Is VR Fitness the Most Sustainable VR Category Yet?

If you spend enough time around the VR industry, you start to notice a pattern. Most of the conversation revolves around hardware launches, new headsets, display technology, processors, and games, of course. And it makes sense. Games are exciting, they're easy to demo, they're visually impressive, and really easy to talk about and get excited about. Now, to be clear, gaming built the modern VR industry. It gets the credit for that. It's still the biggest driver of headset sales, and some of the most compelling experiences in the medium. But, if the real question is whether VR becomes part of everyday life, the more interesting place to look might actually be fitness. It's not flashy, it doesn't generate the most headlines. But because fitness might be the first category where people build a real habit around using their headset, not something they try once, something they come back to every day. And that's a very different kind of success. So today I want to explore a simple question. Is VR fitness actually the first sustainable category in consumer VR? One of the long-running challenges in VR has always been retention. People buy headsets, they try a few apps, maybe some roller coasters to make them nauseous, they show it to their friends, and then the usage starts to fall off. That doesn't mean VR isn't interesting, it just means that most experiences don't naturally turn into habits. Fitness is different though. Exercise is already something that millions of people are trying to do several times a week. The challenge isn't convincing people that exercise is good for them, the challenge is consistency, and the challenge is getting people to stick with it. And VR turns out to be surprisingly good at solving that problem, because it changes the psychology of the workout. Instead of staring at a treadmill display or watching a clock on the wall, you're dodging objects, hitting targets, moving to music, or following a sequence of movements inside an immersive environment. In other words, you're not just exercising, you're playing, and that subtle shift makes a big difference. Whenever people hear about VR workouts, the first question is usually the same. Is it real exercise or is it just waving your arms around? There has actually been some testing around this. In 2022, the Washington Post worked with exercise researchers to measure physiological responses during VR workouts. Participants used a VR fitness program while wearing heart rate monitors and metabolic testing equipment. What researchers found was that many VR workouts reached moderate to vigorous intensity levels, which is the same range recommended for cardiovascular exercise. More recent academic studies have found similar results when looking at boxing and rhythm-based VR workouts, including research from the University of Victoria, showing that immersive workouts can reach those moderate to vigorous activity levels, while also increasing enjoyment and motivation compared to traditional exercise routines. Internal testing from the developers of Supernatural has also shown users regularly reaching vigorous cardio zones during workouts, levels comparable to high intensity exercise like running or boxing. So from a physiological standpoint, VR workouts are not just light movement. They can absolutely qualify as meaningful cardio, but the more interesting part of the story isn't the heart rate or calories burned, it's adherence. People often stick with VR workouts in ways that they don't stick with traditional exercise. Researchers sometimes describe this as "exercise by accident." The activity feels more like play than work, even though your body is working hard and sweating. I want to make this personal for a moment. Because I'm not just talking about VR fitness as someone covering the industry, I'm talking about it as someone whose health has changed because of it. For most of my adult life, I struggled to stick to any kind of exercise routine. I would try something for a while, a gym membership, running, walking, a workout program, and like a lot of people, I would eventually fall off the wagon. The routine would break, and once the habit was gone, it was very hard to rebuild it. VR fitness changed that for me in a way that I honestly didn't expect. Instead of feeling like something I had to force myself to do, the workouts were engaging enough that I actually wanted to come back the next day, and over time that consistency added up. I ended up losing more than 35 pounds working out primarily in VR, but the weight loss is only part of the story. The bigger thing for me is that in my early 50s, I'm actually in better shape than I was in my 30s. I feel better, I'm more flexible, I have more endurance, and I just feel generally healthier. And that's not because I suddenly developed incredible discipline. It's because VR made exercise fun enough that I finally stuck with it. And once the habit took hold, the headset stopped being just a gadget or a gaming console that became part of my daily routine. One of the earliest dedicated VR fitness titles was BoxVR, which launched back in 2017. It was created by the studio that would later become FitXR. BoxVR focused on rhythm-based boxing workouts, designed with input from real fitness trainers. And long before standalone headsets made VR more mainstream, people were already using it as a serious workout tool. In 2020, BoxVR brought into a broader platform called FitXR, expanding beyond boxing into multiple workout styles, and turning into a subscription fitness service. In 2020, another app arrived that helped push the category into the spotlight, Supernatural! Supernatural combined guided coaching, licensed music, and beautiful cinematic environments to create workouts that felt closer to a studio fitness class than a game. For many users, it became a daily ritual, and the community that formed around it looked very different from the typical VR audience. A large portion of users were middle-aged, many were women, some in their 50s, 60s, and even 70s. These were not traditional VR customers. They weren't gamers. They were people trying to improve their health, and for some of them, Supernatural became the first workout program that they had ever stuck with long-term in their entire lives. Which is why the news earlier this year landed with such a thud. In January, 2026, Meta announced that the studio behind Supernatural would be shut down. The app itself remains available, but the development team that produced new workouts and features was eliminated. For the community that had grown around the app, that announcement created a lot of uncertainty. When a fitness program becomes part of your daily routine, questions about its future feel very different than the shutdown of a typical entertainment app. And the response from the community revealed something important. People weren't just discussing a piece of software. They were talking about a workout routine that they had come to rely on as part of their lives. The good news is that the VR fitness category does not depend on a single app alone. Developers like FedExR continued to build and expand their platforms with new classes and training styles. FunFidland is another highly rated VR fitness app that combines some of the best boxing, dance, and meditative flow routines with dramatic environments, with a playful and supportive philosophy. There are also more structured training programs like Les Mills Body Combat, and even games like Beat Saber and Pistol Whip can double as surprisingly intense workouts. The ecosystem is broader than people sometimes realize, and that diversity may ultimately be healthier for the category, because it means that VR fitness isn't tied to one product or one app alone. It's becoming an entire segment of the VR market. Stepping back from individual apps, the reason that this category matters so much is simple. It solves the biggest problem that VR has faced since the beginning. Habit! If someone puts on a headset once a month, VR remains a novelty. If someone puts on a headset four or five times a week to work out, VR becomes part of their daily routine. That is a completely different level of engagement. And once that habit exists, it opens the door to other experiences. A headset that someone already uses regularly for exercise might also become the device that they use for meditation, travel experiences, social spaces, or immersive media, and even gaming. Fitness might not be the most glamorous application of VR, but it may be the one that anchors everything else. The story of Supernatural tells us two things at the same time. First, it proved that VR fitness works. Not as a gimmick or novelty, but as real exercise that people can build their own. in their daily routines. But the reaction, when meta-announced that the supernatural studio would be shut down, showed something even more important. There was real emotion in that response. Concern, frustration, anger, anxiety about what would happen to the app. And that reaction tells you something. For tens of thousands of people, these apps aren't just entertainment. They're part of how people stay healthy. Part of how people stay active. Part of how I stay active and healthy. For some users, especially older people who never saw themselves as traditional VR customers, these workouts opened the door to a new level of activity that they never found anywhere else. That kind of reaction doesn't happen around novelty apps. It happens when something becomes part of people's lives. VR has spent years trying to prove that it can deliver amazing experiences, incredible visuals, new kinds of games and spectacular demos. But the real test of a technology isn't whether it can amaze us. It's whether it can become an indispensable part of our lives. Whether it becomes something that people would genuinely miss if it disappeared. And if you look at the response from the VR fitness community earlier this year, you can see that moment beginning to happen. For many users, the headset isn't just a gadget anymore. It's the thing that gets them moving every morning. The thing that makes exercise fun enough that they actually stick with it. And when someone reaches the point where they can't imagine their workout routine without their VR headset, well, that's when VR stops becoming a novelty and starts becoming indispensable. This is VR Lens. I'm Craig Storm. Thanks for listening.