Airmen experience many physical demands throughout their careers. Maintaining strength and fitness can reduce injury prevalence and improve force readiness. To maximize training efforts and minimize injury risk, strength training should be periodized for each individual and workloads should be appropriately managed. Volt's existing AI technology provides individual physical training guidance to Airmen, complete with video technique demonstrations, instructions, and detailed coaching cues. However, Volt's technology is currently limited in that it can only assess workloads using external loading of an exercise, which is the standard approach in the strength and conditioning industry, but is not specific enough to effectively manage workloads on an individual level. Individuals have unique body compositions and limb lengths which can affect workload calculations and each movement applies stress to the body differently. Measuring accurate workload measurements ("mechanical loading") and implementing into Volt's technology will help to decrease risk of overuse injuries and improve training outcomes by optimizing training sessions for each Airman. In this project, Volt will collaborate with the Human Performance Collaborative at Ohio State University and the Air Force Research Lab to research and measure mechanical loading and implement the findings into its AI technology to bring better training to all Airmen.
