VR fitness is all the rage and the ladies are buying headsets. Really?
Working out can be a blast, thanks to some of the best phones on the market. All you've got to do in order to get your heat on is:
Key difference? True wireless earbuds didn’t exist. We had headphones that sounded awful and had a cord. Said cord would break easily, so you needed to be careful while doing cardio. If it broke, you had to get your dad to fix it. And he'd get annoyed.
- Tune in to your fav coaching app (or YouTube workout vid)
- Put your earbuds on
- Do the thing
It's simple, easy and most importantly: can be done at home. Because the scent of a bussing gym is certainly a thing that must be eradicated from planet Earth.
But I'd like to paint a different picture for those of you, who weren’t around or conscious enough during the 90s. You see, working out to music was just as fun back then as it is now. Also, doing so with loud music on was just as annoying to everyone around you as it is now.
Key difference? True wireless earbuds didn’t exist. We had headphones that sounded awful and had a cord. Said cord would break easily, so you needed to be careful while doing cardio. If it broke, you had to get your dad to fix it. And he'd get annoyed.
So, given the similarities between the situation mentioned above and some of the most popular VR headset's wire-related requirements, I'm rather skeptical that VR fitness will become a major push towards wider adoption.
Right now, the target audience, interested in experiencing virtual reality, consists primarily of males who are into gaming. And in order for this type of tech to become more widely adopted, that would need to change.
Enter stage left: FitXR. A VR app that is all about working out. It recently got updated to support virtual trainers and all new classes in activities like:
The Washington Post did some digging about how the app is being used and it turns out that as time went on, the typical audience for FitXR shifted from 18 year-old males to women of ages up to 35.
Enter stage left: FitXR. A VR app that is all about working out. It recently got updated to support virtual trainers and all new classes in activities like:
- Dancing
- HIIT (high intensity interval training)
- Martial arts
The Washington Post did some digging about how the app is being used and it turns out that as time went on, the typical audience for FitXR shifted from 18 year-old males to women of ages up to 35.
And this metric is supposed to convince us that the ladies are starting to adopt VR. But I’d like to bring up:
- Having to deal with wires
- The Nintendo Switch and the Ring Fit. The combo is cheaper and the joycons are wireless
What I mean to say is that there are other, more comfortable and even cheaper ways of solving this exact problem. An argument can even be made about the target demographics being similar, so that shouldn't be that big of a hurdle to overcome. So then the only remaining factor is novelty.
But that wears off quickly and all that you'll be left with is wearing a chonky VR headset while sweating to a workout. And if that doesn't sound like fun to you, I'm inclined to believe that you'd agree with me saying: the Apple Vision Pro won't be in any dire need of a dedicated workout app in order to boost its sales.
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