Last month FitXR announced the launch of their first official branded merchandise and accessories, designed to complement and enhance your FitXR boxercise and dance workouts.
The debut range has been thoughtfully put together and already covers almost everything you’d need to be VR workout ready, minus the headset of course.
The FitXR team has sent me out a bumper sample pack of their accessories for review. The only two items from the store that I didn’t receive are the silicone cover (available in black), sweat proofing your headset and the hoodie.
The FitXR Branded Tee $35 or £24.49
First up is FitXR’s T-shirt. This polyester design is lightweight and breathable, evaporating your sweat rather than absorbing it into the material. Available in both male and female versions, the t-shirt comes in a slimming black with a contrasting white FitXR logo, giving a sleek, monochromatic look. They also offer a nice matching hoodie, this time in organic ringspun cotton.
I’m wearing the small T-Shirt in the photograph below. For reference, I’m 5 ft 7 inches and 140 lbs. It’s a slim fit and matches my slender proportions well. The sleeves are nice and short, and thankfully there are no flappy wings, my pet peeve, instead, the material gently hugs my upper arm. It’s very light and comfortable and doesn’t restrict movement at all so ideal for VR workouts. The length is a little short, so if you have a long body then maybe size up. It’s very light and comfortable to wear, I like it.
Note – Wash at 30 degrees only. The logo is stuck on and I know from personal experience with cycling shorts that I’ve bought that hotter than 30 degrees can cause these types of logos to peel off, so remember to cool wash. The t-shirt quality itself feels very good. I’ve washed mine twice already and it’s been fine. Overall, providing you like the FitXR branding and color you should be pretty happy if you get one of these.
A VR Ready Water Bottle, More Exciting Than It Sounds $18 or £12.49
Your hydration needs are met with a flip-top water bottle. Now water bottles are hardly the sexiest of purchases, but this one is interesting as it’s designed to be used specifically in VR and comes with a built-in flip top straw, that you can drink through whilst wearing your headset. At 640 ml, it’s not a large bottle, holding just over a pint of liquid. But that’s ideal for its intended purpose, home FitXR, and other VR workouts, any larger would make it more awkward to use whilst in VR. In the interests of scientific rigor, I conducted some spill tests, that began with me tipping the bottle over, (no spillage whatsoever) and then holding the bottle upside down (literally a couple of drops and then stopped).
I had no trouble drinking from the bottle whilst wearing my Quest so can definitely recommend this both to laser-focused people who don’t want to interrupt their workouts when hydrating, or clumsy klutzes that are always knocking over their drinks.
The Dri-Fit Headband $17 or £11.99
Next up, the Dri-Fit headband. Comprising 20% spandex, 80% polyamide the Dri-Fit purports to have a double-layered wicking material that can soak up sweat leaving you dry and comfortable throughout your workout. Here at VRFitness Insider, we are always banging on about the importance of sweat proofing your headset. This starts with a silicone cover or replacement facial interface but doesn’t end there. You really should be wearing a headband too, don’t take chances with your expensive electrical device.
The Dri-Fit provides a lot of forehead coverage, twice the amount of my existing band, and is thin enough that it fits on easily inside the headset. It is a little smaller than my old band and does feel a little tighter as a result, although I stopped noticing that when I was working out. I think for small, to normal size heads this will be ideal, although if you’ve got a Jay Leno-sized nogging you might find it a squeeze.
As with the T-shirt take care not to wash it above 30 degrees to preserve the logo.
The Magical Ice Towel $22 or £14.99
The most intriguing entry to me within the FitXR range is their Ice Towel, basically, a large facecloth that once wet and rung out, claims to stay magically fridge cold for up to two hours. I had never heard of such a thing but was definitely keen to test that out. I have to say, it really does work, and works well. Like any good slob living alone during the lockdown, I have left it on the floor at night after working out, and it was still cold the next day. I’m sure there’s a very boring and mundane scientific reason to explain how it works, but sometimes education stifles imagination so I’ve not looked it up.
Needless to say, it does its job well, and it’s great for those times that your headset is steaming up a bit and you want a rapid cool down. I’ve been slathering it all over my face, head, neck and down my back and shoulders for an instant temperature drop and then straight back in the game.
The towel (it’s not really a towel, more a scarf-shaped face cloth) comes in a silicone carry bag with a carabiner clip that you could clip onto a rucksack or bike, so it’s useful outdoors too.
A useful tip I was given, if you flick the towel it somehow reactivates the coldness. Clever stuff.
Like the water bottle, this is something I’d have never bought for myself, or ever thought I’d need, but its utility is such that I wouldn’t want to be without one now. I was previously using sheets of kitchen towels to wipe myself down during workout breaks and after sessions. I prefer the ice towel.
Make Your Workouts Harder With Wrist Weights $25 or £17.49
Finally, we have FitXR’s own branded wrist weights. I’ve always been on the fence about trying wrist weights, wondering if they would be useful, but never actually buying any, so receiving these is a nice opportunity to try them out.
Visually the wrist weights add a splash of color to the FitXR accessory range, departing from the all-black with some attractive cyan trim. The cardboard box is suitably coordinated, all-black externally, aside from the white logo, but all cyan inside. The presentation made for a great first impression and these feel like a high-quality item.
The weights are 0.5 kg each, around 1.1 lbs, which doesn’t sound a lot, but much like using a rowing machine, it’s a resistance that builds over time. My own Oculus Quest 2 controllers are battle adorned with VRCover’s grips and halo protectors and the combined weight of all these items means I certainly start to feel it during FitXR, and other VR sessions. The wrist weights are great for games like Beat Saber, The Climb, and Thrill of the Fight too.
They are not so heavy that you are likely to injure yourself with improper form, but they will tire you out more quickly and help you to progressively overload your workout intensity, a key factor in improving your fitness gains.
The sizing of the adjustable circumference ranges from 16 cm to 26 cm which is about 6.2 inches to 10.2 inches, so will cover the average wrist size just fine. Both weights have a hole for you to insert your thumbs for a secure fit, but I actually found it more comfortable to wear them upside down. For me, the hole was rather tight on one hand and dug into the skin between my thumb and forefinger a little. Wearing them the other way around though felt very comfortable and provided I wrapped them tightly I had no problem with them slipping.
Not just for VR, or wrists!
I had some fun experimenting with these to see what uses I could put them to. I have a door-mounted pull-up bar and some high parallel dipping bars. The weights provided a nice bit of extra resistance for pull-ups, chin-ups, and tricep dips. For this, I chose to wear them around my ankles and the fit was fine. I mentioned this to FitXR trainer Ianthe and she suggested the wrist weights are actually great to wear around the ankle for the FitXR dance workouts, which require lots of legs raises and knee lifts. Given that FitXR has built up quite a sizable base of active female users I could see this becoming a popular alternative use for these. Wear them on the wrists for Box mode and the ankles for Dance mode.
Overall, I’m finding the wrist weights to be surprisingly versatile and enjoy adding them to my bodyweight workouts as well as using them for VR cardio.
Summary
FitXR’s debut merchandise selection has been well thought through, providing everything you need to get the most out of your VR workouts. It’s also nice to see that the clothing and other items are made out of recycled materials where possible.
Although I’ve been working out in VR for years I’d never looked for a better solution to wiping off my sweat than a kitchen towel, and if I needed to drink I’d just put a glass of water nearby and hope I didn’t tip it over. The ice towel and the water bottle are certainly more elegant solutions to those problems and I will be using both in all my workouts moving forward.
I definitely recommend both of those items if they sound appealing to you.
The wrist weights are a great way to build some extra intensity into your workouts, and providing you’re of a relatively slender build can work equally well as ankle weights.
Exclusive 10 Percent Discount Offer valid until 30th April
Finally, FitXR has given us an exclusive 10 percent discount code to be used on the merchandise for all our readers, simply enter the code INSIDER10 at checkout to receive the discount. Offer valid throughout April.
