Deep Squatter Android App Review

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We received a message from Developer Johan of Jumisapps about a new Android app he developed called Deep Squatter. This app measures your squat depth through the angle of your leg, and gives you feedback at the end of your set (unless It’s still your MF’ing set, then I guess you won’t see it.) Our unofficial official 70’s Big app tester Paul Sousa put it though it’s paces last week and weighs in here:

Forget politics or religion, the most divisive subject on the planet is squat depth.  Well, if you own an Android smartphone you can now have proof of your depth to shove in the faces of all your Youtube critics.  Developer Jumisapps has released an app named Deep Squatter that aims to let you know if you truly are a deep squatter, or if you’re more like Marotta at the Arnold (too soon?).

The concept behind it is simple, in the app you set your desired reps and the depth you want to reach in degrees with 90 degrees being parallel.  You can also set whether you want to have a beep or vibration when you hit your desired depth on each rep (I had both turned on and could barely notice the vibration, and couldn’t hear the sound at all).  Once you begin squatting the app tracks your reps and depth, and upon completion of your set it will show how many reps you completed and the depth.

It would be nice to be able to see specific info for each rep though, instead of what seems to be either just the info from the last rep or an overall average (not sure which it is).  There is also a rumor that the developer will be adding the ability to track speed which could prove very useful, especially to those who use dynamic work in their programs.

Overall I think it’s a cool concept executed pretty well.  Some minor enhancements to allow for more detailed information would go a long way, but even as is I would recommend it for anyone who is curious about their depth.

 If you have an Android powered phone, you can get the app here. You can contact Johan at jumisapps@gmail.com, or check his site http://jumisapps.com/blog/

Paul Sousa is an amateur strongman enthusiast, general strength enthusiast, Android app enthusiast, husband, father, and is enthusiastic about burritos and hilariously oversized steaks. 

47 thoughts on “Deep Squatter Android App Review”

  1. Thanks for posting this up! I plan to add much more info to the app when I have gotten the time to throw it together. Bar speed rep by rep, depth per rep and so on. There is an incredible amount of information about the squat one can retrieve except just depth.

    The depth shown now is the maximum depth achieved during the set. Any rep cut short isn’t counted.

    If anyone got any questions or suggestions I would be happy to answer them!

      • I don’t doubt that, I have been reading this page silently for years. 70’s big and pendlay forum are my daily (silent) hangouts when I am to bored to work :)

        I would love to do a iphone version, but apple are kind of asses when it comes to developer terms. It is much more pricey to put apps on the apple store and as far as I know one need an Macintosh to install the app development platform. It’s also a completely different programming language (objective c instead of java).

        Both the Macintosh and developer fees are unfortunately outside of my budget for the time being (app making is just a side thing I have started with for fun and not my daily job).

        In the long term if deep squatter gets popular enough on android and I could figure out some way to make a few bucks from it then who knows.

  2. Not too soon imo
    Would be pretty cool if they used something like this in competition so people stopped getting illegitimate depth calls.

    Why aren`t we friends anymore, Paul?

  4. I’ll test it out tonight.

    Without using it though, here’s what I think would be cool – Set counter, Rep counter, matrix after each set with a column for each rep with a few rows of info (time, depth, something, something), and a calibration mode where you hit depth in your clothes for the day to make sure the app understands what’s happening.

    Also if you know the mass on the bar and estimate the movement (user input?) you could calculate horsepower, which would be cool, but not important…

    • Thanks for suggestions, something along those lines will be added in the next version. It would be a fairly simple addition so I could throw it in there in a week or two.

      A simple calibration can be done by doing a bodyweight squat to parallel and check that the app indeed show 90 degrees. If it deviates one can put that angle into the app and squat to that angle.

      Any variation from 90 can only be because of placement of the phone on the leg. If one makes sure it is straight and on the front of the leg it should be very accurate. I always squat to 95 or 100 degrees to make sure I break parallel.

      The horsepower would be a bit trickier though. I guess one would need to measure the distance the bar travels for a bunch of different depth angles and enter it. Or enter limb lengths and have a model in the app that calculates the rest (god knows how one would take into account different squatting styles though). Interesting idea! Would require some serious thought to implement though.

      • You could ask the user to estimate bar vertical range,after that the maths should get easy – (Vertical range X bar mass)/time = power output. Some careful choice of units will be needed though, and you could have power output per rep, and per set. Utterly useless in the scheme of things, but fun with maths, woo!

  7. The beeping when hitting depth works on the same “channel” as the music player so it will automatically use the same volume. If the sound is very low one can crank up those volume settings and see if it helps, it changes based on phone model. One drawback is that on phones with a back speaker android insists that the back speaker is the speaker to use, so the sound will be muted by the leg. I can make out the sound if the music in the gym isn’t to loud, I have tested it on a HTC sensation and on a Nexus 4. Nexus 4 can output a lot higher volume.

  9. It would be cool if the app realizes you’ve waited too long between sets, overrides headphones and announces on the speaker phone “Benjamin Steven! Come on…let’s get serious!”

  10. So now I have added a bit of functionality, I will bug test it tomorrow and then upload it to the store if it works fine.

    The additions are:

    1. After doing the set one can now get a table with depth, max angular velocity and average angular velocity for every repetition in the set. The velocities are for the positive part of the movement.

    2. I have added so one can email the table to oneself as easy data storage. I also threw in the angle and time values as a comma separated list so that one can easily put the values into an excel sheet and there plot angle vs time and other parameters and find sticking points etc.

    Hopefully this stuff will be available tomorrow!

    • That’s fantastic dude, really nice work.

      I often get a bit paranoid about my squat depth, especially since I’m almost always training alone. It’s brilliant to have something like this as a training aid.

      And it’s awesome you’ve added in the features people have been suggesting, I’m looking forward to the new additions.

      • Thanks!

        I helps me a lot, I find that I can squat much more consistently now. It is scary now knowing how many reps I was cutting short in my 5 rep sets.

  13. Been out of town the past week and just catching up on posts. Tried this out tonight with some air squats and I have to say pretty damned cool. I will be using this at the gym as a training aid to give it some good beta testing!

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