Lifestyle

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

Published

1 year 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

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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

With TikTok's future uncertain, creators ponder life without the app

Published

6 hours ago

January 18, 2025

Press Room

With TikTok's future uncertain, creators ponder life without the app

A content creator on TikTok holds a protest sign outside the Supreme Court building on Jan. 10 in Washington, D.C.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

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Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

TikTok could go dark in the U.S. on Sunday, following the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a ban on the social media app unless it is sold by its Chinese parent company ByteDance.

President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Monday, has said he’ll think about what to do next — on Saturday he said he would “most likely” delay the ban, which is scheduled to take effect on Sunday.

He could also continue with the ban and push for the sale of the Chinese-owned platform to a U.S. company, as the law passed by Congress last year requires.

In the meantime, the huge community of creators who post videos on TikTok have taken to the platform to share their feelings about a potential TikTok-less future.

“It feels like I am losing a really good friend — and that sucks,” said tearful TikToker Emily Senn, who has been contributing comedy and lifestyle videos to the platform over the past few years, and earning, she said, a steady income from these efforts. Beyond sadness, Senn’s “farewell to TikTok” video cycles through many emotions, from anger against the U.S. government for banning the platform (“I’m never forgiving you for this!”) to anxiety about the lost revenue stream. (“I’m worried about what I’m going to do financially.”)

Not all TikTok creators are laden with woe.

Others have been having a bit of grim fun — user Yanxiao1003 is among the many creators to post content mocking the idea that a Chinese spy might be hiding in their phones.

“We are not supposed to do this but I keep receiving requests from my viewers to review the privacy of the people we are watching,” he said, before going on to give information on the individuals he’d been “spying” on.

Lawmakers who passed the ban were worried about what they describe as national security risks posed by the app. They warn it could be used by the Chinese government to influence and surveil its more than 170 million American users.

The TikTok difference

Social media platforms often have limited lifespans. X bears little resemblance today to the Twitter of yore. And now-extinct platforms like Meerkat, Periscope and Vine are only a dim memory to many.

But TikTok, launched in 2016, quickly became a bastion for creative expression. The platform set itself apart from Instagram and Facebook because of the way its algorithms worked.

“Instagram is really all about who you follow. And based on who you follow, they’ll determine what content you see,” said Eric Dahan, CEO of the social media marketing company Mighty Joy. “You look at TikTok, it’s very content-driven. So it doesn’t matter who you follow nearly as much. It’s really about what content you find interesting.”

Dahan said that’s why TikTok became such a large platform for creative discovery — where artists could share their work, go viral and build communities as well as their careers. The massive popularity of the BookTok literary community is a case in point.

“ The main sign of a social platform being successful is its ability to generate and spark a unique community,” Dahan said. “People that weren’t considered creators prior became influencers through TikTok organically.”

Making backup plans

Many creators have been seeking out TikTok alternatives in the past few weeks, with some migrating to Instagram or YouTube.

Others have been checking out potential creative homes on the Chinese apps RedNote and Lemon8.

Icons for the apps Xiaohongshu and TikTok on a phone screen.

In the days leading up to the TikTok ban, Lemon8 (which is owned by ByteDance, the same company that owns TikTok) soared to the top of the Apple App Store’s most popular lifestyle app list. And according to data shared with NPR from digital marketing agency Hennessey Digital, Google Trends data showed RedNote attracted nearly 2.5 million searches in less than 48 hours.

Some former TikTokers have been unapologetic in their decision to migrate to these Chinese-owned apps.

“You think I’m going to join a Chinese app supporting the Chinese government to go against my home country, America?” said TikToker Danisha Carter in a recent video. “You’d be absolutely correct. Here is my RedNote profile.”

Unclear future

It remains to be seen whether the U.S. government will also go after these platforms. It will still be up to the Trump administration to enforce the ban.

Trump alluded to the platform’s future in a message posted to his social media platform, Truth Social, on Friday. “The Supreme Court decision was expected, and everyone must respect it,” Trump wrote. “My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!”

He told NBC on Saturday that he will “most likely” give the platform a 90-day extension from a potential ban, but had not made a final decision.

To some observers, TikTok’s permanent shuttering seems unlikely.

“ I think it will be a slow transition rather than just a complete shutdown,” said Hao Zheng, a research fellow at Curtin University’s Influencer Ethnography Research Lab in Perth, Australia.

And others, like influential TikToker Jools Lebron (of “very demure” meme fame), are expressing optimism about the future.

“It’s not over till the fat lady sings,” Lebron said in a post on TikTok on Friday. “We’re not giving up just yet. I just believe it’s going to be OK.”

Lifestyle

Kate Moss' Hottest Shots to Celebrate Her 51st Birthday

Published

7 hours ago

January 18, 2025

Press Room

Kate Moss' Hottest Shots to Celebrate Her 51st Birthday

Kate Moss is 51 and feeling tons of fun, and we’ve got all the best shots to celebrate another trip around the sun for the veteran runway model.

The star celebrated her bday earlier this week … and, while she’s a relatively private person who seems to stay off social, her agency — the Kate Moss Agency — sent her their best wishes in an IG post.

Moss rose to prominence during the “heroin chic” fashion craze of the 1990s … appearing in ads with a grungy element to them.

KM gained round the world attention, making millions of dollars each year by modeling … and, looking incredible in pics — usually posing with little to nothin on.

Moss has turned toward mogul-ing in recent years … opening up her agency, contributing to British Vogue as an editor and creating her own clothing range — though she did jump back on the runway for the Victoria’s Secret fashion show back in October!

Moss isn’t the only famous member of her family … her sister Lottie and her daughter Lila have both risen to fame in the modeling world too.

So, happy belated birthday, Kate … hope you had a super day for a supermodel!

Lifestyle

YouTube’s Ms. Rachel Gets Netflix Show, Drawing Cheers From Parents

Published

14 hours ago

January 18, 2025

Press Room

YouTube’s Ms. Rachel Gets Netflix Show, Drawing Cheers From Parents

“Let’s figure out what our letter of the day is!”

Ms. Rachel, the children’s YouTube star, cooed that sentence in an Instagram video posted this week as she dug into a sensory bin of purple rice, with the kind of texture toddlers tend to ogle.

Set against a blank yellow screen, like many of her videos, she smiled as her ponytail bobbed onto her signature pink T-shirt and blue overalls.

She gasped as the camera panned to a bright red “N” in the rice.

Holding the letter, she cheerfully told viewers in her singsong voice that her videos would soon be available on Netflix.

The announcement is the latest development for the booming empire of Ms. Rachel, the child educator from Maine turned viral video star, whose appeal has been compared to that of Mister Rogers and Beyoncé.

She has more than 13 million subscribers on her YouTube channel and millions more on Instagram and TikTok, with her videos have collectively drawn billions of views.

Ms. Rachel, whose full name is Rachel Accurso, also has a multibook deal with Random House; a line of toys, including a popular cooing doll in her likeness; and branded T-shirts, pajamas and bathing suits. She works with her husband, Aron Accurso, the co-creator and co-producer, and they are represented by the powerhouse talent group Creative Artists Agency.

“We’re so happy that our videos will be reaching more little ones and their families through Netflix,” Ms. Accurso and her husband wrote in an email. “It’s the best feeling to see families singing the songs, using the learning techniques and creating meaningful moments together beyond the screen.”

At Netflix, the videos join a lineup of children’s programming that already includes fan favorites like “CoComelon” and “Blippi,” which also found fame on YouTube.

The four-episode season of “Ms. Rachel” will be available to stream starting Jan. 27, and it will include 30- to 60-minute lessons that teach numbers, letters, colors and shapes. More episodes will be available later this year, and her videos will continue to stream on YouTube. (Representatives for Netflix declined to comment.)

Ally Shuster, Ms. Accurso’s agent at CAA, said she learned about the Ms. Rachel videos two years ago through her young nephew, Oliver, who was mesmerized.

“I think people respond to Ms. Rachel’s passion and authenticity,” Ms. Shuster said in an email.

“Rachel and Aron put so much thought and care into their content,” she said, adding, “Their love for children and their work really shines through, and I think that’s a big part of what makes them so successful.”

Before she found fame on YouTube, Ms. Accurso, 42, earned master’s degrees in early childhood education and music education, and worked as a music teacher in the Bronx.

She left the job to spend more time with her son, Thomas. Around his first birthday, she started making videos for him when she noticed that he was behind on speech development. She and her husband uploaded the videos to YouTube in 2019, and the content struck a chord with young children and their parents.

Speech pathologists have said that her videos incorporate techniques used by speech therapists, such as speaking slowly and repeating simple sentences. Many parents have said the programs feel more wholesome than other options.

(The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under the age of 18 months avoid screen time, children between 18 and 24 months limit screen time to educational programming watched with a caregiver, and children over age 2 limit it to one hour a day of high-quality programming.)

To the parents who have watched Ms. Rachel’s rise on social media, the Netflix deal is welcome news for a variety of reasons.

Betsy Tannenbaum, 35, an attorney in Nashville with two young children, said she discovered Ms. Rachel after noticing a group of children who were transfixed by her videos at a birthday party.

“My husband and I are both working parents, and we work from home, so screen time is sometimes unavoidable,” she said. “Ms. Rachel makes that as guilt-free an experience as possible.”

Ms. Tannenbaum also thinks watching the videos on Netflix will streamline the experience.

“The current platform she is on can sometimes feel convoluted with unrelated content and suggestions that can be distracting to both myself and my toddler,” she said, “and can sometimes get us down a rabbit hole.”

Avery Adrien, 34, a content strategist living in Richmond, Va., also has two young children and said Ms. Rachel’s videos were part of her family’s evening routine.

“We appreciated that it was a very relaxing show,” Ms. Adrien said. “A lot of kids’ shows these days are overstimulating.”

She and her husband found Ms. Rachel’s videos on YouTube several years ago. Ms. Adrien said her family felt like they grew up with her and were excited about her success.

“Ms. Rachel’s in her bag, getting that money,” she said, “and we think no one is more deserving of it than her.”