Brawn, the recently-launched strength training app has launched virtual leaderboards for its users across the UK and Canada.
The new feature enables users of the app to virtually compete against others on the platform, through submitting their verified results, such as multi-rep sets of squats, benches, or deadlifts.
Sohail Rashid, Brawn co-founder, said: "These new features have been launched to encourage and enable the natural competition between lifters that drives them to achieve more.
"Our goal is to increase participation numbers by removing the barriers experienced by hobbyists, competitors, coaches, and federations.
"We believe Powerlifting is a sleeping giant, and are passionate about growing global participation in Powerlifting, by making the sport more easily accessible, through lockdown and beyond.
"Virtual leaderboards will help further promote the fantastic work that federations and event promoters do in delivering the irreplaceable platform experience.”
Describing Brawn as a community platform, Rashid said the app was designed for people that like to lift and was inspired by the challenges presented by lockdown.
It will now, however, become a long-term service.
Early comparisons have been made with Strava, due to its broad range of features including Lifter Profiles, Trophy Cabinets, Awards, Rep PBs, and Training Logs.
The new features have been designed specifically to satisfy the competitive needs of strength athletes while making the sport more accessible to newcomers.
"With lockdowns and ongoing travel restrictions forcing competition cancellations and postponements, Brawn has provided a solution to enable competition for lifters at all levels," Rashid added.
Brawn was founded in 2020 by Rashid and Andy Smith.
"When the UK government announced national lockdown in March 2020, both our businesses were hit hard," Rashid said.
"We had to make significant personal financial sacrifices to survive. While offering each other advice and moral support, we decided that now was the time for the powerlifting to digitalise.
"We wanted those that enjoyed lifting to be more connected and engaged; we also wanted (needed) something to focus on personally and to use our time constructively.
"We had to work around COVID, competition cancellations, gym closures, lockdowns, quarantines, isolations, business failures, childcare (home schooling!) and multiple different time zones.
"But we put a business plan together and were then able to recruit a team of developers and data scientists that bought into our vision and that could help us deliver it.
"We went on to soft launch the first version of Brawn in October 2020 with 200 beta users.
"Within three months we grew to 700+ UK lifters on board, 200+ weekly training videos and partnerships with leading federations across the globe," Rashid told HCM.
