Creating a world-leading sport and fitness product takes much more than a great idea and a team of brilliant engineers. It takes a combination of bright minds and keen athletes who not only walk the talk, but also run, ride and swim it.

“The real work is done when the rubber hits the road,” said Dynastream Innovations Inc. President and avid triathlete, Jim Rooney. "From concept to consumer, we're on the ground pushing to make things better than anyone thought they could be. We collaborate, design and test our products, and then we use them to help us reach our own personal goals.”

The company, creators of ANT+ digital sensing technology for sport, fitness and health monitoring, believes that having staff use the products in a real use-case environment will give them the perspective and knowledge needed to create the best devices possible. This concept promotes out-of-the-box thinking  and helps identify problems that may not be discovered is a structured lab environment. And it works both ways. Employees jump at the opportunity to put the devices they have spent countless hours perfecting into action. The result is a winning combination of cutting-edge ANT+ products built for consumers, by engineers/consumers.

“Using ANT+ technology in a practical environment gives me first-hand knowledge of what our customers want and need,” said Senior Software Engineer, Geoff Thomas. “And the benefits are twofold. Jumping on a bike and testing devices at various stages of development throughout the workday not only helps me solve problems, it gives me an outlet to physically push myself.” 

This hands-on philosophy has helped take Dynastream from a two-man operation working out of a garage in the late 1990s to now a globally recognized brand with over 60 million devices in the market, and Dynastream continues to stay true to this belief.

On May 5, ten Dynastream/ANT+ employees – executives and engineers – will travel to Florida to compete in the Rocketman Triathlon at the Kennedy Space Center. The multi-race event will include three separate distances - Classic, International and Half Ironman - and marks the first time in history that the Kennedy Space Center's secured gates have been opened for a privately coordinated public sporting event. It’s a race that the ten athletes have been working towards for the better part of a year. Early morning swims, lunch hour bike rides and after-work runs have all become a daily ritual. The devices that the athletes have worked so tirelessly on in the lab will act as their coach helping to evaluate their performance and push them to the next level.   

“I think the main objective for all of us is to do each leg of the race at a pace that is sustainable,” said Staff Engineer, Theo Smit. “Monitoring things like heart rate, speed, cadence, distance and power during each event will help us to know exactly how hard we are pushing ourselves.”

“Real-time distance logging has made the day-to-day training much easier. Tracking data started as a novelty and then turned into a real motivator. No one wants to post a bad training session, and knowing this, you push yourself harder,” said Software Design Engineer, Michael Choi.

On race day, some of those same ANT+ devices that have been relied on during the training period will guide the athletes through the course providing the real-time data needed to help them reach their goals.  

“It’s sometimes hard to see improvement from day to day when you’re training, but when you can compare your results over the longer term, you can see that the training is having a positive effect” added Smit. “It also acts as motivation to do the training sessions and upload your data so that the others you’re training with can see you’re putting in the time.”

At the end of the race after the finished line has been crossed, each staff member will not only have a sense of personal satisfaction and accomplishment, but also some valuable insight for how to make the next generation of ANT+ products even better.

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