VR doesn't replace exercise for me; my regular routine involves weights, but it compliments it nicely on my off days. I think it's good to mix in, but wouldn't want to rely on it as the sole form of exercise. Maybe that's just me; I can't do the same thing every day, and since weight training requires a strict routine, cardio is where I mix things up for spice.

Being out of breath isn't actually great evidence of of a good exercise. A few things I particularly dislike:

* Headset gets sweaty

* Content that requires you to perform well can be harder to do when tired, so the exercise part gets less and less as you just fail. Yeah, you can tweak settings to not auto lose, but if the gamification of your exercise stops working then you might as well just do real exercise. This goes the other way too in that you may just get too good at the game and the gamification part is gone for all but the most extremely difficult pieces of content.

But I could see most of the above being improved in a few generations such that it’s a really great exercise option.

Last May I bought a Quest 2 specifically to try Supernatural, a mix of Beatsabre with a Pelaton-style experience with pre-recorded song-driven sessions.

I did one 5 song session (20 mins or so) and for the first time in my life I was dripping with sweat and thought to myself "that was fun as hell, I want to do another one."

That want did not fade. I haven't missed a day since May 5th of 2021. I go harder some days than other. I take my Quest on vacation and do at least one session. I focus on closing rings on my Apple watch. I have become more mindful of my eating too.

I was also surprised that with Supernatural specifically, the inclusion of a game mechanic that translates to squats and lunges means has translated to pretty significant increase in strength as well, even though it's "just" body weight exercises.

I was skeptical about the additon of Boxing to Supernatural, but it's become my fav mode. I get to a target heart rate faster, and I've seen significant changes in my body since adding it.

Over the last 12 months I've lost almost 60lbs, feel better, am stronger, and enjoy the process. I'm headed towards a weight I haven't been since college, and it's clearly within reach.

This never happened before VR in spite of time and money spent on professional services, products, and trainers.

I'm adding a Tempo Move for some weight training, but I don't expect to give up Supernatural anytime soon, if ever!

[1] https://sidequestvr.com/app/5820/space-punch

[2] https://discord.gg/MKsZqrZh

Unfortunately, support for custom maps/mods for the standalone Quest version of the game is not great, so it’s best to play the PC version if the community maps are of interest (which can be done with a Quest via PC link).

The point of always wearing them, even for low intensity use, is I never have to motivate myself to put on extra weight - and I strongly associate the weighted feeling, and the endorphins I get from them, with having fun.

This is how our bodies evolved to live ... or it should have been, lol.

* VR makes me sweaty… because it induces minor vertigo.

* Anything which requires intense, complete focus to do right is never boring. Exercise, both strength and cardio, requires this level of focus.

* Exercise is essential to physical and mental well-being, especially as you age. The difference between having plenty of energy throughout the day and fighting through deep fatigue is profound. With exercise you are sharpening the tool that is your body, for both physical and intellectual output, and time spent keeping your tools sharp is never wasted.

* Exercise is a skill that supports measurable progressive mastery. If gamification helps your motivation, then the advent of smart watches and fitness trackers makes it extremely easy to watch your “stats” go up.

* Exercise and sports provides a venue to meet new people, which as you get older only gets harder and harder. You may think you are an introvert and dislike being around others, but that likely points to unresolved social anxiety. You’re a human: you evolved to be a social animal. You may indeed need less socialization time and fewer friends than more gregarious humans, but you do need it. The extent to which you are introverted only emphasizes the importance of finding opportunities to make new acquaintances and friends because introversion has probably left you with fewer than you need. Exercise and sports is a great such opportunity.

* Exercise is fun. It taps into a very animal sense of conquest, and the joy of pure physical sensation. I’ve been doing a lot of road cycling lately following a running injury that I’m still recovering from, and the exhilaration of speed, of instinctively responding to possibly dangerous surprises, and of pushing your legs and your lungs to go ever faster is joyful. Even overcoming the misery of winter cycling weather becomes it’s own source of accomplishment: “I pushed through sub freezing temperatures and a brutal headwind today. I am strong and resilient.”

The only issue I have with Thrill of the fight is that when I get into it, I hit hard, but find no resistance as I would hitting a punching bad or sparring with someone, so my elbow tends to overextend and I feel some pain for a couple days after playing for about 30 minutes. That’s something that will probably get better over time as I gain more control, but as of now, that’s something I need to be careful of.

I’ve sworn off FB and while VR for cardio has me intrigued, nothing is gonna get me to sign back in there.

- SuperHot: while less cardio focused at the higher levels it really has you doing a lot of slow, deep squats and stretches as you dodge and move around. I recommend trying to do the "Whole game in 10 minutes" mode as that's an easy chunk of time to spend. It's been great to loosen up my back after being at the desk for too long or as a quick way to get over the sleepiness of a big lunch.

- Synthriders: a lot of people know BeatSaber already, but I prefer this as the music is more vaporwave and there's a more varied move set and better 360 mode.

- The Climb 1+2: more a pleasant mental break than anything else, but fun.

https://vrhealth.institute/vr-ratings/

Effective training (not exercising) requires a progression model. That is, on some time frame you must exceed your performance at the end of that time frame when compared to the beginning of the time frame. This must be done in some measurable way--trying "harder" is ineffective. For example, if you squatted 120 kg x 5 two days ago, today you need to squat 122.5 kg x 5. VR cannot support such a progression model because it is incapable of producing a sufficiently intense stimulus (obviously for strength, but also for cardiovascular fitness) to result in continued adaptations; i.e., you cannot effectively scale the stress to produce meaningful adaptations after an initial period of adaptations. I'm sure if the author of the post continues for another 80 days, you'll see progress mostly stall.

At any rate, the bigger issue is that the most important component of fitness--strength--is left out entirely. Strength is extremely correlated with decreased morbidity/mortality but, perhaps more tangibly, becoming strong results in vast, systemic changes to your body and (especially if you're older or extremely unfit already) similarly vast improvements to your quality of life. You are a physical entity and the way you interact with your environment is expressed through forces; the degree to which you can produce such forces is strength. We all depend on strength.

As anyone who is strong will tell you, being strong is a far superior state to being weak. If you only "exercise" or just go for runs or only do VR exercise, you are weak.

(Effective) strength training trains your entire body. Your bones, your nervous system, your balance, and yes, even cardiovascular fitness. You can become very strong lifting just 3x a week for one hour each time. Throw in some HIIT (which takes 15 minutes and results in better cardiovascular fitness than VR exercise because it has a progression model and is sufficiently intense to result in sufficient stress to evoke an adaptation) on a rest day and you have a far, far more effective recipe for general fitness with significantly less time spent. All other factors being equal, the man who can squat 400 lbs will always be fitter than the man who plays VR for 45 minutes every day--and the former can do it with a smaller time investment.

For any naysayers arguing that strength training isn't fun (like VR is): it is fun. You're playing Pokemon, just leveling up IRL instead of your Clefairy. The progression model I explained above makes it fun.

VR exercise has been a real gamechanger for me, well worth the cost of the VR system alone.

I exercise every day, and look forward to it, I really enjoy it. I feel a lot more energy in my day to day life and feel just generally great. My focus and general emotional health is a lot better, and I also see some benefits with creativity.

So yes, it may just be light cardio or whatnot, not the same as a gym workout, but I don't see myself doing a gym workout so regularly or having such fun.

I guess that everyone is different. In my case I really enjoy participating in HIT workouts with people; the group competition drives me to push myself.

That's one of the reasons for having better results in a marathon than during training: group competitiveness

The second benefit is also obvious to me: socializing. Just the fact of doing sports together gives you a sense of bonding, of going through similar pain and succeeding.

One can argue you can achieve the same with VR meanwhile for me is just a poor replacement.

Not being bad about it, but if you find a gym that's open at 5:30 it's going to be pretty empty, that's if COVID worries are keeping the OP out of these environments.

> I clear out my workout space and make sure my cats aren't in the main play area.

No wife and kids huh? I don't think it's going to scale to having a couple of toddlers running about when you're plugged in and jumping about the place blindly.

* If you're wanting to have some change of skill transference into real world table tennis, get an adapter for your dominant hand paddle so your bat has the right weight, position and feel. Also, never forget that the table isn't real.

When I focus on form, I’m just a little sore from pushing myself past my comfort zone.

Most importantly, it gets me out of bed because I look forward to the 20min of zen and focus I get while listening to great music.

You get in an exercise bike (with a cadence tracker, which is a device thag measures pedal movement) and ride through 3D environments via google street view. It’s really, really cool.

Also, best saber is great for getting a little sweaty. So is holopoint.

1. Isn’t the headset moving when doing fast moves?

2. Does the headset get dirty from sweating?

3. Does any sweat build up inside the device?

4. Did anyone break their device by moving too fast?

TIL. I’ve been doing this forever, but it’s kind of nice to have a zeitgeisty label to slap on the activity.

For example, I’ve been doing somewhere between 5 minutes and 60 minutes of yoga every day for about a year now. Some days it’s more, other days (or weeks) it’s less. But I’ve found that needing to do something with no minimum standard every day keeps it top of mind, but never stressful.

And it helps that even five minutes of stretching after sitting in front of a computer all day does help to keep me from feeling terrible.

Also, my wife and I have gotten really into doing Apple Fitness+ strength training videos together. It requires an Apple Watch because Apple, but no weird VR headset. I’m sure you could find any number of comparable videos on YouTube. I don’t think you need to buy a thing to start feeling healthier.

I bought a treadmill for a treadmill desk. At first walking was a bit painful when walking more than an hour a day.

Now, after a couple months, I not longer have pain when walking even a few hours. In fact, it feels better to walk than to stand.

And now walking doesn't create knee or leg pain, I am starting to jog. At first once every 2 or 3 days. Now about nearly every day for 20-30 minutes. Though if I feel worn out, I'll skip a day to avoid any injuries.

i try to jog outside, but when it's too cold, i jog inside on the treadmill, while watching queued youtube vids.

If you want to join a hand tracking based full body group workout you can join our daily session in VRWorkout ( 7AM GMT+1/10 PM Pacific)

For audio chat send me a friend request (oculus) to: xrworkout.io because we are still ironing out some flaws of our audiochat in GodotEngine

[1] https://xrworkout.io [2] https://github.com/mgschwan/VRWorkout

https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2307085352735834/

I don't find high difficulty levels to be great exercise. I can keep up fine, but I get lulled into using little wrist flicks instead of sweeping arcs.

The best tracks for me are ones which aren't technically challenging. Instead, I get my whole body into it - dancing the whole time, stepping to the side so I can take a wide swing, shakin' my butt to the groove... That all gets my heart pounding, and works a much wider range of muscles. I've also turned the HUD off so I don't focus on my score, instead loosening up and having a good time.

The Claws mod also helps me a lot. You only get about half the range of the normal sabers so you have to move your arms farther to reach the blocks. It also makes you use a wider range of muscles, which has stopped some of the RSI I was feeling from too many wrist flicks earlier.

It's not perfect exercise. I could feel my body improve a lot early on, but then it plateaued and I don't see an easy way to push it much farther. However, I'm happy with where it's gotten me, and I intend to keep with it for the foreseeable future. It's fun, and it's convenient so I have no problem doing it for 45 minutes every day, and those are valuable attributes.

I have:

1. A Quest 2

2. A PC with an RTX 20XX graphics card (usually running Linux, but can boot into Windows 10) and USB C port

3. Beat Saber (standalone version)

I guess I need:

4. A long USB C cable (or the official one)?

5. Beat Saber for PC (best to buy on Oculus or Steam?)

6. Some instructions for finding, installing and using these community mods.

Is there a particular place (e.g. Reddit community) that's the best place to find 'getting started' info?

Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no way VR will bulk up your arms in a way that a simple dumbbell won't do better in 5-15 minutes per day, right?

> exercising parts of my body that running didn't touch

Similarly, running will exercise parts of your body that VR won't touch right?

No you didn't, unless you were completely and utterly detrained (i.e., previously bedridden or something) and even then, the stimulus would've only resulted in adaptation for a short period.

VR exercise is far too submaximal (in regards to strength) to result in meaningful strength adaptations past a short initial adaptation period.

As the proverbial 90 lb weakling who never did anything athletic, I can attest that once I started, I was amazed at what my body was capable of.

To be fair, we should also understand the context of the quote, which is that Socrates advocates physical strength and training so men could be useful to the states [1].

[1]. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5hcclh/did_s...

2) You are too dismissive, hand waving/wringing behind the word “effective”. You don’t need to min/max and obsess over progression and optimization to get good exercise. I’m jacked just doing push-ups, pull-ups, and body weight squats here and there. I don’t count them, I just do some, but I do some every day.

Where people fail is the daily consistency and making the lifestyle change of actually exercising at all regularly, not because they aren’t exercising optimally.

If VR compels someone to exercise, it kinda seems like you would butt in with this “well actually” sort of unhelpful discouragement before you even know what their goals are. Sounds like you may only have one narrow goal in mind.

Your posts in these threads remind me of all the instant guru redditors that just read Starting Strength and now dunk on people in r/fitness.

It's fine to muck around doing 120kg squats if that's your thing, but you're continuously putting yourself to increased risk of injury as the years go by and you're increasing weight. To mitigate that risk you then have to start doing additional warm up, foam rolls, recovery routines. Oh and lets not forget that most people can't even do squat properly, so add static stretching too. That's hell of a commitment to someone who likely hates the process and just wants to be healthy.

That said, I also do weight training, but I don't emphasize it due to above. 2x/week full-body base, 2x/week 30 min cardio, 2x week static stretches. Am I advanced in anything? No. Am I rounded more than person going to the gym 3 times a week? I'd think so.

Step one is getting people to train at all. That alone means they are improving if they do something consistently.

Next, progression can take many forms. Adding weight is one way, more reps is another, adding explosiveness (body squat with jump for example) yea another. There's also things like time under tension where you do 1/2 squats and never come out of the contraction for the whole time. I did heavily weighted pull ups for years, then one day decided to focus on reps instead and my lats got bigger.

We also need to define how much strength does the average person who doesn't want power lifting to be their sport need. I've seen some people say, the ability to goblet squat the weight of a typical toddler is a good goal. If someone is doing 100s of bw squats consistently multiple times/week, they should feel comfortable picking up their kid.

Someone mentioned studies showing increased strength is good for health, and that's right. But if you look closely, they are not talking about huge increases. Again, bw stuff probably meets the study parameters for increases.

At the end of the day, people need to find something they like doing and do it consistently. They'll progress to some level, and then maintaining is fine if they don't want to squat 400# or do 500 pull ups in the workout.

I finally stopped power lifting when it no longer fit my other sport goals. I needed more agility and endurance for what I wanted to do so had to move my focus.

As for progression you do it the same way as running presumably - by putting more time and/or doing it faster.

I'll be physically weak and happy instead and continue to put concepts into my mind and enjoy the activity I do get, thank you.

Just talk to anyone who trains endurance sports. Read the recent "how to skate 10kms" that is making rounds lately. Look at any training program of competitive endurance athletes and you will see low intensity volume before anything else. The reason is there is that it works. There are adaptations that only happens during long easy sessions.

If you just care about carrying heavy stuff then you can ignore all of the above but there is more to fitness than that.

>>All other factors being equal, the man who can squat 400 lbs will always be fitter than the man who plays VR for 45 minutes every day--and the former can do it with a smaller time investment

Plenty of guys who can squat 400lbs who would be totally gassed after running a few miles or cycling up a moderate length hill. I wouldn't call it fit. I am betting on 45mins per day VR guy.

First, I'll mention that I generally agree that most people are not fit, that most people should get fitter, and that includes getting stronger. I'll also agree that getting stronger has tremendous real-world benefits, especially as you get older.

That said, you're pushing that message way too far and discounting cardio completely.

I think the main reason to get fit, for most people, is one of:

1. They want to live longer.

2. They want to have a healthier/better life.

3. They want to look better.

4. They enjoy it.

Different people have different goals, which are all valid. But you deciding that strength is the most important component of fitness is not true, for someone who doesn't share your goals.

For living longer, cardiovascular health is more important than strength, as is having lower body fat. That's the generally accepted view today - if you think otherwise, what evidence do you have for that?

For being healthier, after a certain amount of strength, I'm pretty sure that cardiovascular fitness is also more important, though admittedly I'm a bit less sure about that point.

For wanting to look better, this very much depends on the person. For most people, losing weight is the easiest thing to do to improve their appearance, though building muscle is probably the second most important thing. (I'm excluding makeup/fashion/etc which are completely different).

For enjoyment, well, that's completely dependent on the person. I personally love strength training and dislike many forms of cardio, but that's me.

I play FitXR which has HIIT and I use resistance bands that I connect to a belt, so I’m adding plenty of strength.

Plus I’m not a Gym rat, I’m not trying to do what you are doing, I use it because I hate going to the gym, i hate any exercise, I want to be able to do something at home on my lunch break and most of all it really makes me feel great for the rest of the day, it’s the best thing I do for myself so I’m not sure how it can be a ‘remarkably poor allocation of time’ it’s literally the opposite of that, i do it for an hour, my heart rate goes way up, I sweat a lot and I’m buzzing for hours afterwords with a great amount of focus. Your comment is complete and utter nonsense.

I don’t care about ‘training’, I care about exercise. Your post makes no sense. Nobody doing this is trying to become some brain dead nobody builder like yourself.

The novelty of VR aerobics will have the shelf life of Tae Bo, Jazzercise, on and on. I have seen more variations on this theme than the Fast & Furious franchise.

At least when you get sick of the workouts you still have the VR headset that can do other things instead of a rowing machine or treadmill that collects dust.

I even have a decent home gym but go to the commercial gym 90% of the time because working out at home is boring and demotivating. You can't replicate the stimulation of the gym at home. The ritual of going, the other people, not to mention the variety of physical stimulus.

VR has HIIT already, FitXR has many different levels of it.

VR fitness is mostly just aerobic workouts that you would get from a kickboxing or more tradition aerobics class with an instructor. You aren’t using weights in those classes either, it isn’t suited to anaerobic exercise.

Personally, I do go on extended walks regularly, e.g. do a couple miles to the grocery store—but, I was trying to get back into an actual strength training routine after years of no formal workouts, just walking, and gaining skill in Beat Saber was actually the first stepping stone that eventually got me back into it. Just needed some kinda tiny success first, just some experience using my body in a relatively athletic mode again.

VR is great. You don't have to spike your risk of skin cancer, you don't have to deal with allergies, you don't have to run along a road that constantly has drunken teenagers crashing into mailboxes, there are no mosquitos that will make your life miserable, and you can play with friends, regardless of the fact that they're traveling, or live elsewhere. You don't have to deal with motion sickness as you're driving to a more interesting location, and you don't have to comply to the schedule of your immediate environment.

But none of that is quite as important as what really matters: The real world is boring. If the parts accessible to everyone were half as interesting as a world defined in silicon, people wouldn't strap an LCD screen onto their face and spend all day in it.

$300 for a device that you can do your work in, watch movies with friends in, play pretty intensive, full-motion e-sports in, meet new people every single night without having to pay a cover fee in, and program your own world around your preferences in is a hell of a deal.

These things are popular because the real world sucks in comparison for 80% of the population. Not everyone's a dotcom bubble millionaire, not everyone attends any university, let alone a good one, not everyone lives in the suburbs or in an urban environment.

It's more fun to see someone stand up on a virtual stage and give a presentation to eighty people on something that wouldn't be significant in real life, like a mainline Linux kernel running in a written-for-this-talk RISC-V emulator inside of a pixel shader inside of the video game you're currently standing in's virtual world[1] than it ever could be to watch birds.

I have one of the best views imaginable in real life, with as much land as a person could want to mess around with vehicles, run, or make impromptu sleds to see how fast you can go down a steep hill without toppling, and it doesn't hold a candle to VR. Most of my hours spent outside now are based in running with my pet or walking through the woods, because there's no point in going outside every day for its own sake. If it weren't for my pet, I probably wouldn't spend more than an hour outside every day.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2u7NOpzcBQ&t=5054s

But more intense exercise without a novel mental aspect (i.e. a game) interferes with my ability to think hard and I find myself constantly frustrated and/or bored.

Now if I could go on physical exhausting, mentally entertaining, medieval quests in the real countryside that would be great. Maybe sunshine, Vitamin D and augmented reality are waiting in my future.

However, to each their own.

2) The face gasket gets damp with a moderate workout, and sometimes I soak it if I push really hard. It air-dries between uses. It's made of antimicrobial something-or-other which seems to last a long time before it turns funky. When it does, new ones are 2 for $40, so you just throw it away and snap a new one on. The rest of the headset doesn't get wet.

3) I haven't had problems with it, but some people feel it gets too hot and humid. If so, you can get aftermarket fans which fit in the frunk to circulate air through it.

4) I haven't yet! The headset stays on fine. I have clapped the controllers together moderately hard a few times with no apparent damage. Everything seems well-made, and you can buy individual pieces if you do manage to break something.

My experiences are all with the Valve Index. YMMV with other setups.

The Quest II actually feels a little more uncomfortable to be for exercise anyway. It seems like the lenses are closer to the face and the unit gets a little warmer.

So to you question, yes the face gasket and head strap can get quite sweaty, but not so much "inside" the device far as I can tell.

To the last point, I've punched the headset with the controllers a few times (usually going for a short inside uppercut), but they seem pretty sturdy. (Or maybe my punches just have no power :-)

2. Not really. The main thing that gets dirty is the face insert, which is detachable and can be washed by hand. I have a silicon layer above that so just wipe it off after each session. The oculus 2 is much better than the 1 in this regard, which had a fabric around the unit that could get really grimy.

3. I’m not sure. My first oculus died from reasons I can’t determine. I thought it might have been because of the sweat. The oculus 2 avoids fabric for the main unit and seems to be more resistant in this regard.

5. No. But I’ve had more than a few accidental controller strikes on either the other controller or on the unit itself at high speeds. Never hurt the hardware, but I’ve hurt my fingers a few times.

2. It does. I wash the face mask foam regularly with just warm water + soap. The face cover is removable so it's not a big deal.

3. In my case, it's all absorbed by the washable foam.

4. The Quest 2 is pretty sturdy. I did bump the controllers pretty hard against each other a few times, and had a few glancing hits controller vs headset. Nothing broke so far. The controllers have a ring that tends to protect your hand and the buttons when you crash them into something.

2. Yup.

3. Yup again, especially around the... face gasket?

4. Haven't broken it yet, but I definitely have windmilled my controllers into various things. Part of that is that I don't really have enough floor space for VR.