FitXR provides individuals at home with a virtual reality (VR) app designed to enhance fitness journeys with immersive visuals and audio.
Meta Platforms named FitXR as the “Best Fitness VR Game of 2020,” thanks to the app’s range of daily classes hosted by an esteemed lineup of sports experts such as dancers Frida Persson, Sarah Burke, and Garret Caillouet. More recently, FitXR teamed up with Professional Athlete and Motivational Speaker, Zion Clark, to teach boxing classes.
FitXR transports a user to a dedicated virtual workout room known as a Studio, where instructors lead users through exercises such as shadow boxing and dancing.
Additionally, the platform integrates multiplayer functions to support groups of up to six people competing in a shared virtual space.
The company plans to enhance the multiplayer feature with new visuals as it takes a “meta-first” approach to its fitness software solution.
XR Today spoke with FitXR, Chief Product Officer, Ben Jones, to discuss the benefits of immersive fitness and how FitXR stands out as a fitness solution, over traditional gaming experiences.
XR Today: Can you introduce FitXR?
The FitXR product mission and vision is to become the world’s most immersive, authentic fitness platform. That is important because VR and immersion contain the power to take away a lot of pain [related to fitness regimes].
There are so many barriers to fitness… The reason you stopped going for a run, the reason you stopped going to the gym, the reason you don’t put the extra rep in, is because fitness can be painful.
It’s a barrier to most kinds of [fitness] journeys, either starting or continuing. What I love about what we do, and why I joined the company, is because we come with a level of immersion that takes away a lot of the pain.
You can continue to train [with FitXR] because it’s fun. Fitness is fun. I mean, how can those words go together? They just don’t, but they do in FitXR.
So, that is what we do, we put the fun back into fitness, but we do it in an immersive way, which takes away the majority of the pain.
XR Today: What benefits come with immersive fitness, outside of more conventional routes?
We are only starting to see augmented and mixed reality (AR/MR) fitness use cases through either small prototypes that are out in the world or through some emerging companies.
The devices themselves are starting to move forward and offer things like passthrough, which allow you to mix the real-world that you see in front of you with immersive [AR/MR] elements.
That’s exciting. But, FitXR immerses you in that VR world, where you forget everything around you. Whereas if you switched to AR/MR you start to see and notice everyone around you.
In some spaces would be very beneficial, as we certainly don’t you want to knock into a sofa.
Although, I still call the value of VR in fitness incredible, because it takes that level of immersion to space that you are truly in a ‘flow’ state. Again, which takes away the pain.
XR Today: How does FitXR help to improve post-pandemic mental health?
The pandemic was incredibly powerful for our industry and home workouts generally. That was the only thing people could and could not do.
We saw that with the price of weights and barbells going through the roof because you just need some type of equipment at home, which now sit outside most people’s houses or in a cupboard somewhere as the gyms have reopened.
Conversely, the uptake of VR fitness has incredibly and dramatically increased. What is interesting for us, is some of the stats in the marketplace.
The number one home workout is high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and FitXR is the only immersive solution that offers a true HIIT workout versus all other competitors.
So how have we sat in the post-pandemic world? I think we offer a choice, which is exciting, and a way of extending your ‘omnichannel’ fitness, where a user is going to the gym to utilise strength training and get a phenomenal cardio workout through FitXR. So it continues their fitness journey.
XR Today: What benefits does immersive VR fitness have over rudimentary mobile applications that are currently available?
I was one of the key people behind Nike Training Club, one of the most used mobile fitness applications, and they have value.
But, FitXR connects a user to a new world, where the sound is high-quality and the ability to focus on one thing, at any point in time, is there.
When a user is just looking at a little phone screen, it doesn’t feel like that [a digital personal trainer] is with them, whereas, a FitXR environment is like jumping into a TV.
It’s similar to sitting ‘outside’ [of a phone screen] as a viewer, compared to when a user becomes a participant. That is quite special.
The other part is, FitXR contains a multiplayer feature where a user feels connected to other people. If they look around a FitXR environment, they will see real-time blue shadows of other people we call “Ghosts.”
As we go through 2022, those ghosts will improve and become richer avatars, and that is one of the key features that we will bring as part of our “meta-first” attitude within the company.
There is a huge difference between a little screen that you’re looking at as a viewer compared to truly being a participant in the game, in that virtual environment.
Then you have the community aspect and multiplayer. They [smartphones] don’t compare anymore.
XR Today: Why is FitXR more than a game and instead, closer to something seen next to a squat rack or a cross-trainer?
FitXR focus on the authenticity of the workout itself.
FitXR focuses on the precision of a user’s moves, which makes sure that every single move is authentic We can know that a user is getting a truly authentic workout [with FitXR] that is going to change their body and mind.
Recently, some of our focuses have been on the precision of height ratios and velocity of punches. As FitXR gets much more precise, we know that a FitXR workout is an authentic experience.
Also, FitXR is making sure that we are aware of people and making sure that they have a safe, authentic workout. FitXR integrates warm-up and cool-down mechanisms into the experience, just as you would do in the real world, and should do when using these types of applications.
FitXR is getting new voiceovers and we are making sure they are truly authentic, rather than completely disconnected from a user’s progress within the FitXR experience.
That’s been a massive, massive win for us. In terms of the ‘Minutes Completed’ in all of our [FitXR] Studios, now that the new voiceovers have gone in, it shows that people want that authentic experience.
They have not had it before [and when they have] it was very gamey. FitXR moves away from that. We’ve focused on our data loops, feedback mechanisms, and so forth.
We can understand how people are engaging with FitXR, what moves they are missing, what moves they are hitting, and that data goes back to a user in the new results screen so they can improve.
That allows the FitXR solution to become more refined through 2022 with better [fitness] recommendations and new classes, as well as tailoring specific collections for people, depending on what they want to achieve.
We think of the FitXR solution as a fitness brand first, versus a game. The one thing we’d never want to be is just a game. We are really in that fitness space and we are fitness first, more than anything else.
