We’ve reported on the scientific research carried out by the punching professor Ravi Vaidyanathan at Imperial College, London, that shows how AI can be used to assess and one day coach boxing Here Manchester-based entrepreneur Jerry Krylov takes the research a step further to market.
The noble art of boxing, largely unchanged since a Victorian Marquis introduced his Queensberry rules, is undergoing a revolution.
Technology is transforming how boxers can train and fight smarter, whether they’re an amateur boxing at home to lose a few pounds, or an international fighter seeking Olympic gold.
Transformational Tech in Boxing Trackers
Thanks to the Corner Boxing App, boxers can now capture the data from every single punch they make in training. This virtual tool uses sensors placed on the boxer’s wrists. These then record the speed, power and volume of punches thrown and analyse overall performance.
Corner was co-founded by Jerry Krylov with his business partner Charlie Burr in 2015. By 2017 their start-up had raised investment and by 2018 the product was launched. Now it is one of the world’s most advanced boxing trackers with more than 20,000 boxers on its books covering a range of talent from amateurs boxing alone at home to Team GB who are using it to analyse performance.
The British former World Heavyweight Champion Anthony Joshua and Super-Middleweight Champion Callum Smith were both involved in testing the tracker.
A Training and Coaching Revolution
At his Corner HQ gym in Manchester, Jerry explained the versatility of the product:
“We offer a range of skills: our Heavy Bag training improves punching speed and power to improve stamina and punch volume; Fit Of Fury looks at building powerful combinations of punches and improving overall boxing technique, while the Bag Burner gauges the high volume of punches to generate knock-out power into punching combinations.
“All of these techniques allow the boxer to take control of his or her boxing performance and take their skills up to the next level”.
A Leaderboard records all the data so that a boxer’s performance can be gauged in competition with all the other boxers who are logged in. It shows who’s punching the hardest, and who’s punching the fastest, and enables people to compete with each other as they fight to achieve their training goals together. Alternatively, an individual at home can measure their performance against previous training sessions and record their Personal Bests.
Inside Innovation at Corner HQ
At the company’s headquarters in Manchester, there are the more traditional staples of a boxing gym. There’s a boxing ring, weights and punch bags to cater for every kind of boxer. It hosts sparring sessions, training, fitness boot camps and boxercise classes.
It remains the heart of the operation where Jerry’s team try out new things and test new products. The Corner HQ spreads out from here into a 20,000-strong community, both at other gyms around the country and in clients’ homes.
Jerry is a graduate of Glasgow School of Art where he studied interior architecture and product design. and set out on a career as a designer and entrepreneur. His search to design a brand-new product led him to his business partner Charlie who was developing an App to track alligator rehabilitation of all things. The transition from alligators to boxers might seem unlikely but it came together to create the Corner project.
Until then Jerry’s sports were rock climbing and mountain biking. It was only when he began a collaboration with Charlie, a passionate boxer, that he discovered the world of boxing:
“I now box and train in few hours a week. It’s enjoyable but I also do it because I need to understand our product, looking at what works best, what we can improve, and what our boxers need from it”.
Corner: Creating a Boxing Community
It’s all designed to create a community of better boxers whether they are elite fighters or just someone learning the ropes. Users like Darren Hedley, the owner of the Punch Hub UK gym in Oxfordshire, agree. Darren believes that boxing and the Corner App really help his clients:
‘The visual scores recording punches and other elements really help. You will lose weight and get stronger and fitter but you’ll also get your frustrations out. And the improvements come in leaps and bounds, particularly in the first two months of training”.
Eventually, this community of gyms could go global and spread into the lucrative markets of Dubai and New York to create a global digital boxing community.
“Tech is such a crazy space”, says Jerry: “ There’s always something new, and the challenge [is] how you embrace it and implement it. The key sometimes is not to be the first to market because then you have a job of educating people to use something they’ve never encountered before. Sometimes the key is to come second but with a better product which is user-friendly and sustainable.”
The Future of AI in Boxing
For any leading-edge tech entrepreneur, the spectre of AI is never far away from their thoughts. Jerry recognises the fears over AI but sees his company as a good example of what can be achieved:
“AI is a controversial subject at the moment. Our job is to give people the data to help them become better boxers, not to replace the coach in the corner of the ring. The technology simply gives us the hard evidence and the facts about your performance – and that is clearly more accurate than depending on the human eye. That’s the strength of the product.
“We can use it in a variety of ways: we can judge scientifically so the boxer with the best punch-rate wins, and we can help coaches using AI to bring all the data together and analyse strengths and weaknesses and advise their boxers how best vary their punches and combinations. There’s a real opportunity to bring together human and data intelligence”.
Whatever the future holds there’s little doubt that Jerry and Train With Corner’s knock-out product is already punching above its weight.
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