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From Fellrnr.com, Running tips
Created page with "{{DISPLAYTITLE:TgForce Review}} TgForce is a mixture of the fantastic and the flawed, but hopefully they'll be able to overcome these flaws which are entirely around bugs in t..."
{{DISPLAYTITLE:TgForce Review}}
TgForce is a mixture of the fantastic and the flawed, but hopefully they'll be able to overcome these flaws which are entirely around bugs in their app and the final product will be one I can highly recommend. TgForce is a small sensor that straps to your lower leg, just above the ankle, measuring the impact on your Tibia (lower leg). TgForce is a little pricy given it measures just one thing, but that one thing might be quite important. The impact measured on your Tibia will be the impact that is felt at your knees and to a lesser extent the rest of your body. [[Running Sensors]] such as [[RunScribe]] and [[MilestonePod]] measure impact on your foot, and your foot and ankle are capable of absorbing significant amounts of impact. I believe that the measurement of impact at the lower leg is a far more useful and important metric, though I should stress that I do not have the science to back this up. TgForce will only work with an iOS application, so if you have an android phone (or no smartphone at all) you're out of luck. I don't like carrying a phone, but I found the real-time feedback from the TgForce is worth the annoyance. The application displays a graph of your Tibial impact, showing each individual foot strike rather than a smooth value. This is excellent for use on a treadmill where you can see how small changes in your [[Running Form]] affect your impact. When running outside it's harder to keep an eye on the screen, but the app provides real time audio feedback. You define an impact threshold in the app, and if you land harder than the threshold the application will beep. This beep occurs for each footstep that is over the threshold, allowing you to know instantly if you're doing the right thing or not. This is the only [[Running Sensors| Running Sensor]] that provides this type of feedback, as others give you verbal "coaching" which I find far less useful. This would you feedback is far less intrusive than I expected, and I listen to music at the same time. The downside to the TgForce is the rather buggy application which sometimes crashes mid-run, and will often crash if you swap applications or lock the screen while it's in use. The company has promised fixes to the application, but like many software projects the delivery is continuing to slip. I also had a number of hardware issues, but the company was excellent to work with and has remediated the manufacturing flaw so this should not occur again.
{| class="wikitable"
|- valign="top"
|[[File:TgForce Live.png|none|thumb|250px|When you're running the TgForce app shows the impact acceleration of your last footstep, here shown as a large 4.9g, and each step is added to the bar graph at the bottom of the display. You can clearly see in this bar graph how my impact changes as I move to a forefoot landing. There's also a display of the average impact for this run, 9.0g in this case. There is a smaller display of the elapsed time, the number of steps, and [[Cadence]].]]
|[[File:TGForce Settings.png|none|thumb|250px|The settings are mostly straightforward. You can set the maximum impact level, and get an audio warning on each footfall that exceeds that value. (There are some settings for sensor threshold and sensor delay, but the defaults should work for most runners.)]]
|- valign="top"
|[[File:TgForce Strap.jpg|none|thumb|250px|TgForce recommends attaching the sensor with a small Velcro strap, which works fairly well. ]]
|[[File:TGForce Tape.jpg|none|thumb|250px|You can also use tape to attach the sensor which is actually a bit more comfortable, except for removing it (unless you have adhesive remover.)]]
|- valign="top"
|colspan="2"|[[File:TgForce Review.png|none|thumb|500px|After your run there is a display your run, showing a moving window of 1,000 steps along with your cadence. You can also export your data via email.]]
|}
TgForce is a mixture of the fantastic and the flawed, but hopefully they'll be able to overcome these flaws which are entirely around bugs in their app and the final product will be one I can highly recommend. TgForce is a small sensor that straps to your lower leg, just above the ankle, measuring the impact on your Tibia (lower leg). TgForce is a little pricy given it measures just one thing, but that one thing might be quite important. The impact measured on your Tibia will be the impact that is felt at your knees and to a lesser extent the rest of your body. [[Running Sensors]] such as [[RunScribe]] and [[MilestonePod]] measure impact on your foot, and your foot and ankle are capable of absorbing significant amounts of impact. I believe that the measurement of impact at the lower leg is a far more useful and important metric, though I should stress that I do not have the science to back this up. TgForce will only work with an iOS application, so if you have an android phone (or no smartphone at all) you're out of luck. I don't like carrying a phone, but I found the real-time feedback from the TgForce is worth the annoyance. The application displays a graph of your Tibial impact, showing each individual foot strike rather than a smooth value. This is excellent for use on a treadmill where you can see how small changes in your [[Running Form]] affect your impact. When running outside it's harder to keep an eye on the screen, but the app provides real time audio feedback. You define an impact threshold in the app, and if you land harder than the threshold the application will beep. This beep occurs for each footstep that is over the threshold, allowing you to know instantly if you're doing the right thing or not. This is the only [[Running Sensors| Running Sensor]] that provides this type of feedback, as others give you verbal "coaching" which I find far less useful. This would you feedback is far less intrusive than I expected, and I listen to music at the same time. The downside to the TgForce is the rather buggy application which sometimes crashes mid-run, and will often crash if you swap applications or lock the screen while it's in use. The company has promised fixes to the application, but like many software projects the delivery is continuing to slip. I also had a number of hardware issues, but the company was excellent to work with and has remediated the manufacturing flaw so this should not occur again.
{| class="wikitable"
|- valign="top"
|[[File:TgForce Live.png|none|thumb|250px|When you're running the TgForce app shows the impact acceleration of your last footstep, here shown as a large 4.9g, and each step is added to the bar graph at the bottom of the display. You can clearly see in this bar graph how my impact changes as I move to a forefoot landing. There's also a display of the average impact for this run, 9.0g in this case. There is a smaller display of the elapsed time, the number of steps, and [[Cadence]].]]
|[[File:TGForce Settings.png|none|thumb|250px|The settings are mostly straightforward. You can set the maximum impact level, and get an audio warning on each footfall that exceeds that value. (There are some settings for sensor threshold and sensor delay, but the defaults should work for most runners.)]]
|- valign="top"
|[[File:TgForce Strap.jpg|none|thumb|250px|TgForce recommends attaching the sensor with a small Velcro strap, which works fairly well. ]]
|[[File:TGForce Tape.jpg|none|thumb|250px|You can also use tape to attach the sensor which is actually a bit more comfortable, except for removing it (unless you have adhesive remover.)]]
|- valign="top"
|colspan="2"|[[File:TgForce Review.png|none|thumb|500px|After your run there is a display your run, showing a moving window of 1,000 steps along with your cadence. You can also export your data via email.]]
|}
