Lifestyle

Hit your 2024 exercise goals with these VR fitness apps and games

Published

2 years ago

January 17, 2024

Hit your 2024 exercise goals with these VR fitness apps and games

The experience is virtual, but the results are real. Here’s our breakdown of the best VR workouts. Above, Meta’s Supernatural fitness app.

Meta

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Our top 5 general fitness VR apps

Les Mills BodyCombat

Odders

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Odders

Les Mills BodyCombat: Les Mills BodyCombat is great for beginners as a one-time purchase with a lot to offer—the workouts center around punching, squatting, and knee-striking targets. The trainers are engaged and projected in a Star Wars-esque hologram before the workouts begin, which feels paced just right and strongly emphasizes form. After a 20-minute boxing-style workout, I burned 228 calories, making it one of the most efficient VR workouts I’ve tried.

While the October update for LM Body Combat added workouts and a new mixed reality mode showing you the room around you, I find myself looking to other apps and games for variety. It also doesn’t have a “cool down” after the workouts – so I’ll typically switch to another app after my workout to unwind. $30/one time purchase

FitXR: FitXR is a subscription-based app with a diverse line of workouts. A recent update added Zumba and a mixed reality mode called Slam to a roster that includes boxing, combat, high-intensity interval training, sculpt and dance — with new modes added frequently.

I enjoy FitXR quite a bit, but it’s not my top recommendation due to the cost, the poor avatar graphics, and some missing mixed-reality options. Despite these issues, I still find myself returning to this app regularly. I love their HIIT workout, where you’re smashing orbs to beat your best time and compete with the rest of the users in the class. Working out for 25 minutes doing warmups, HIIT, boxing, and a cooldown, I burned 262 calories, which is comparable to a moderate Peloton cycling workout for me. $9.99/month

Supernatural: Supernatural is one of the most popular VR fitness apps – so popular that Meta bought out its developer, Within, for $430 million in February 2023.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a polished experience with beautiful locations from around the world, popular music you’ll recognize, and exuberant trainers with two main workout types — Boxing and Flow. In Flow, you’ll swipe through orbs with baseball bats. You’ll also need to squat to pass through giant triangles, leg lift from side to side, and perform knee strikes. While my heart rate wasn’t always as high as with FitXR and Les Mills, Supernatural gave my lower body more of a workout. $9.99/month

Xponential+

Will Mitchell/Xponential+

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Will Mitchell/Xponential+

Xponential+: Xponential+, the newest offering for Quest platforms, has partnered with established workout studios such as Pure Barre, Stretch Lab, and Club Pilates to bring their workouts to augmented reality. I love how the app brings the workout into your living room by displaying a small version of the trainer on your floor or ceiling when it detects that you’re in a plank, pushup, or lying on your back. There’s no longer a need to crane your neck during a workout to keep an eye on your trainer’s form — a great example of how mixed reality can solve the problems of more traditional fitness classes. $9.99/month – also includes access to workouts via app or web

Vrit: Equal parts game and workout — Vrit has a zany Nintendo feel. As far as I can tell, it’s about a competition with robotic spheres in “sports battles” to defend the clouds of Earth. The story is a bit ambiguous, but this $3.00 game is truly entertaining and one of only a few apps that uses hand tracking and has you engaging in floor routines like planks and pushups as well as running in place (I preferred doing “high knees” instead for those sections). $3.00/one time purchase

VR Fitness on a bike

There are two main options for working out in VR on a stationary bike: Holofit and VZFit.

VZFit

VirZOOM

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VirZOOM

VZFit: I recommend VZFit the most. The app has digital worlds for you to bike through and a Google Street mode where you’ll spin through real locations. Stitching Street View photos together leads to wonky visuals, but it held my interest and I appreciate that they’re trying something new. While VZFit doesn’t offer as many “digital worlds” as Holofit does — I preferred its overall look and feel. $9.99/month

Holofit: Holofit can take you places — from a fictional cyberpunk world to Antarctica, the deep sea, and the streets of Paris. While some graphics seem dated, they teem with life and personality. You can compete in races and games or ride more leisurely while looking for hidden items. Holofit’s big advantage is its ability to sync with your bike, elliptical, or rowing machine, but it doesn’t feel as good as competing VZFit. $11.99/month

More games that will get you moving

Even better, many VR games crafted for good old-fashioned entertainment are still demanding enough to raise your heart rate. At 40, I’m starting to feel the effects of age, so I welcome the option to play games to stay active.

Beat Saber

Meta

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The future of VR Fitness

It's not too late to make a New Year's resolution

2024 could be a landmark year for mixed reality. The Meta Quest 3 makes it much easier to see the world around you while you work out, and we’re already seeing specialized headsets designed for work, like the upcoming Immersed Visor and Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro. It’s only a matter of time before we see specialized headsets for fitness. In the meantime, if you recently got a VR headset over the holidays or you’ve been looking for a reason to dust yours off and jump back in, there has never been a better time to break a sweat in virtual reality.

James Perkins Mastromarino contributed to this article.

Lifestyle

Mundane, magic, maybe both — a new book explores ‘The Writer’s Room’

Published

5 hours ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

Mundane, magic, maybe both — a new book explores ‘The Writer’s Room’

There’s a three-story house in Baltimore that looks a bit imposing. You walk up the stone steps before even getting up to the porch, and then you enter the door and you’re greeted with a glass case of literary awards. It’s The Clifton House, formerly home of Lucille Clifton.

The National Book Award-winning poet lived there with her husband, Fred, starting in 1967 until the bank foreclosed on the house in 1980. Clifton’s daughter, Sidney Clifton, has since revived the house and turned it into a cultural hub, hosting artists, readings, workshops and more. But even during a February visit, in the mid-afternoon with no organized events on, the house feels full.

The corner of Lucille Clifton’s bedroom, where she would wake up and write in the mornings

Andrew Limbong/NPR

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Andrew Limbong/NPR

“There’s a presence here,” Clifton House Executive Director Joël Díaz told me. “There’s a presence here that sits at attention.”

Sometimes, rooms where famous writers worked can be places of ineffable magic. Other times, they can just be rooms.

Princeton University Press

Katie da Cunha Lewin is the author of the new book, The Writer’s Room: The Hidden Worlds That Shape the Books We Love, which explores the appeal of these rooms. Lewin is a big Virginia Woolf fan, and the very first place Lewin visited working on the book was Monk’s House — Woolf’s summer home in Sussex, England. On the way there, there were dreams of seeing Woolf’s desk, of retracing Woolf’s steps and imagining what her creative process would feel like. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment for Lewin — everything interesting was behind glass, she said. Still, in the book Lewin writes about how she took a picture of the room and saved it on her phone, going back to check it and re-check it, “in the hope it would allow me some of its magic.”

Let’s be real, writing is a little boring. Unlike a band on fire in the recording studio, or a painter possessed in their studio, the visual image of a writer sitting at a desk click-clacking away at a keyboard or scribbling on a piece of paper isn’t particularly exciting. And yet, the myth of the writer’s room continues to enrapture us. You can head to Massachusetts to see where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women. Or go down to Florida to visit the home of Zora Neale Hurston. Or book a stay at the Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in Alabama, where the famous couple lived for a time. But what, exactly, is the draw?

Previously unknown poems show Woolf as a fun aunt. She's pictured above in 1902.

Lewin said in an interview that whenever she was at a book event or an author reading, an audience question about the writer’s writing space came up. And yes, some of this is basic fan-driven curiosity. But also “it started to occur to me that it was a central mystery about writing, as if writing is a magic thing that just happens rather than actually labor,” she said.

In a lot of ways, the book is a debunking of the myths we’re presented about writers in their rooms. She writes about the types of writers who couldn’t lock themselves in an office for hours on end, and instead had to find moments in-between to work on their art. She covers the writers who make a big show of their rooms, as a way to seem more writerly. She writes about writers who have had their homes and rooms preserved, versus the ones whose rooms have been lost to time and new real estate developments. The central argument of the book is that there is no magic formula to writing — that there is no daily to-do list to follow, no just-right office chair to buy in order to become a writer. You just have to write.

Lifestyle

Bruce Johnston Retiring From The Beach Boys After 61 Years

Published

6 hours ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

Bruce Johnston Retiring From The Beach Boys After 61 Years

Bruce Johnston
I’m Riding My Last Wave With The Beach Boys

Published
March 4, 2026
6:28 PM PST

Bruce Johnston is riding off into the California sunset … at least for now.

The Beach Boys legend announced Wednesday he’s stepping away from touring after six decades with the iconic band. The 83-year-old revealed in a statement to Rolling Stone he’s hanging up his touring hat to focus on what he calls part three of his long music career.

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“It’s time for Part Three of my lengthy musical career!” Johnston said. “I can write songs forever, and wait until you hear what’s coming!!! As my major talent beyond singing is songwriting, now is the time to get serious again.”

Johnston famously stepped in for co-founder Brian Wilson in 1965 for live performances, becoming a staple of the Beach Boys’ touring lineup ever since. Now, he says he’s shifting gears toward songwriting and even some speaking engagements … with occasional touring member John Stamos helping him craft what he’ll talk about onstage.

beach boys getty

“I might even sing ‘Disney Girls’ & ‘I Write The Songs!!’” he teased.

But don’t call it a full-on farewell tour just yet. Johnston made it clear he’s not shutting the door completely, saying he’s excited to reunite with the band for special occasions, including their upcoming July 2-4 shows at the Hollywood Bowl as part of the Beach Boys’ 2026 tour. The run celebrates both the 60th anniversary of “Pet Sounds” and America’s 250th birthday.

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“This isn’t goodbye, it’s see you soon,” he wrote. “I am forever grateful to be a part of the Beach Boys musical legacy.”

Lifestyle

On the brink of death, a woman is saved by a stranger and his family

Published

17 hours ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

On the brink of death, a woman is saved by a stranger and his family

In 1982, Jean Muenchrath was injured in a mountaineering accident and on the brink of death when a stranger and his family went out of their way to save her life.

Jean Muenchrath

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Jean Muenchrath

In early May 1982, Jean Muenchrath and her boyfriend set out on a mountaineering trip in the Sierra Nevada, a mountain range in California. They had done many backcountry trips in the area before, so the terrain was somewhat familiar to both of them. But after they reached one of the summits, a violent storm swept in. It began to snow heavily, and soon the pair was engulfed in a blizzard, with thunder and lightning reverberating around them.

“Getting struck and killed by lightning was a real possibility since we were the highest thing around for miles and lightning was striking all around us,” Muenchrath said.

To reach safer ground, they decided to abandon their plan of taking a trail back. Instead, using their ice axes, they climbed down the face of the mountain through steep and icy snow chutes.

They were both skilled at this type of descent, but at one particularly difficult part of the route, Muenchrath slipped and tumbled over 100 feet down the rocky mountain face. She barely survived the fall and suffered life-threatening injuries.

When Olivia Joffrey's dad was too sick to attend her sixth-grade Father's Day softball game, her unsung hero, Bob Scowcroft, showed up to support her.

This was before cellular or satellite phones, so calling for help wasn’t an option. The couple was forced to hike through deep snow back to the trailhead. Once they arrived, Muenchrath collapsed in the parking lot. It had been five days since she’d fallen.

”My clothes were bloody. I had multiple fractures in my spine and pelvis, a head injury and gangrene from a deep wound,” Muenchrath said.

Not long after they reached the trailhead parking lot, a car pulled in. A man was driving, with his wife in the passenger seat and their baby in the back. As soon as the man saw Muenchrath’s condition, he ran over to help.

”He gently stroked my head, and he held my face [and] reassured me by saying something like, ‘You’re going to be OK now. I’ll be right back to get you,’” Muenchrath remembered.

For the first time in days, her panic began to lift.

“My unsung hero gave me hope that I’d reach a hospital and I’d survive. He took away my fears.”

Within a few minutes, the man had unpacked his car. His wife agreed to stay back in the parking lot with their baby in order to make room for Muenchrath, her boyfriend and their backpacks.

The man drove them to a nearby town so that the couple could get medical treatment.

“I remember looking into the eyes of my unsung hero as he carried me into the emergency room in Lone Pine, California. I was so weak, I couldn’t find the words to express the gratitude I felt in my heart.”

Joann Moschella had just been hit by a car when an unlikely hero came to her rescue.

The gratitude she felt that day only grew. Now, nearly 45 years later, she still thinks about the man and his family.

”He gave me the gift of allowing me to live my life and my dreams,” Muenchrath said.

At some point along the way, the man gave Muenchrath his contact information. But in the chaos of the day, she lost it and has never been able to find him.

”If I knew where my unsung hero was today, I would fly across the country to meet him again. I’d hug him, buy him a meal and tell him how much he continues to mean to me by saving my life. Wherever you are, I say thank you from the depths of my being.”

My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.