Gamified exercise
therealbrandonwilson • 8 Jan 2024 •
For Christmas, my girlfriend gave me a "poor man's Apple watch" that has various capabilities, including measuring steps, heart rate, blood oxygen, body temperature, blood pressure, and blood glucose. Outside of heart rate, blood oxygen, and maybe temperature, I am skeptical that it can accurately measure the rest. After all, if it could be done accurately, Apple would have probably already built the capability into the Apple Watch.
I have been paying attention to the step count, and I realized that I can achieve over 10K steps easily with a typical session of VR ping pong. I had a session yesterday and a session today. I like to say it's having fun, and by the way, it also happens to be exercise. The Meta VR system has quite a few fitness games, which make aerobic exercise much more palatable. Missing from the equation, however, is strength training. I started to wonder if someone had come up with some sort of gamified strength training apparatus. You know, if such a thing exists, I'm going to find it, or rather, it will find me.
Lo and behold, I found something called the Quell Impact system. The system features two hand-held controllers, wrist straps that attach to resistance bands, and a waist belt with heart rate tracking. There is an open-world game called Shardfall (compatible with Mac and Windows computers) that procedurally generates worlds, so you never play the same game twice. Advanced haptics and motion-tracking allow for precision gameplay. The system will also provide biometric analysis to track progress.
The company is in pre-launch mode, and I placed my pre-order to get a discounted price of $249 + a $10/month membership for the game. The only downside is that orders won't likely ship until March/April of this year.
In the meantime, I'll have to be satisfied with boring resistance bands and weights.
Comments
I move around a lot during my 1.5-2 hour sessions. The Oura ring had 9K steps, but I do wear it on the same hand as the watch (non-dominant). I know there are other fitness games out there, but other than body weight exercises, they don’t offer much in the way of strength training.
Maybe tie a heavy weight to your wrist? 😊
And ruin my perfectly-precise muscle memory for those killer shots??
Wow! 10k steps just playing the game?
Due to the limitations on space in my house, I have to stand pretty still to play. No wonder I am bad at it!
Or is it just the watch tracking fake steps from your hand movements? I sometimes find washing up the dishes ends up adding extra steps on my Garmin, even though I wear it on my non-preferred wrist.
If you want a real workout on the Quest, people swear by The Thrill of the Fight, or Blaston.