I am standing on a grassy mountaintop, listening to birds chirping, getting lost in the stunning landscape. Suddenly, pop music swells and round black and white objects the size of soccer balls begin to fly toward me at an accelerated clip, exploding into confetti each time I punch one away. No, I’m not dreaming—just working out in my living room while wearing a VR headset, playing the Supernatural fitness game, immersed in a 360-degree wonderland.
When it’s over, I’m panting, elated, and totally sweaty, just like when I finish taking a class at the gym—and the next day my lats are on fire. So I’m not surprised to read the findings of a small new study which found that VR exercise —specifically the Supernatural app on a Meta Quest headset—was just as effective as comparable real-life, “high-quality cardiovascular activity” like running, boxing, and swimming. The study, out of the Behavioral Medicine Lab at the University of Victoria, Canada, and published on June 6 in the journal JMIR Serious Games , looked at the effect of two medium-intensity modes of the games “Flow” and “Boxing” on 24 participants with little or no VR experience.
It measured results with what’s called a Metabolic Equivalent of Task, or MET, score, which is a multiple of a person’s base resting rate, used to calculate an estimated calorie burn based on the individual’s weight . Further, it looked at mood changes post-exercise and found they were consistent for what you’d.
