Let’s be clear from the off. The future of fitness is bound to be hybrid, and the interplay between virtual and physical exercises will be heavily influenced by metaverse applications.
The versatility of the metaverse has the potential to provide endless use cases for phygital workouts. In this article, we focus our attention on three profound fitness trends that will influence how people will burn calories in the future metaverse.
Three trends that will affect the future of fitness
Regardless of whether the final application incorporates metaverse features, the following trends are prevalent in the fitness industry.
#1 Gamified Exercises
Adding game-like elements to daily workouts makes fitness more fun and engaging. These elements include competing against others, incorporating storytelling, as well as rewarding users for showing up consistently and enabling profile badges for particular accomplishments.
#2 Smart Wear
Whether they are smart clothes like Ralph Lauren’s PoloTech t-shirts that record fitness activity to recommend tailor-made exercise routines or gear like Fitbit bracelets and Garmin smartwatches, smart wear is here to stay.
#3 Location-independent Fitness
Since Covid-19 has been declared a global pandemic, much has changed in where we do our daily exercises. Going to a gym is no longer an absolute necessity. From Lululemon Studio Mirror to Apple Fitness, companies now have offerings consumable on mobile phones in a location-independent way. For many of us, it is now the new normal, and we can pick from thousands of exercise types and trainer classes that are well suited to carry out in many places, above all at our homes.
How are these fitness trends converging with the metaverse?
Here the adoption of VR and AR will play a decisive role. The global market for related technologies will rise to over 250 billion USD by 2028 according to Statista. The trends mentioned above and metaverse initiatives are already synchronizing in exciting ways.
Gamification
By wearing a VR headset, you can theoretically transport yourself into any part of the world and exercise there. Take, for example, the Supernatural, which allows its members to exercise and meditate in the most beautiful places on earth. Thanks to the gamification elements, the VR fitness app allows you to create a personal leaderboard to challenge yourself against others, build your muscles with music-sync moves, train along with live coaches, and set weekly goals to track your progress.
Olive X is building a gamified metaverse ecosystem. Its Dustland Rider platform allows users to integrate physical bicycles via Bluetooth and immerse into the game’s narrative while they continue to work out.
Smart wear
Engineers at Wesmart developed an electrical muscle stimulation suit that increases the positive effects of the workout. The suit manages this by sending bio pulse waves similar to the human brain through 16 electrodes covering the user’s body.
Sony has recently announced an interesting product that will affect developments in the metaverse fitness domain. It’s called Mocopi, a lightweight motion capture band. You can use it to control your avatar in real time within metaverse VR applications.
The wearable sensors market is expected to grow at 15.20% CAGR by 2030. Fitness tracker bands and smartwatches are already driving the market at the moment, and we’ll surely witness future innovations that combine smart wrists, clothes, glasses, and all sorts of healthcare solutions to create novel metaverse fitness apps.
Location-independent fitness
Metaverse will enable us to insert holograms in our living rooms, including fitness coaches, partners, or opponents. Ghost Pacer has already made this concept a reality. The company develops augmented reality glasses that project a live opponent into your running field. Using the Ghost Pacer’s companion app, you can also race against your friends, even if you run at different times.
