An Honest Review of OVR Velocity
There are all kinds of gadgets out there for gym rats, athletes, and strength and conditioning coaches to measure and track training variables. The whole industry is chasing “optimal” training, and that means using various data sets within training blocks.
One of these data points that seems to have gotten more popular amongst coaches recently is bar speed, or bar velocity. There are a ton of different companies out there who make products that can give you this information but many are out of reach for your average strength and conditioning coach due to price. Most of the better coaches aren’t rolling in the dough, so when it comes time to either feed your family, or track some metric in the gym, family wins.
One company seems to have seen that void in the market and filled it. I recently bought one of their products and wanted to give my honest review on it, since I couldn’t seem to find any reviews that weren’t paid for, or weren’t from coaches who were given free product. Here is my honest review of the OVR Performance Velocity.
OVR Performance
OVR is a relatively new company. From what I can find they’re based out of Tallahassee, Florida. However, the product was shipped from Oklahoma. I first got turned on to this product by Coach Fahey from Florida State University School, better known as Florida High. I actually did a basketball camp there back when I was like 7 or 8 years old and living in Tallahassee. Small world.
Coach Fahey is a founding member, and also the guy who directed Westside vs The World. He’s very obviously a conjugate guy, so I can see how a product like this would have value for him. It was also a really big selling point for the product with me.
OVR makes a few products, including:
OVR Velocity
Measures bar speed (peak and average in m/s2), ROM (in inches or cms), Power (peak and average in watts), and time to peak velocity.
OVR Jump
Measures vertical, reactive strength index, and ground contact time.
OVR Sprint
Timing gates that measure time for sprints. Can group up to 16 gates together.
OVR Performance has kind of burst onto the scene almost out of nowhere, and given coaches another option for measurement when it comes to their athletes. It’s also a company started by coaches, which is really a big plus in my book.
Measuring Velocity
I’ve long been a big proponent of a Westside-influenced/Conjugate template with athletes, but I’ve never really invested the money into measuring devices for my dynamic effort work (or max effort work either, there’s value there as well). Like most coaches, I’ve always eyeballed it and had relative success with that. I’ve never really been a big fan of all the new tech because it feels like it takes away from coaching the athlete. I feel like my clients aren’t paying me to keep my face buried in a phone or tablet. This is one of the reasons you’ll RARELY see videos of my athletes online, that’s not what they’re paying for and I feel a way about it. I wanted a product that could measure bar speed/velocity without taking my focus away from the athletes in my care.
Dynamic effort work is typically done at intensities of 40-70% (plus roughly 20% in band tension) of an athlete’s one rep max, and that load tends to dictate bar speed, if the athlete is putting 100% into the reps. The bar speed we’re looking for with traditional dynamic effort work is 0.8m/s2, but I’ve also learned to manipulate this method to steer it towards speed, and speed endurance as opposed to power. Go check out this book if you’re interested in the same! Seriously, go get it! It’s nine bucks for the rest of the summer.
Anyway, measuring bar velocity ensures we’re training optimally for the stimulus we’re chasing. Too low and we’re tilting towards strength, too high and we’re chasing speed and not power. These velocity measuring devices are great for this.
My Buying Experience
My social media feeds have been absolutely inundated with ads for OVR Performance over the last year. I don’t know how much they’re spending on marketing, but holy hell, it’s gotta be a lot because every single time I open Instagram or Facebook, I’m seeing an OVR ad. I finally decided to give one of their products a go, and settled on the Velocity product to start with.
Their website is easy to navigate, except for a stupid pop-up trying to get you to download their program that kept popping up for me. The cost of the Velocity was $250, and I added a magnetic roller and bag/case for the product to protect it. The magnet and case were on sale, so I think all in with shipping and tax, I was in it $281. More on this later, but if you’re going to buy one, splurge on the $9 magnet and the $14 case; they’re worth it.
Once the order was placed, I got an email telling me it was confirmed, and the next morning, I got an email from UPS saying that my order was shipped/a label had been made.
I ordered it on a Thursday evening (around 11 pm), and the product went out the next day. It shipped from Oklahoma and was originally slated to get to me in Wesley Chapel, Florida, on Tuesday. But it was then updated to be delivered on Monday, which was a nice little surprise. So, including the weekend, the product was in my possession in less than 96 hours.
The presentation of the product was actually pretty nice. It looked like someone put some thought and effort into the design of the box, and it really felt like a premium product. The product did not come charged, so plan on having it plugged into the wall for a little bit when you first get it.
All in all, the purchasing and shipping process was easy and went smoothly.
Using the OVR Velocity
I brought it into the gym the next morning and wanted to be able to troubleshoot any issues I might have on myself prior to trying to use it with my athletes. Setting it up was pretty seamless after downloading the OVR Connect app. I use an iPad and have a magnetic mount to connect it to the rack that it is being used in.
Side note here: Use a tablet when using tech in the gym. Having your head buried in your phone just looks unprofessional to your clientele, and if we’re ever going to be taken seriously as an industry and as coaches, we need to come across as the professionals we are. You want to make more money as a coach? Look like a professional and not a social media-obsessed personal trainer. I know we all think we’re influencers in some way, but those people online aren’t paying for your time.
Just my two cents.
The Velocity comes standard with a velcro strap, but the magnetic roller makes for a significantly easier time when changing plates. Also, I would assume that the number of times that you’ll be doing and undoing the velcro strap will lead to a relatively short lifespan. The magnetic roller will also roll as the bar spins, making sure you’re always getting the most accurate reading. The magnetic roller should come standard, to be completely honest, which is why I recommend buying one the first time around.
The product is pretty light in weight, which is why it has four magnets on the bottom. You’ll need to place the Velocity on something heavier and metal, like a plate. At the facility I coach at, we have the Iron Grip urethane plates, so it’s not a great fit. I kind of wish that the magnets were either a little bit stronger or that OVR would sell a 10-pound metal platform of some kind. It would be an easy upsell on their site and push people near that $300 mark. If you have urethane plates, think about buying a single metal plate that is flat on at least one side for this product to sit on when in use.
The product has two different modes that you can use when gathering metrics: sandbox mode and regular mode (there doesn’t seem to be a name for the non-sandbox mode, so we’ll just call it regular). The regular mode allows you to attach yourself or an athlete to the numbers being produced, and will store them for future use. The sandbox mode allows you to collect metrics in real time for many different athletes. The biggest difference is that in sandbox mode, you won’t be storing data. We use TrainHeroic for our programming, so we utilize the sandbox mode and have athletes input their own barspeeds into the app on their end. It just works better for us and allows the athletes to just roll through without having to stop each and every time a new athlete gets in the rack.
The product itself will display all of the metrics you’ll collect on the screen itself, however unless you make a habit of standing directly underneath the bar while your athlete is training, you’ll need to use the OVR Connect app to see in real time.
Overall, using the product is pretty smooth both in groups, and if you’re working one on one with an athlete. The only issue that I have run into so far is that the video portion of the app will not allow me to save video. It’ll take it, but I can’t seem to save or share it. Might be user error but I have yet to figure this out. Let me know if some of you are having the same issues.
What Does OVR Velocity Measure?
Prior to purchasing my OVR Velocity, the only things that were really important to me with this product were peak and average bar speeds. I just wanted a way to measure them and give my athletes feedback. However, the OVR Velocity measures a lot more. It measures:
Average velocity in each rep (each is recorded separately)
Peak velocity in each rep
The range of motion of the movement
Peak power in watts
Average power in watts
Time to peak velocity (this was a big one that I didn’t know I needed, but has been great to have)
Elastic Acceleration Index, which is an analysis of how quickly an athlete can create force (remember, force is different from speed).
These are all great metrics that you can use with your athletes, and they will give you information on their preparedness for the training session at hand. They’ll also let you know if you’re training in a zone that is going to be beneficial for the goal of the day. I’ve always liked looking at data and trends, but I HATE collecting it, I just hate getting pulled away from coaching to deal with tech. This product seems to have made it relatively easy to collect while coaching. I’m not going to get into all of these data points, but if you’d like an explanation let me know and I can do a video or write another article!
My Overall Rating
These are all going to be on a scale of 1-5. A 1 being awful and 5 being damn near perfect.
Buying Experience - 4.9/5
This gets a 4.9/5 simply because I got tired of that stupid pop-up. Every single time I navigated back to the homepage looking for something, it popped back up. You can change this in the settings to only hit an IP address once every 24 hours. We do it with my site and I would reccomend it to other businesses as well. Overall though, it was an easy process, the product came quickly, and everything was delivered as promised. BUY THE MAGNETIC ROLLER, you’ll thank yourself later.
Setting Up - 4.5/5
The product is easy to set up and connects seamlessly to the app. My only gripe is that we have urethane plates at my gym, and I’m probably going to have to buy a 5-10lb plate to keep the unit on the floor. But not everyone is going to be in the same boat as I am with this. If you’ve got iron plates in your gym, this’ll probably be a 5/5 for you.
Using the Product - 5/5
The product is really easy to use, and the learning curve is pretty small. I played around with it for half an hour and felt like an expert. Everything is easy to see on the screen and in the app. AGAIN, BUY THE MAGNETIC ROLLER. It’s worth it.
Price - 5/5
The biggest selling point initially here was the cost of the device. Right now, OVR Performance is the only company not cashing in on the subscription bullshit where you’re a slave to the company forever after dumping a bunch of money into their product. At $250 with free software in perpetuity, the Velocity could function worse, and I would still probably choose this product over others. I honestly can’t say enough about this.
The Company - 5/5
This is a company run by coaches who are still on the floor coaching. They seem to get it and offer products that work well on the floor. I hope they stay that way as they grow and sell more products, but for now that’s a huge win in my book. If I can support other coaches while filling a need within my own coaching, it’s a win every single time. Also, offering the Sprint and Jump products at fair price points running on the same (free) app is a great strategy to pull more coaches into your overall product line.
Things That Would Be Nice to Have, But Aren’t Deal Breakers
A mode that doesn’t measure power and doesn’t need a weight attached in the app. I’ve got kids wanting to change the weight on the tablet in between rounds because their weight is off by 5 or 10 lbs from their partner’s weight. When you’re not looking at power production or metrics attached to that metric, it would be nice to just run it like an old-school Tendo unit. This is still possible, but many kids have OCD about this kind of thing, and it’s a pain in the ass to talk them through it.
Stronger magnets or a heavier device.
A roster to cycle through in sandbox mode so that you can attach data sets to individual athletes who are lifting in the same rack. Like, click a button and put the next athlete in and save the data under their profile.
A way to add accommodating resistance to the weight. I’m sure this would be an absolute nightmare to program on the back end of the software, but it would be pretty awesome to have.
Integration into software like TrainHeroic, TeamBuildr, Strength Coach Pro, etc. I know this one’s probably a pipe dream, but whichever company does this first is going to be the leader in the space for a very long time. With everything going digital, this would be a good play to eventually consider this, if the owners of OVR haven’t already.
A lot of these things can definitely be changed/added, but I’d imagine it would either force OVR Performance to create a paid version of their software. For the price point of free, I’m very happy with the software as it sits. If given the option to pay for a version that included some of these things, some coaches might decide to fork out more cash.
The Verdict - Overall - 4.9
This number is just the average of the five scores. It’s essentially a 5 for all intents and purposes. My only issues really seem to be things that might not be issues for everyone. The biggest (really only) one is my desire for either stronger magnets or a heavier product (which comes with its own issues with shipping and cost of the product).
If you’re looking for a product that is going to give you real-time data that is actionable with your athletes/clients with barbell movements, OVR Performance Velocity is a big win. The price point is the best in the industry, and the lack of need for subscription can’t be beat. The product pretty much nails everything you want in a bar speed/velocity tracker. I will more than likely order a few more for the rest of the racks in my gym.
