Exercising in VR, part 1

It’s not that difficult to gather the hardware for exercising in VR. All you need is a VR headset such as the Oculus Quest, and a treadmill or an exercise bike. But that might be aiming at the wrong problem.

People who are inclined to use a treadmill or an exercise bike are probably going to exercise anyway. They are already used to the adrenalin and the dopamine rush that comes with aerobic exercise, and they don’t need much more motivation.

A more useful target for VR exercise may be the far larger group of people who don’t use exercise bikes or treadmills. In our lab we’ve been figuring out ways to reach those people.

One question we ask is: Can we use VR to help motivate people to do healthful aerobic exercise right at their work desk? And we’ve made some progress answering that in a positive way.

More tomorrow.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *