My new favorite piece of workout equipment is a VR headset

It’s a normal weekday night. I’m standing in an alleyway punching water balloons lobbed at me out of cannons, my trainer yelling encouragement from nearby. I miss a block, and a stray basketball from the same cannons hits my head — it’s a good thing this is virtual reality!

In May 2020, as it became clearer that COVID-19 was sticking around, I ordered myself a new gaming device: an Oculus Quest. I wanted to experience being and playing somewhere else without going somewhere else. But to my surprise, the headset instead became a critical piece of home gym equipment. 

As a former competitive powerlifter and certified fitness trainer, I’m no stranger to building a home gym. I’ve filled a garage with racks, barbells, bumper plates, and a bench. When I moved to a tiny apartment in SF, I downsized to a corner of my bedroom, with dumbbells, a trap bar, and a stationary bike. Nowadays, that corner also includes my Oculus Quest, and I schedule VR cardio into my overall fitness routine (alongside strength training). Here’s a typical VR training session:

• Warm up (~10 minutes): Playing as the “Ninja” build in Ironlights forces me to make sweeping arm movements and dodge around, serving as a great dynamic warm up

Gif of Ironlights – the game mechanics require swinging the weapon behind you to regenerate it after a hit

• Steady state training (~30 minutes): 
  • Knockout League VR’s training modes (Focus Mitts, Reflex Alley, Heavy Bag), where you’re getting a great full-body workout by punching and dodging. The punch/dodge sequences are new every time, so it never gets boring. 
  • Alternatively, I sometimes play Beat Saber on one-handed mode, but holding the controller in both hands – a great way to raise the intensity level!

• Finisher / max effort (~10 minutes): Thrill of the Fight, boxing with an AI opponent. I use “endurance mode” to help the fights last longer.

Screenshot from Thrill of the Fight

• Cool down (~10 minutes): Ending with a few favorite (two-handed) tracks on Beat Saber to slow my heart rate.

The VR Institute of Health and Exercise has proven that VR games are effective workouts, equivalent to rowing, biking, and other conventional exercise. But why did a VR headset become more useful to me than the equipment, including a stationary bike, that I already had at home?

Dozens of existing sports now just a click away

Think about the barriers to taking up a new sport: buying equipment, finding a court or other space, finding people to play with, and learning proper form. Take boxing, for example: I’d need to buy gloves, buy and mount a punching bag, get a sparring partner, and hire a coach. How would I get all of that, during shelter-in-place, in my apartment? Some might face other barriers as well like, like fear of entering a new space where you might not fit in (“As a woman, I find the all-male vibe at the nearby ‘Fight Club’ intimidating.”) or might look foolish (“I’ve got bad rhythm but I want to learn to dance.”).

VR addresses each of these barriers. New equipment is visible in the virtual reality, and the controller’s vibrations simulate contact (punching, catching, or otherwise). Large spaces, even something as large as a baseball stadium, can be seen in the headset, and you can teleport anywhere in that space. You’re playing with or against AI opponents who are ready to play whenever you are – and since they’re not real people, the fear of judgment is gone! 

Teaching proper form is the hardest thing to get right. The computer has to have a routine to teach you a sport, the capability to detect your form, and the smarts to evaluate (and, if necessary, correct) it. VR has plenty of room for improvement here – by default, most systems only know where your head and hands are. Dangerous form in the rest of your body goes completely undetected. I actually found myself looking up boxing form videos on Youtube to avoid the most common mistakes – and definitely no substitute for the expertise of a real-world coach.

You could argue that sports in VR are pale shadows of their real-life counterparts. There is a real tradeoff between realism and convenience. To me, that tradeoff is worth making:

• When you’re in the headset, facing down an opponent, it certainly feels real. 
• Some aspects are even better because they’re not real – I don’t find myself wishing “That punch should have hurt more!” 
• When we start seeing more VR multiplayer, we may even be able to get the social benefits of real-world sports as well. 

In the end, I’m reaping two of key benefits of sports: fun and exercise. With instantly available play, without the frictions that would keep me from enjoying them in the real world, I’m having more fun doing more cardio.

New fun ways to work out are possible

Beyond making existing sports accessible, VR also enables a bunch of others (or angles on existing ones) that just wouldn’t be possible in the real world. From slicing and squatting (Supernatural) to space frisbee (Echo) to shooting and dodging targets as a conveyor belt takes you through an action scene (Pistol Whip), there’s a huge menu of fun, blood-pumping VR games. More fantastical ways to play means even more potential ways to have fun, stay motivated, and build a workout habit. Even people who think conventional sports are boring could find their “thing” in VR.

The Oculus Quest is the first VR headset that’s good enough

There’s a simple reason why I never saw previous VR headsets as being for fitness: the Oculus Quest (released in May 2019) is the first that just works. Even my parents, who are not VR or game people, liked the headset and were able to use it mostly independently.

Almost a decade after Oculus’s first Rift prototype in 2010, the Quest today has finally hit on the right combination of factors:

• It’s standalone. I don’t have a computer that could support one of the other headsets, and I wouldn’t have the patience to repeatedly set up external sensors. 
• It’s untethered. This creates a complete sense of independent motion that allows you to really embody – and lose yourself in – the physicality of the movements. 
• It has the robust capabilities needed for truly engaging content. Unlike the Google Cardboard or Oculus Go, the Quest has six degrees of freedom and hand controllers. This unlocks experiences and games beyond passive media viewing.
• The content ecosystem has grown greatly over the last half-decade, with over 170 apps now available on the Oculus Store. Of my favorites, Ironlights was released just in 2020, Beat Saber and Knockout League in 2018, and Thrill of the Fight in 2016.

The content and the tech are finally in a place where value beats friction for fitness use cases. And so two things can start to happen: (1) VR headsets become popular legitimate, effective fitness equipment, and (2) fitness drives adoption of VR as a “hero” use case.

In the meantime, I’ll keep getting my heartrate up by dodging, slashing, and punching in virtual worlds, with a vast array of conventional and fantastical sports just a click away.

Stay tuned for pt. 2, where I’ll discuss what could help drive adoption of VR as a fitness device.