diPulse smart activewear “put me through my paces” Ankit Insight

WTiN’s Jessica Owen meets with Richard Statham, Mathias Jepson and Vedran Stankovic from diPulse to get to grips with the company's new smart textile system designed to improve athletes’ performance.

Imagine a gym kit that can monitor your heart rate, sense your movements to help you train better and stimulate your muscles to enhance your workout … well, this is exactly what new start-up diPulse has created.

Combining experience in Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation (NMES) with professional training, health insight, textiles science and engineering, Swedish company NMES Group and a world leading textile provider have teamed up to help create diPulse – a sports enhancement tech wear designed to prevent sports injuries and improve athlete performance.

To find out just exactly how this technology works, I recently travelled down to London to meet with the founder and CEO of the company, Richard Statham, along with managing director and world-level CrossFitter, Mathias Jepson, and tech wizard, Vedran Stankovic.

The three picked me up from Canary Wharf station and escorted me to the most extravagant gym I have ever set foot in – Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson apparently works out here when he’s visiting the city, although sadly he did not make an appearance this time.

Once I had taken in the swimming pool, spa facilities, extensive range of equipment, climbing wall and luxury dressing rooms, the guys found us a spot in The Yard (an 8,000 sq ft multifunctional training space) where they began to tell me how diPulse came about.

The starting point

“In my early years, I won a world title in Ju Jitsu, and at times of injury I would usually get treatment with muscle stimulation,” says Statham.

“Then a few years ago, I was introduced to muscle stimulation again when I was working with a company in Switzerland that specialises in this technology. While I was helping them to restructure, I realised that this company had incredible technology, but it was not sexy and not at all capitalising on its potential.”

After doing some market research into muscle stimulation products, Statham found that the market was saturated with many mainstream, low-quality but aesthetically designed products. 

“Everyone in the market uses gel-based patches – these are used to create a bridge between the skin and stimulation. They are mounted onto the skin and a direct current is used to stimulate the muscles, but they limit the user a lot – if you’re sweaty they won’t stick and if you do manage to stick them on then you’re limited to small, static movements to keep them from falling off.”

This is where Statham wanted to innovate – he set out to think of a muscle stimulation product that was both stylish and powerful. But the innovation did not stop there. He also wanted to create a product that incorporated many other technologies.

“I usually walk into a gym, turn on my Apple Watch to see my heart rate, attach another heart rate unit to my chest (because you know, I’m getting old) and then I’ll put on my Bluetooth headphones and swipe in and out of apps like Spotify.

“I just thought that surely there could be a way to put all of this into one platform.”

And that’s where diPulse comes in.

Tech and materials

The diPulse kit is just like any other long sleeve compression shirt partnered with leggings that you’d wear to the gym. But that’s where the similarities end.

The sportswear features a metal-free dry electrode smart textile system with integrated high-performance fabrics, providing consistent deep muscle NMES, heart rate sensory and motion sensing.

“The material feels just as good and thin as other sportswear garments, yet there’s 13 layers of technology in it,” says Statham. 

Both the leggings and the top feel silky and thin, but there are firmer patches situated where the key muscle groups are, such as the abs or quads – these patches are where the dry carbon is rendered into the material.

On these patches, there are popper-like magnets attached to them. Small modules that look like key fobs attach to these parts and within them, this is where the muscle stimulation, heart rate sensory and motion sensing technology is hidden.

“It has taken three years to design the material,” adds Statham. “The dry carbon is not elastic, and it isn’t perforated for breathing either, so it has taken a while to get the tech to where it is today.”

How it works

When I first learned about diPulse, it took me a while to get my head around the amount of technology that has been integrated into the product, and how a user would actually go about using it. So, let’s break it down into an easy step-by-step guide…

1. Put on the leggings and shirt
2. Attach the key-fob-like modules to the muscle groups you want to focus on (a maximum of two muscle groups at a time for safety reasons)
3. Open the free diPulse app on your smartphone
4. Choose the training programme you want to complete (there are six programmes that come with the app, but you can also purchase others)

Examples of the types of training programmes and challenges that you can do, include:

• Warm-up: You can place modules on your muscles to warm them up properly, “you can even wear them in the car on the way to the gym,” says Statham.
• Static movements: You can adjust the intensity of the modules to help work out your body when doing static movements such as deadlifts and squats.
• High intensity: The kit is designed so that you can do high intensity workouts such as CrossFit, and in future the kit could be altered for sports such as cycling and golf.
• Cool down: Cooling down is important and helps to accelerate recovery.
• Create a challenge: One user can complete a workout and compete against another user. This can either be done live, or an avatar can be sent to someone else.
• Live challenges with experts: Statham says it’s possible for world-level CrossFitters and other sports personalities to take part in live workouts, so that users can workout against their avatars.
• Virtual referee: This is perhaps the most important feature. The motion sensors can detect if you’re performing a movement incorrectly. For example, when doing a squat, the app can tell you to stop what you’re doing and then can refer you to instructions on how to safely perform the movement.

Let’s take the virtual referee workout to continue with the step-by-step explanation.

Choose the training mode for, say, squats

5. The app will show you an avatar of your body and where to attach the modules
6. Turn on the modules via a button on the units
7. Once connected, start your workout

“We want to drive health and fitness but we’re using sport as a motivator,” says Statham.

“Social media is driving innovation in how we innovate the technology and also the training programmes that we will start releasing.”

My experience with diPulse

While in London, the guys allowed me to try out the diPulse leggings and some of their collections of ancillaries. 

To start me off, the guys gave me an arm wrap that fits around the bicep muscles. A module was then connected to the device.

“The stimulation has a range of 0-100,” explains Jepson. “No one has yet attempted anywhere near 100, a level of 30 can be challenging enough.”

I won’t lie, I was quite nervous when I first turned on the stimulation as I wasn’t sure what to expect or how it would feel. Essentially, the stimulation just creates a tingling sensation, but you can feel the muscles being almost grabbed – in a good way.

“How it works is that the stimulation comes on for seven seconds and then it rests for seven seconds and so on,” says Statham.” When the seven seconds of stimulation begins, that is when you start moving, such as doing a set of squats, you want to be working against the sensation.”

Once I had got used to the arm wrap and the tingling in my newly-found biceps, the guys gave me a belt to wrap around my abdominal muscles.

The sensation from the belt is much more intense in my opinion, probably because it is targeting a larger group of muscles than the arm wrap. However, after a couple of rounds of seven second intervals, you do get used to the sensation and I felt it working out my muscles just from standing around wearing it.

Lastly, Jepson gave me the diPulse leggings to try on.

The leggings feel just like normal gym leggings – they are thin, hug the body and feel smooth and silky. There are rigid sections where the dry carbon is rendered into the material, but it doesn’t limit your movement or make you feel uncomfortable.

For me, the sensation is much more comfortable on my legs (I regretted mentioning this to the team because they started to turn up the levels).

“Now that you are used to the feeling, let’s try some squats and lunges. When the seven seconds begin, start to squat as you would normally and then have a break when it stops,” Jepson instructed.  

Bearing in mind that I am not a world-level CrossFitter myself (I’m more of a nip-to-the-gym-for-30-mins-in-my-lunch-break type of girl), I thought I did quite well. Depending on the level, squatting in the diPulse leggings is similar to squatting with a bar and weights.

“The simplistic way to look at it is that the brain sends a signal to the muscle to respond to say lifting,” adds Statham. “What we do is intensify this by electrical stimulation.

“It’s like training 15/20% above what you normally would do. For example, say you usually squat 40 kg, you could take all of that weight off and do it without. You could even put a wooden broomstick across your back, and we can simulate 40/50 kg when you squat.”

If you normally train for an hour in the gym, with diPulse you could be training for just 20 minutes and still have done the same amount of work – it’s a more efficient and intense way of working out.

Price, availability, washing

Now, having a piece of kit that can monitor your heart rate, teach you how to deadlift properly and improve your workout is all great, but it’s often the simple things, such as being able to launder the garment, that consumers want to know about.

“diPulse is warranted to Nike standard, you can wash it as you would any other garment,” says Statham.

Tests have shown that diPulse is guaranteed to withstand 100 wash cycles before there is a change in performance, and even then, it is only slight at 0.01 difference. The expected lifespan of a diPulse garment could even last over 500 washes.

When it comes to price, Statham says it will cost around £450 for a set of pants with two muscle stimulator modules, and around £500 for a top and modules.  

“In comparison, 2XU compressions are around £100 and they don’t even have heart rate etc included. Other competitors such as Compex offer products for more than £1,000, so actually for what we’re offering, it’s well priced.”

In terms of availability, diPulse is not quite ready to hit the shops. However, the company has ordered test garments and has a few distributors on board already. diPulse aims to have some sets of tops and bottoms ready by spring/summer 2019.

Overcoming hurdles

There have been several challenges that diPulse has had to overcome to get to where it is now.

The first challenge being market perception: “The market is very saturated, but the problem is the quality of the players has given it a stigma which is well below its potential,” says Statham.

“There is also the misconception of the value of what it offers. Most people are introduced to this technology once something has gone wrong, yet it has far broader potential.”

Another somewhat obvious challenge is finding the technology to develop such a high level of dry carbon. It has taken diPulse and its partners a long time to innovate the fabric to the point at which they are now at.

But diPulse has overcome these hurdles and it is now beginning to reap the rewards. In the first week of February 2019, the company was awarded the ISPO Brandnew Award for the Wearable category at ISPO Munich – the world’s largest trade fair for sports business.

Statham says that some well-known sports companies are already interested in diPulse too.

After my workout with the diPulse team, I handed back the ancillaries and leggings to the guys, who were then going on to do a proper workout together (they’re clearly passionate about sport).

“Let me know how you feel over the next few days after wearing the kit,” Jepson said to me as I left.

Considering I didn’t actually do that much of a workout, just some movements to experience how diPulse works, I didn’t think I’d have anything to report back. Yet, two days later I was experiencing  the effects of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS).

“Now it’s easier to understand how a 60-minute workout comes down to 20 minutes with the NMES technology – what we call CMT, Combined Muscle Training.”

To find out more about diPulse, visit: http://www.dipulse.com/

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