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How on earth could going to a virtual gym help you if you’re trying to lose weight? Well believe it or not. It may not be as far-fetched as it sounds. Have you heard of something called Second Life, if you haven’t, I will give you a quick rundown.
Second life is a virtual community, where you can interact with people through your computer you can buy clothes and go to lots of different worlds hence the title of this post. It has got to the point now where there are virtual classrooms, as well as seminars which you can attend using your home computer. People involved in a 12 week experiment did the following, one group attended a real group session in the gym.
While a second group attended an online one. The researchers said at a conference that the confidence and motivation the people gained whilst in the virtual world carried on into real life. A leading psychologist in the UK said that mixing both activities both in the real world and online would bring more benefits. Dr Jeanne Johnston who put the study together recruited people and asked them to join a they community on Second Life called club one island.
The people who were asked to participate were overweight and obese, in both groups, they spent the same amount of time, both online and in the real world, which equated to four hours per week.
The people involved in the study were women aged approximately 46 years of age this particular age group was second life, members the women in the other group were aged 37 years of age. During the time span of the study which was 12 weeks both sets of groups yielded similar amounts of weight loss.
They both lost 10 pounds of weight, thereabouts, here is what one of the researchers said about their findings.
“Dr Johnston said: “It’s counter-intuitive, the idea of being more active in a virtual world, but the activities that they do in a virtual world can carry over into the real world.
“The virtual world programme was at least as beneficial as the face-to-face programme, and in some ways, more effective.
“It has the potential to reach people who normally wouldn’t go to a gym or join a programme because of limitations, such as time or discomfort with a fitness centre environment.”
If you haven’t tried second life. It is quite good fun, although you do need a modern PC. In order to be able to run it. However, the thing about it is that it doesn’t cost anything.
So all you would need to do is a search for club one island and you would be able to join that community. Some people might not particularly want to go to a gym. Due to time constraints, or just not having one local to them. For them, this would be an ideal alternative.
There seems to be more and more stories similar to this that we seem to be hearing, which involves online virtual communities, as well as using games consoles to work out with the way we do fitness training is starting to change more so now than ever before. What you think about this? Is it something you would consider doing leave your thoughts opinions and comments in the section below.
Sources and references http://www.bbc.co.uk
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