Never Skip Leg Day Again: Training the Lower Body with Vertical Jumps in a Virtual Reality Exergame

TL;DR

This paper presents a VR exergame focused on vertical jump training to promote balanced full-body workouts, addressing the common upper-body focus in existing VR fitness games and exploring design considerations for effective lower limb training.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel VR exergame for lower body training using vertical jumps and provides design guidelines based on expert feedback and user experience analysis.

Findings

Jump exercises provided a challenging and engaging experience.

Participants showed positive attitudes towards the training.

Design implications improve safety and effectiveness in full-body VR exergames.

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) exergames can increase engagement in and motivation for physical activities. Most VR exergames focus on the upper body because many VR setups only track the users' heads and hands. To become a serious alternative to existing exercise programs, VR exergames must provide a balanced workout and train the lower limbs, too. To address this issue, we built a VR exergame focused on vertical jump training to explore full-body exercise applications. To create a safe and effective training, nine domain experts participated in our prototype design. Our mixed-methods study confirms that the jump-centered exercises provided a worthy challenge and positive player experience, indicating long-term retention. Based on our findings, we present five design implications to guide future work: avoid an unintended forward drift, consider technical constraints, address safety concerns in full-body VR exergames, incorporate rhythmic elements with fluent movement patterns, adapt difficulty to players' fitness progression status.