April 28, 2026
Stop! Hammer stats time
I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers
From gym toy to Lumberjack Olympics — plus burnout angst and “did a bot write this?”
TLDR: A Shopify alum used a one-month sabbatical to build a pad that scores sledgehammer hits. Comments split between dreaming up lumberjack contests, questioning if the post was AI-written, and asking for real data on long breaks—because measuring “raw” movements could change training and our relationship with rest.
A Shopify alum spent his one-month break building a pad that scores how hard you smash with a sledgehammer and whether you can do it again tomorrow. The gadget aims to measure messy, explosive moves that gyms rarely track. He hurried a 20-day prototype, learned hard hardware lessons, and parked updates at intensity.systems.
But the real fireworks? The comments. Sports fans are dreaming up lumberjack showdowns, with one user picturing it as a tiebreaker for axe-swinging contests. Engineers chimed in with nerd humor — “Charpy would like a word,” a nod to an old-school metal impact test — while jokesters turned the thread into a Peter Gabriel sing-along. Meanwhile, the work-life crowd got serious: one commenter admitted they’ve never taken more than five days off in 13 years and begged for research on longer breaks. That cracked open a raw debate about burnout, sabbaticals, and whether a month away can reset your brain.
Then came the spice: a user accused the post of sounding like it was “run through an LLM,” kicking off a mini-trial on authenticity vs. polished tone. Love it or roast it, the crowd agrees on one thing: if you can measure it, you can program it — and this could bring sledgehammer swings from meme to metric.
Key Points
- •The author built a prototype power meter pad for sledgehammer strikes during a one-month sabbatical.
- •The project’s aim is to quantify a fundamental, under-instrumented movement pattern in functional fitness (downward striking).
- •A 20-working-day rule was set to push one idea hard enough to assess viability.
- •Early hardware lessons included connector failures under shock loads, a failed sensor mount, and a costly mechanical design misstep.
- •A detailed engineering write-up is deferred pending consultation on intellectual property strategy; project updates are at intensity.systems.