About Strength Edge Tech

Our Journey

Our journey began with a struggle by Gatis (founder) to track performance changes in Olympic weightlifting training during COVID-19 lockdowns. This was the starting motivation to apply background in software development and computer vision research to develop tools for tracking long-term performance changes in strength and conditioning. Together with co-founder Joseph and his insights as an experienced S&C coach, we started Strength Edge Tech with the aim to reduce unnecessary manual data capture of athletes and replace that with intuitive computer vision tools providing objective and tailored metrics to assist the professional coaching process using the best technological solution available.

Our Vision

We are working towards SET-vision systems becoming a new paradigm in S&C, and we envision systems such as ours becoming the standard in all professional sports with dedicated S&C coaching practices.

Gatis Jurkāns

Founder, CTO

BEng in Electronics and Electrical Engineering from the University of Bradford, MSc in Computational Neuroscience and Cognitive Robotics from the University of Birmingham, and currently final year PhD student in Computer Science at Aston University. Gatis has worked as a software developer for over 6 years and has performed in research roles related to computer vision applications. He is passionate about Olympic weightlifting, and this passion has led to developing systems for sports performance analysis both as part of his research role and for Strength Edge Tech.

Joseph Blacker

Co-Founder, Head Coach

MSc Sports Science graduate from the University of Birmingham and MSc Strength and Conditioning. Joe has also published academic research in the field of sports and exercise science. Experienced strength and conditioning coach with experience in international sports such as rugby union and rowing. In addition to his professional and academic experience, Joe has been a nationally competitive Olympic weightlifter for over 10 years, with his best finish being a senior national silver medal. Joe can offer both the hands-on experience of being someone who would use our product as well as an extensive understanding of the academic literature, which underpins the application of the SET-vision system.