Skulpt Aim: Device to measure muscle fitness with one touch

@wil421 The Skulpt Aim is actually unlike any other device on the market. It uses a technique called Electrical Impedance Myography that my co-founder Dr. Seward Rutkove began developing over a decade ago at Harvard Medical School. Four years ago we combined his background in neurology with my engineering background to refine this technology and develop a system that not only gives you information about your fat content, but also your muscle quality. The first system we developed is medical in nature and is being used by pharmaceutical companies and academic researchers at some of the top hospitals across the US. The Skulpt Aim leverages all of the knowledge we have gained over the last decade to provide consumers with a tool that gives them fat percentage and muscle quality for individual muscles. The device uses patent-pending sensors and algorithms licensed from Harvard and MIT and others developed internally to calculate accurate indices of muscle fitness. Because the device is placed directly on the muscle you measure, it gives you very accurate data on that specific muscle. I'm curious, when you say "sensors like these", what in particular are you referring to? Regarding your second question, this first generation embodiment is a stand alone device, but we are certainly looking at other implementations for down the line.

Hi everyone. I'm the CEO of Skulpt and happy to answer your questions:

@bcbrown The Skulpt Aim is "aimed" at anyone who wants to improve or maintain their fitness. Prior to developing this consumer device, we developed a medical one that uses some of the same core technology and is actually being used at more than 30 of the nation's top hospitals in clinical research. The Skulpt Aim, however, is not intended to diagnose any medical condition. It's the first device on the market that will allow you to measure your fat percentage and muscle quality on any part of your body.

Regarding your second question, muscle quality (MQ) is a measure of strength and definition. There is a high correlation between MQ and normalized strength (i.e. strength over weight), meaning that someone smaller with strong muscles for their size can have a similar MQ to someone larger with stronger muscles, but two people who are about the same size and strength will have similar MQs. Also, similar to your IQ, the average person has an MQ of 100 for each muscle and a pretty fit person will have MQ scores of 120-140 or even higher.

This seems like it exists just because it can. It basically does 2 things:

1. Fat % of a area/muscle group

2. Muscle "quality"

To address each:

1. One of the most accepted truths in health is that you can't spot reduce fat. There's no point in determining the fat % in a part of the body instead of overall since you can't just reduce the fat in one area. You can only reduce your TOTAL body fat.

2. I'm not sure how muscle quality is any better than just knowing how much weight you can lift. For example, if you really want to know the "quality" of your biceps, just track and measure how much you can curl. Of course everyone who lifts already does this.

@biscarch All great questions. Muscle quality (MQ) is a measure of your muscle's strength and definition. Leaner, stronger muscles are characterized by having larger muscle fibers with less fatty tissue infiltrated. MQ correlates strongly to weight-normalized strength and as you exercise and get stronger and leaner, you'll see your MQ go up. At this moment, we can't tease out the differences between different types of muscle fibers, but as we gather more data we believe there is a good chance we will be able to. We think this product will be extremely useful to high-level athletes since it will allow you to optimize your training by quantitatively measuring and tracking the impact of different exercise regiments on your muscles. You'll be able to see when you're plateauing, for example, so you know it's time to incorporate some muscle confusion. We have compared the fat measurements to underwater (hydrostatic) weighing (the gold standard), Bodpods, skinfold calipers and bioimpedance scales and found that our errors were much lower than skinfold calipers and bioimpedance scales by about 3-4x. And on top of that, you get data on individual muscles in a fast, easy, and private way. As far as the availability of "raw" data, we're playing that by ear right now and it will depend on user feedback. We'll certainly consider it if there is a lot of demand. Thanks for all of your interest!

I have a neurological condition that results in me having high muscle tone - very tight muscles, tendons etc. Would this device be able to give me feedback about how tight a muscle is? I would consider that invaluable to evaluating different techniques I'm using to manage my condition!

Who is this product aimed at? People with medical conditions, or "fitness enthusiasts"? What's the relation between "muscle quality" and strength? Are there any use cases for powerlifters, for example?

@robertfw thanks for your thoughtful question. My co-founder, Dr. Seward Rutkove, is actually a neurology professor at Harvard Medical School who specializes in neuromuscular disorders and the core technology we use was born out of his frustration that there were no good tools for measuring muscle health and fitness. As I mentioned previously, we have developed a medical version of this technology that is being used in clinical research, but the Skulpt Aim is intended to be used to track your muscle fitness.

@chadly That's a great question. The device allows for up to 6 users and a really cool feature is that the light ring is personalized for each profile. So when you turn it on, you will be able to immediately tell who's profile it's set to (e.g. blue for you, violet for your wife) and you can easily select a different user with the side buttons. You'll each have separate profiles so you can track your progress and get tailored advice.

I'm not sure what's worse, the infomercial quality says-nothing marketing speak about what this thing is and does (both on the site and here -- "muscle quality"? ORLY?), or the insistence on trying to treat HN threads like twitter with top level @whoever responses.

Either way (and I appreciate my response to this may be a bit over the top), I've never wanted to downvote an HN front page story as much as I want to downvote this one.

I'm not sure how I feel about flexible funding campaigns. I really don't want to give them my money unless I know for sure they'll have enough capital to be able to do a manufacturing run, which precludes flex funding. Conversely, if they don't need the capital, I'd rather wait until the device is released and reviewed before plunking down the money.

In my experience sensors like this are inaccurate compared to calipers or a hydrostatic body testing (if you can find a place or mobile van to do this).

How would your method differ, and how would it produce more accurate results?

Edit: Does it need to be a standalone device or could it be an attachment like a case on an iPhone?

Disclaimer: Jose (CEO) is my cousin. I'm extremely happy and proud to finally see him turn years of effort into a great product.

Any questions you have I can forward to him, and/or will try to get him to join the conversation.

Looks awesome - http://www.skulpt.me/about.html

I'm in, and I'll share as well. Good luck to the team - seems pretty great.

The 'average' guy in the definition of MQ looks like someone who goes to the gym only 4-5 times per week rather than 7-8 times.

I find it slightly offputting to show that as the baseline.

This seems like a really cool idea. Would it work with multiple users? e.g. if I wanted to share one device with my spouse - would it be able to keep track of multiple people?

Muscle quality. What quality are you aiming to optimize?

Thanks cuz! Happy to answer any questions that come up.