I know I harp on about this quite a bit, but I find it very interesting. Especially the aspects that help me push past the barriers that would normally be blocking my way due to my health issues.

I really think this has a lot to offer folks at all stages of life and people with a wide range of health “states” or just even folk who are fit already.

For those unaware, I have chronic pain issues among a few other neurological “gifts” my body has bestowed on me in my 40s. I constantly am amazed at how much I can do when I’m taken out of my own body and surroundings and dropped into a totally different world that gamifies the constant movement over time that I need to perform to get healthier.

Although my morning routine generally involves hobbling about for an hour or so, riding out fairly extreme (at times) muscle and joint pain until the painkillers kick in; I’m finding myself able to ignore all that and work fairly intensively for far longer than my mind and body would otherwise allow.

I don’t feel the pain much at all until after I’m done. And then, boy does it rebound back on me, but the fact remains that while I’m in that VR bubble I’m not inhabiting that body at all. That’s what it feels like. The more effective the avatar, the better that seems to work too. And y’know looking down and seeing feet (and not a beer belly) is good for the soul 😄

Things are moving apace in this area at the moment too.

https://vrhealth.institute/ is doing some stellar work accurately equating the calorie burn and effort level of various VR games and fitness titles. This is making it easy to get an idea of how hard I’m working and making sense of heart rate graphs etc.

I was curious about their app so I got a cheap Mii Band 5 today to monitor my heart rate and that was able to connect to the app itself. I wanted to see if what my smart watch was telling me via Google fit was wrong, as I was getting pretty blown away by the number of calories it keeps telling me I’m burning.

Anyway. I wore a watch on each wrist, started a workout in each app and played Until You Fall for about an hour.

As you can see, they’re nearly the same. 30 calories difference. Which gives me some confidence that it’s reasonably accurate. If the app that the experts built is telling me the same thing, then I can trust my usual watch just fine and I’ll give the Mii Band to Rachel probably.

I’d really like to do something with this. Specifically for people in pain who normally can’t get a good workout done. There’s been a lot of research done, some pretty amazing, about gaming in general in the treatment of pain; but I really believe there’s something much more powerful about VR. Being transported and taken out of your damaged body and dropped into a different world. It can be pretty profound and I think it could help a lot of people.

Anyway. Ramble over. It’s something I highly recommend if you find normal exercise difficult or boring or both. It’ll get you moving, that’s for sure. Just ask my IKEA deathstar lamp. 😱