Life Fitness and VirZOOM Announce Big Changes for Your Local Gym

Think the world of fitness isn’t catching on to the VR phenomenon? Think again! Life Fitness just announced huge news that’s going to make VR a big part of your daily routine in the gym! Life Fitness (in case you never looked at most of the equipment you use in the gym) is a global leader in commercial fitness equipment. A huge fitness manufacturer may not be what you’d expect when you read headlines from CES, but, along with VirZoom, they just made one of the biggest announcements in the worlds of VR and Fitness.

Amad Amin, Life Fitness product director of digital experience made the announcement just yesterday:

“Introducing virtual reality to our Life Fitness equipment is an exciting step in the evolution of providing completely immersive and engaging experiences to workouts. Our partnership with VirZOOM is a natural next step in building on our workout experience. Whether you are competitive or want to escape and enjoy your workout, there is something in the virtual reality experience for everyone.”

Life Fitness, the global leader in commercial fitness equipment, today announced a partnership with VirZOOM, a maker of virtual reality games, to pilot a virtual reality solution that can be used with fitness equipment. At CES 2017 in Las Vegas, the companies announced their partnership and plans to host pilot virtual reality competitions at select global commercial fitness facilities in Q1 2017.

What does this mean for the end user, namely you? There will be virtual reality competitions at select global commercial gyms in early 2017 and that’s not all! This exclusive partnership transforms Life Fitness’ Discover SE3 bikes into a virtual reality experience with the VirZOOM Module, which allows VirZOOM software to access data from the bikes such as pedal speed, resistance buttons and heart rate which enable VirZOOM gameplay.

According to Spencer Honeyman, Director of Business Development at VirZOOM,

“The VirZOOM and Life Fitness partnership expands the world of virtual reality into commercial fitness facilities. Leveraging VirZOOM technology and games with Life Fitness equipment harnesses the users’ emotional response in VR and motivates them to move. Using the pedal stroke to operate a car, tank, Pegasus and more motivates exercisers to move like never before – and enjoy themselves while they get a workout.”

For those of you that have been reading VRFitnessInsider.com, you already know that VirZOOM is one of the major innovations we’ve come to see as the precursor to fitness and VR coming together and changing both industries. We’ll have more from the folks at Life Fitness and VirZOOM as this develops but we’d love to hear from you on how you see this new alliance in fitness and VR in the comments!