When working closely with a personal trainer you’ll find that they pretty much know almost everything personal about you. They’ll know your physical goals, body weight, body fat composition, and your least favorite exercises. With this said, it’s important to note that many clients and even trainers crave more variety in their workouts. Using VR alongside personal training, bodybuilding, and yoga instructors can improve the client and trainer experience by breaking away from boring or overused workouts.
Fitness Trainers
As a fitness trainer, you love to workout as much as you like to help others reach their fitness goals. You’ve likely experienced a client that hated to run, refused the elliptical, or whined the entire time they’d lift weights. And like a great trainer, you probably sought out to find a replacement exercise that the client would benefit from while exerting the same amount of energy.
The good news is, that you (yes you) can create an alternative and fun way to exercise by using virtual reality. Don’t be intimidated, fitness trainers like Chentur from ARX are successfully using augmented reality with clients. He notes that creating his own games like Jump Squat Shooter, Press Up Shooter, and Runner are responsible for helping clients like Phantasmal lose weight, build lean muscle, and have fun while doing it.
If you’re not the make your own game or app type you can still incorporate VR with your exercise routines. Pair hand weights, ankle weights, and vests to target strength training and turn up the heat on fat burn. You can also use HTC Vive Trackers with everyday objects to turn a toy gun or bat into an exercise tool. Or use VR gloves as boxing gloves or a tool alongside other action-packed VR games to help you turn everyday workouts into a gamified experience. In fact, trainers recommend playing VR games like Fruit Ninja, Hot Squat, and Holopoint to get a full body workout.
Bodybuilding
Bodybuilding and teaching other people how to do so takes more than muscle, it takes commitment. Sure you want to increase your muscle gain and lower your fat composition, but what will get your clients there besides weight lifting, cardio, and nutrition? The answer is variety. As a seasoned bodybuilder or someone looking for functional fitness, you’ll want to use virtual reality gyms like Black Box VR to challenge your muscles to work differently and then you’ll want to pass it on to your clients. The best part of using VR gyms like Black Box is that your clients will get a true resistance training working, supporting lean muscle growth and fat loss.
Bodybuilders will benefit from using VR gym equipment like the Icaros because it’s a full body workout. The Icaros machine uses your full body muscle control to fly and move about a virtual environment, confusing a client’s muscles into peak conditioning. This equipment has even been used to help patients gain back and spine strength after an operation or while in physical therapy. This is great news for bodybuilders who experience back pain or have had injuries from frequently lifting, pressing, and pulling heavy weights or large objects.
Yoga Instructors
Helping your yoga students gain better flexibility, muscle strength, and a better frame of mind is typically isolated to your studio. You could reach more people by removing the walls (not literally) and replacing it with virtual reality. VR apps like Nature VR Yoga and Yoga Joint VR Experience open up the world of yoga to anyone with a mobile headset like Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear. You too can create and upload your very own virtual yoga classes and even apps for people to use at home with their VR gear.
Have you ever written about how to safely do a yoga sequence leading to a headstand? Probably not, because it’s difficult. Have you taken photos and put them on a blog? Sure, but they weren’t detailed enough for beginners at home. This is where VR steps in. You can help more people access helpful and instructive VR videos by creating them yourself. You can design your videos to target the specific types of yogi’s that seek your services or who you want to reach. Do you instruct beginners or people who have been practicing yoga since they were trained by Maharishi? Film it and then share it with an ocean of people waiting for a VR app or experience just like yours.
Every Instructor
Whether you’re a yoga instructor, bodybuilder, or fitness trainer using VR as a way to achieve your fitness goals, you’ll benefit from filming your own 360-degree exercise videos. By using a 360 camera you’ll get to take your class on adventures to beautiful locations like the beach or to a completely different continent if you wish. Because everyone has a different niche, style, technique, or personality that’s all their own, content creation will be just as unique. Integrating VR into your workout or classes will reach more people faster, set a price tag on your gift to the world, and can help remote users improve their health and wellbeing.