muscle-up | $A - G$ |$\frac{A - G}{B} = 0.72$ |
| Pull-up | $A - C$ | $\frac{A - C}{B} = 0.36$ |
| Dead-lift (from ground) | $G$ | $\frac{G}{B} = 0.47$ |
| [Clean (finishing position, from ground)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_and_jerk#/media/File:J%C3%BCrgen_Spie%C3%9F_(GER).JPG) | $C$ | $\frac{C}{B} = 0.83$ |
| Snatch (finishing position, from ground) | $A$ | $\frac{A}{B}=1.20$ |

These ratios might vary slightly from person to person, e.g. depending on whether they have a different [ape index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape_index).

**Example (Muscle-up):** Let's say you are 175cm tall and you just recorded a video of yourself doing a muscle-up. Then you can calculate the vertical distance as roughly

$$1.75\text{m}\times 0.72 = 1.26\text{m}.$$

For the movements that involve lifting a barbell from the ground, like deadlift, clean, snatch and so on, the radius of the barbell, generally $45/2=22.5 \text{cm}$ needs to be subtracted from the distance calculated by multiplying the ratio with the height:


**Example (Deadlift):** Let's say you are 175cm tall and you just recorded a video of yourself doing a deadlift. Then the vertical distance is roughly

$$
1.75\text{m}\times 0.47 - 0.225\text{m} \approx 0.60\text{m}.
$$

The same logic can be applied to any movement where a weight is lifted to a higher point, even speed climbing.

### Step 3: Get the Time

Assuming you recorded this on your phone, you can get the time using the video editor feature:

{%youtube Ocr3NTaACgU %}

**Beginning frame:** Choose the beginning frame as the moment which you start exerting the force. This is generally visible as tension increases in the muscles just before the movement begins.

**End frame:** Choose the end frame as the moment which the movement could be considered complete according to the height value you chose above. For example, [in this video](https://www.instagram.com/p/DDxffiporYq/), Ali lets go of the bars and flies further up after the top position is reached. But because I can't measure how high that is precisely, I choose the end frame as the one where his hands are still holding onto the bar, and use the muscle-up ratio 0.72 to get the distance.

**Example:** The iPhone shows the beginning frame's time as `00:02.75` and end frame's time as `00:04.10`. That means the movement began at 2750 milliseconds and ended at 4100 milliseconds. Subtracting them, we get 1350 milliseconds, or 1.35 seconds.

Note: If you want to be super exact, you can record a slow motion video on your phone.

### Step 4: Calculate the Power

Now that we have the Mass, Vertical Distance and Time, we can plug them in the formula and calculate the power in Watts:

$$
\text{Power (Watt)} = \frac{\text{Mass (kg)} \times g (=9.81 \text{m}/\text{s}^2) \times \text{Vertical Distance (m)}}{\text{Time (s)}}
$$

Let's walk through an example. At the time of [this video](https://www.instagram.com/p/DFTHxjlI_DU/), Ian Barseagle was 95 kilograms. We also know his height to be 188cm. For a muscle-up, that gives us a vertical distance of $1.88\times 0.72 = 1.354\text{m}$.

Counting the frames, I calculated the duration of the movement as $0.867\text{s}$. Now we have everything we need to calculate his power:

$$
P = \frac{95\times 9.81 \times 1.354}{0.867} \approx 1455 \text{ Watt}
$$

So Ian generated an average of 1.455 kilowatt in this muscle-up. 1 metric horsepower is around 735.5 Watt. That gives us roughly

$$1455/735.5 \approx 2 \text{ Horsepower}$$

### Effect of kinetic energy

This calculation assumes that the person is static in both frames. But for example in the case of Ian's or Ali's explosive muscle-ups, they still have positive upward velocity when they reach the top position, and they either need to hold on to stop the movement (like in Ian's case) or let go (like in Ali's case).

The calculation above ignores that kinetic energy. If that were to be factored in, we would find the average power to be higher. I will do that more accurately in the near future, but the formulation above should get the job done 95% of the time for you, the reader.