This figure effectively doubled the sales generated the year before. During the pandemic, home fitness sales reached an all-time high at $2.3 billion. There are many telltale signs that the combination of exercise and augmented reality will boom in the years to come. “ quickly expanding beyond games into a bunch of other use cases, and we think that this is eventually going to be a big part of the next major computing platform after phones and after PCs.” – Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Facebook Are All the AR Fitness Pieces in Place? Each of these benefits support its potential for rising popularity in the near future. Finally, AR fitness can be performed in the comfort of one’s home at a time that’s convenient. In fact, exercise and augmented reality have the potential to create completely new engaging types of fitness games. It also improves existing types of fitness through gamification. Like virtual reality, AR fitness offers opportunities to exercise in social settings with others through virtual platforms. Most importantly, AR fitness makes exercising fun. The combination of exercise and augmented reality provide a number of benefits that encourage physical activity. However, AR fitness may be a solution that can help address these public health problems. Even with virtual reality games, improvements in these statistics have not significantly changed. This resulted in progressive increases in obesity and sedentary lifestyles, especially among younger adults. At the same time, approximately 44% of individuals chose not to exercise because the activities were boring and repetitive. Statistically, roughly a third of individuals performed less activity on a daily basis over the course of the last year. It’s no secret that many people became less active during the pandemic. We made it fun we made it social.” – Reggie Fils-Aime, Former President and COO, Nintendo Why AR Fitness Will Become Popular “We brought augmented reality to the marketplace with Nintendo 3DS. For these reasons, many in the FitTech industry believe the combination of exercise and augmented reality hold great promise. It also invites gamification of physical fitness just like virtual reality does. AR fitness is less commonly associated with these problems. However, virtual reality is commonly associated with dizziness and safety hazards when exercising. In fact, roughly 15% of all VR games qualify as medium intensity exercise activity. This doesn’t mean that virtual reality fitness cannot provide healthy exercise as well. At the same time, the presence of the actual physical environment allows users to still be aware of their actual surroundings.ĪR fitness is therefore considered both safer and more fun than virtual reality exercise. In the process, completely new environments are provided that can make exercise more engaging. Augmented reality combines the actual physical environment present with enhanced virtual components. In contrast, exercise and augmented reality creates a different situation. (Read up on how VR technology has been innovating the fitness industry in this Bold story.) In virtual reality, an entirely new environment is created in which someone performs an activity.

When it comes to fitness programs and exercise, virtual reality fitness platforms have been around for some time. “I’m excited about Augmented Reality because unlike Virtual Reality, which closes the world out, AR allows individuals to be present in the world but hopefully allows an improvement on what’s happening presently.” – Tim Cook, CEO, Apple Exercise and Augmented Reality This is why many experts in the field predict AR fitness as a major new trend in the years to come.

Having become accustomed to virtual fitness platforms, this next step does doesn’t look so intimating. At the same time, consumers appear to be much more interested in exercise and augmented reality offerings. AR fitness is expected to boom over the next decade as new technologies and capacities emerge. One of the more intriguing developments in the FitTech industry involved the combination of exercise and augmented reality.

Of course, gym owners and fitness instructors were not the only ones to adapt to the times. And in a post-pandemic world, it appears the sky is the limit for this evolving sector. In many ways, the pandemic was instrumental in advancing the entire FitTech industry. Others introduced virtual fitness classes that allowed the use of technology to help stay in shape. However, many innovative fitness studio owners embraced alternative fitness options. Consumers had to turn to home gyms and exercise regimens as well. Gyms, yoga studios, and fitness centers were forced to shut their doors. As a result of the pandemic, the fitness industry underwent some major changes.

The next big thing in fitness