Virtual Training, Real Sweat

Can training in the metaverse deliver results IRL?

My journey to the future of fitness begins with 30 seconds of time travel. I park my car at Venice Beach, next to the iconic Gold’s Gym. I admire the vast yard – where big dudes in skimpy tops deadlift in the sunshine – then I walk half a block and light years away to the headquarters of Supernatural, a virtual-reality fitness developer.

Ten minutes later, wearing a Quest 2 headset, I’m boxing on the moon. Then, I fire off jabs and throw uppercuts on the edge of Yosemite’s Taft Point, bobbing and weaving as Drake belts out Headlines. Working out in the metaverse is more literal than I’d imagined. Sweat trickles down my neck, my heart rate edges north of zone 2. The sensors in the handheld controllers tell the app how accurately I’m punching. I throw my first crisp left-right-left combination and glance over my left shoulder at Half Dome and the 3,000ft drop from this snowy precipice.

As someone who has worked out while carrying an iPod, a Discman and even a brick-sized Walkman, I find exercising with a Quest 2 to be a transformative experience in a moderately comical form. In a similar vein, the offerings currently available in the app marketplace still have an early-days feel. Companies including Sony, ByteDance and Apple are expected to introduce new headset products in the next year or so, and Meta is testing new data-collection methods that would allow users to play without holding controllers. Over a few weeks, I tried a range of the latest VR fitness games, including cycling in Paris with Holofit, stretching my glutes in Tahiti with FitXR and doing hand-eye coordination drills with Reakt. I can report that these early offerings are fun, sweaty and surprisingly addictive.

During my visit to Supernatural HQ, I got to watch Leanne Pedante, head of fitness, create voiceovers for a ‘monster’ 40-minute flow session in a blue-screen studio. The making of each workout is like a film production, combining scripting, animation, live action, music curation and extensive post-production. Supernatural, which didn’t even exist at the beginning of the pandemic, now has nearly 70,000 users in its official community Facebook group.

One reason for the rise of exercise VR apps is how they deliver gamified stealth fitness. And it translates into a real-life metabolic boost that has been substantiated scientifically. Consider a 2022 study from researchers at San Francisco State University, which concluded that subjects playing three

active VR games had a measurable gap between perceived exertion and actual exertion – meaning the apps induced people to push harder than they realised.

No one knows this more precisely than Jimmy Bagley, an associate professor of kinesiology at San

Francisco State University and a co-founder of the Virtual Reality Institute of Health and Exercise. Using a metabolic mask, his team can measure the oxygen usage of people playing VR games and calculate how many calories are burned by sustained play. ‘Many people think these games are gimmicky,’ says Dr Bagley. ‘But now that we’re doing testing, it’s clear that it is exercise.’ Supernatural’s boxing is a top calorie burner in the VR space, according to Dr Bagley’s research, with users able to burn around 12 calories per minute at the hard setting.

Is there a catch? You can’t lift weights, which for a lot of people means VR will at best supplement what they’re doing at the gym. The headset itself isn’t cheap (about £325) and the better apps are subscription based. Also, the Quest 2 can feel bulky when you’re moving around, especially on a spin bike, and can get really sweaty.

There’s no evidence that injuries are a systemic problem, but a few studies and the community forums for these apps contain a smattering of posts about overuse injuries. More sobering is the risk of damaging your home through your metaversal exertion. Market research found that VR-related homeowner-insurance claims in the UK rose 31% in 2021, and there is an entertaining Reddit thread cataloging household disasters. In my own living room, my 15-year-old son meandered to the side during a VR boxing routine and threw a right cross into the wall, missing a glass cabinet door by inches. I can’t overstate the importance of creating a safe space before you unleash your inner Tyson Fury.

I’d imagined that the dominant audience for these apps was young gamers who already owned a headset. While this demographic is real, reps for Supernatural and rival Holofit say that a surprisingly large cohort of older people are signing up, as are tens of thousands of men and women searching for a different way to work out. The truth is, lots of people struggle to find a routine that works for them. Maybe they dislike being on display at the gym – whether they’re heavy, trans, introverted, slow to pick up routines, intimidated by advanced gym-goers or uninterested in returning to pre-pandemic habits. Perhaps they don’t feel like dealing with the logistics of a gym or want to hole up inside when the weather is bad. For these people, a VR exercise routine is infinitely better than no routine at all.

In my case, a VR headset will never sit at the centre of my fitness life. I love moving outside. I’m a fan of strength training and feel at home in an IRL gym. But this tech will make my starting rotation. It’s a fun warm-up for other activities, an effective tool for squeezing in exercise on busy days and an engaging way to focus on a session of guided meditation.

I often travel for work and dread hotel gyms. VR could be my salvation. Early on the morning that I filed this story, I was whacked out on time zones because of a corporate meeting in Honolulu and was wide awake before sunrise. I cleared some furniture and strapped on my gear. In a hotel room in my boxer shorts, I was jabbing beside a wintry tarn in Wyoming as Post Malone riffed about love lost.

For 20 heart-thumping minutes, I was transported to a faraway place where exercise isn’t really work.

‘I was transported to a faraway place where exercise isn’t really work’