The Gym in January? No Thanks—This Year, I’ll Be Getting Jacked at Home in My VR Headset

It’s that time of the year again. Everybody makes a New Year’s resolution, and everyone makes the same one: get in shape. Regular gym goers notice the influx of new joiners taking rest breaks on the bench presses, leaving dumbbells in weird places nobody can access, and crowding the squat racks with their warm-ups.

As somebody who’s twice been almost kicked in the face while mid-squat inside the squat rack by somebody doing stretches where they shouldn’t have been, I have a strong annual urge to hide indoors for my workouts until the crowds thin out by March. If you’re feeling the same, or if you just don’t want to throw yourself into the cold for the trek to the gym, check out these intriguingly, sometimes bafflingly high-tech solutions for a low-tech conundrum.

They may not be the greatest, but they are the latest.

beyond power voltra 1

With a name like a Transformer, it’d better have the power to transform you into Rocky Balboa. Or at least his trainer, Mickey. The Voltra 1‘s magnesium-alloy-case holds a 9.4-foot cable with adjustable resistance. There’s even Wi-Fi so that you can track your workouts and export your workout data.

There’s a four-inch touchscreen for controlling the settings. Its cables can provide anywhere from five to 200 pounds of resistance, both consistent and adaptive, “for both concentric and eccentric movements,” according to Beyond Power.

The Voltra 1 is designed to bolt to existing home gym equipment, such as the frame of a squat rack, but you can also bolt it to a $199 Travel Platform. There’s even a photograph on the company website that shows it strapped around a tree:

At $2,100, though, you’ve got to be really desperate to avoid the gym. Perhaps you have the coin to build a killer home gym, or your job involves staying fit to a severe degree. At least once you empty your cash reserves of its list price, you’ll have no problem lifting your wallet.

Vitruvian Trainer+

Don’t have room for an entire squat rack in your home? Or even bulky weights? The Trainer+ comes as a platform with two integrated cables to provide customizable resistance. To use it, you stand on the platform and grab any of the included bars and handles.

There’s a quick connect system so that you can attach one long bar for some exercises and two individual handles for others. Resistance can be set as high as 440 pounds, which is quite impressive and should suffice for all but the brawniest of gym veterans.

Anytime a product description of anything mentions AI these days, I get skeptical, though. “AI reads your motion 1,000 times per second, loading the right weight for you in every moment,” writes Vitruvian. “Whether you’re feeling fired up or fatigued, the Trainer+ knows exactly when to increase or reduce the load to give you the best workout experience possible.”

How it works in practice, I can’t say. What’s wrong with just setting your own weight resistance? For certain exercises, I can see it as a helpful feature, if it works as designed. For others, where you lift until failure, not so much. Its $2,990 sure sounds like a heavy lift, though.

litesport

Remember Liteboxer? It’s rebranded as Litesport, an augmented reality exercise subscription that seeks to bring your own personal trainer into your home. Not in a creepy way. But in a high-tech way, where they’re flat and kind of see-through, and there are numbers hovering in your room. Not creepy.

Augmented reality is different from virtual reality in that you’re still seeing your room and surroundings through your Meta Quest (sold separately). It just projects the image of a programmed virtual trainer into your room through the display as it’s worn over your eyes, and there’s crucial information and controls (for pausing the trainer; they’re not live) hovering in your room, too.

They’re currently having a Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal where you can get a subscription for $1 per month for the first three months. Nobody tell them that Black Friday and Cyber Monday ended a long time ago. Last year, technically. After the first three months, the plan reverts to the normal $9 per month price.

Fringe benefit: Working out at home puts you at easy access for a recovery beer. So get out… er, in there and shape up.