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Comment by zmmmmm | Hacker News Reader

VR exercise was a bit of a revelation for me. Used to run 8km per day but lockdown convinced me to try exercise at home using VR and I fell in love with it. Apart from being fun (you're literally playing computer games), I got a much better workout, exercising parts of my body that running didn't touch. I actually started bulking up in my upper arms for the first time in my life. Really surprised me and sold me that this could be one of the real "killer apps" for VR if enough people knew about it.

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> I actually started bulking up in my upper arms for the first time in my life.

Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no way VR will bulk up your arms in a way that a simple dumbbell won't do better in 5-15 minutes per day, right?

> exercising parts of my body that running didn't touch

Similarly, running will exercise parts of your body that VR won't touch right?

> no way VR will bulk up your arms in a way that a simple dumbbell won't do better in 5-15 minutes per day

True, but you underestimate the most important thing when working out: consistency - doing it regularly over long periods of time. VR/AR trainings will take off in the future, as the "gamification" (read: instant gratification) will help motivate people to stick with a workout routine and achieve that consistency.

I don't think I underestimate it, just in case someone is coming here and thinking that VR is a good way to bulk up their arms, I'm just saying that it won't compare to even the minimum of using dumbbells.

I'm just saying that it won't compare to even the minimum of using dumbbells.

Using dumbbells is the main thing here: It doesn't matter if dumbbells do better if it simply isn't an activity you keep up long term. Daily VR is going to be more meaningful and develop more muscle over time than sporadic dumbbell use. And lets be honest, realistically this is what we are comparing. Fun activity with side effects to an exercise in boredom that has better side effects.

The fallacy everyone is making here is believing that consistency trumps all else. But it doesn't if you're consistently subjecting yourself to a stress which does not result in any new adaptations--then there will be no change.

An oft repeated example of this fallacy is in the case of tanning. If you go out into the sun for 20 minutes and get a tan, what will happen if you continue to go out in the sun for 20 minutes each day? Will you get more tan? No. You've already adapted to the stress (ultraviolet light exposure for 20 minutes) and so the continued daily stress of 20 minutes of sunlight will not result in any new adaptations.

That is why if you are completely untrained, sure, VR constitutes a sufficient disruption to homeostasis that you'll get some muscular adaptations. But the stress is so minimal (and you cannot effectively increase it) that you will quickly adapt to it and subsequent exposure to the stress in the future will not result in any adaptations, it will only maintain what little adaptation you already have.

"Consistency" in this instance probably means exercising more than once a month. I think you're comparing VR exercise with a hypothetical ideal based on your own exercise routine, when it should really be compared with what a given individual was doing beforehand, which is probably some kind of cardio with no upper-body impact, or absolutely nothing.

The original guy said he replaced 8km daily running with VR exercise, so I don't actually think we are comparing 'sporadic gym/exercise' with 'constant VR'. But in the case of that, sure you are right.

I can't really tell you if using a dumbbell would have done more - probably you are right. But there's no way I would persist with dumbbells, I find them excruciatingly boring.

> Similarly, running will exercise parts of your body that VR won't touch right?

Perhaps but not nearly as many as VR hits that running doesn't touch. It certainly forces you to do squats.

> I find them excruciatingly boring

I find the best antidote to boredom when lifting weights is to find the right weight and number of reps so that you're pushing through the burn for at least a third of the set. Hard to stay bored when your arms are on fire. Music is the other major component, you have to really amp yourself up and listening to music can put you in that mind set. Maybe even doing some circuit training would be better for you since you don't have to deal with long wait times between sets.

> there is no way VR will bulk up your arms in a way that a simple dumbbell won't do better in 5-15 minutes per day, right?

Right, targeted exercise will bulk you up more

> running will exercise parts of your body that VR won't touch right?

What? No

Which muscles do you think you use while running that you don’t use jumping around in vr?

> Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no way VR will bulk up your arms in a way that a simple dumbbell won't do better in 5-15 minutes per day, right?

You're not wrong, just missing the point.

> I actually started bulking up in my upper arms for the first time in my life.

No you didn't, unless you were completely and utterly detrained (i.e., previously bedridden or something) and even then, the stimulus would've only resulted in adaptation for a short period.

VR exercise is far too submaximal (in regards to strength) to result in meaningful strength adaptations past a short initial adaptation period.

I also build muscles in VR training and I've done a lot of stronglift so I know what progression is like. Pistol Whip is great for building leg muscles. Imagine doing that one more squat you didn't think you had in you when in the squat rack. In Pistol Whip you do that 20 times without noticing.

You don't need progressive overload to build muscles. High rep sets should not be underestimated.

The lower body musculature is too large to be effectively stressed by bodyweight exercise in people fostering any decent level of fitness, i.e., bodyweight squats don't make you stronger.

Just because an exercise is hard or makes you sore doesn't mean it's effective.

I doubt I'll convince the parent, but for the curious about why this comment is utterly wrong and uninformed let's look at how muscles work.

In a given set of muscles you have dozens to thousands of motor units. Each is activated by a motor neuron. When recruited the muscle fibers in a motor unit begin producing (or trying to produce) force. The interesting thing is that they arn't all recruited at the same time, when you use 'a muscle' your actually invoking a complex process of recruitment of sub units within that muscle. Moreover these units are not created equally. Some can produce force for a long period of time and are usually weaker, some can produce force very rapidly but tire quickly. This is why when you try to produce a small static force for a long period of time (e.g. hold your arms out straight) your muscles will eventually start shaking and eventually give out. As one set of motor units begin to fatigue the signal to the whole muscle increases, recruiting fast action motor units which are worse at slow holding, and eventually they and all the units are fatigued and you can't produce continued force.

If you'd like to play around with a simulation of the above process you can, it's older code but it may still check out:

https://github.com/iandanforth/pymuscle

And to specifically address the issue of 'building muscle', as I've noted there are lots of sub components with different roles. Each of those can grow over time for different reasons and fatigue is one of the main signals for growth. Not the only one, but the notion that the only way to build muscle is to 'tear up' your muscles with huge lifts is both outdated and wrong.

I'm having trouble understanding how your comment refutes mine; could you clarify?

> Not the only one, but the notion that the only way to build muscle is to 'tear up' your muscles with huge lifts is both outdated and wrong.

I think you're misunderstanding my point. The bodyweight squat is ineffective because you cannot change the stimulus; the only training variable you can adjust is the number of squats you do. Because it's a relatively easy exercise, this quickly means that you cannot subject yourself to sufficient stress with it, both for myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy purposes. Nobody in the history of the universe has ever gotten big and strong on bodyweight squats. It has never happened and it never will happen.

You sure can change the stimulus. Three options immediately come to mind. First, you can increase the power with which you explode out of the bottom, that is push at the ground harder and faster. Second, you can pause at the bottom for a variable length of time, adding an isometric element and increasing the difficulty of the concentric movement. Third, you can do one legged squats to greatly increase the weight per leg.

Have your heavy barbell back squats made your legs and core strong enough to do explosive pistol pause squats?

>bodyweight squats don't make you stronger

Complete nonsense.

I should've written more explicitly: bodyweight squats don't make people who harbor a decent level of fitness stronger. Like any novel stimulus, they will make you stronger for a short while and then it will stop once you've adapted.

It's pretty obvious that the target audience for VR exercise is not 'people who harbor a decent level of fitness'. You're looking at the wrong baseline.

> they will make you stronger for a short while

I'm curious about the precise interpretation here. Are you saying increased strength be lost and I will return to baseline before I started exercising? Or are you saying I will get a certain amount of increase and I will maintain it, but it will plateau there?

Because I'm just fine with the 2nd scenario. The first would be weird and contradicts my experience (nearly 2 years in ...).

I've only ever done body weight and know that get more muscle when training. I think you are doing premature optimizing. I know nothing about exercise theory but I know what gets me fat and what makes me strong, I do not care about what is optimal since I do fun things for exercise, not for strength.

Do you think this is the difference, the mindset we have in our training.

> what makes me strong

How do you know what makes you strong? That is, how do you measure it?

Well, I'm not sure if this is about differences in definitions .... I don't know what adaptation means. All I can tell you is it had a significant impact on the actual physical bulk of my upper arms.

The main driver of that was SynthRiders, where you get points for punching targets as hard as you can. To get to the top of the leader board you have to pretty much hit targets with all your strength for 3-4 mins. 30 mins of that a day over several months was enough to make a significant difference.

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