Enabling VR on Your Zwift Bike with the HOLOFIT VR Cycling App

Virtual reality on a Zwift bike?! Yes, it’s possible!

The great news is that setting up this super immersive and engaging way to stay fit is easier than you may think.

This article will guide you through everything you need to know, transforming your Zwift setup into a full-fledged VR cycling wonderland.

We’ll begin by exploring Zwift, the popular indoor cycling platform, then delve into the world of VR and how it enhances your Zwift experience. Finally, we’ll provide a step-by-step approach to enabling HOLOFIT on your Zwift bike, suggest thrilling in-app activities, and show you how to seamlessly integrate VR cycling into your fitness routine.

Buckle up, put on your VR headset, and get ready to experience cycling like never before!

What’s Zwift? Where does VR fit in?

Zwift has constantly been in the top ten virtual indoor cycling apps in the last five years, and with good reason: it helped change indoor bike training completely.

Instead of staring at a wall counting down minutes, Zwift gives you the chance to jump into one of the 12 virtual worlds and ride along with other happy members, in a friendly or competitive way.

After purchasing their membership, you would look at your avatar on the screen and have fun, and your workout time would go by much faster.

But the technological advancements did not stop at the regular 2D screens.

With virtual reality, we can now not only look at the virtual worlds in front of us but actually enter them fully. Instead of looking at your avatar, you now become your avatar and a full-fledged part of the virtual world.

And that’s exactly what the HOLOFIT VR app is doing: letting users enter one of the VR worlds where they are fully immersed in the environment, and interacting with it as if it was real.

Why choose VR cycling?

It’s fun and exciting, we already know this.

But did you know that VR cycling has also been scientifically proven to increase workout time and decrease the level of pain perception?

A University of Kent study found that a group of people exercising with the help of VR reported a pain intensity that was 10% lower than the non-VR group. Moreover, the time to exhaustion for the VR group was around two minutes longer than those doing traditional exercises.

If we’re talking about VR cycling specifically, University of Georgia researchers have found that high-intensity cycling is 12-13% less painful when combined with virtual reality.

Simply put: you can ride longer with less pain. Imagine the results that could bring and what time you’d make!

So what do you need to have to enable your Zwift bike to work with HOLOFIT?

How to get started with VR cycling on any bike, including Zwift?

First thing: you’ll need a VR headset. Meta Quest 2 VR headset starts at $199.99 and is available globally.

Second, if you don’t already have FTMS Bluetooth on your indoor bike, you will need a cadence sensor. You might be using a speed sensor with Zwift, HOLOFIT uses cadence instead.

If your indoor bike has FTMS Bluetooth, you can connect to HOLOFIT directly.

If you’re using a smart trainer with Zwift, you’ll be happy to know that most of these work with HOLOFIT because they transmit cadence.

And lastly, you need a HOLOFIT subscription, starting at $6.9/month and giving you access to more than 100 workout options, with virtual worlds like Cyberpunk or Troglodyte, worlds inspired by real places like Paris and Venice, nature with Tropical and Antarctica and much more.

You can choose between daily and monthly challenges, cardio, fat-burn or endurance programs, live races, or scheduled events. It’s a passport for a whole virtual universe designed to make you sweat, achieve your fitness goals, and always, always, have fun.

Your first HOLOFIT VR bike ride

HOLOFIT comes with over 15 virtual worlds and 6 game modes, including both single and multiplayer, so it may be difficult to decide where you should start.

We’ve prepared some suggestions for your first HOLOFIT VR bike ride:

Journey mode, Nihon

A relaxed workout! Journey Mode lets you set your own pace and explore one of our virtual worlds while collecting trophies hidden all around the environment.

For your first time, we’d recommend Nihon. It will send you on a quest of collecting ancient ruins so that you can reconcile the spirit world with the two conflicting human tribes in the area, all from your bike. Do you think you could do it?

20-min CardioGoals, HIIT on Medium

A programmed workout! CardioGoals consists of guided training plans that include Fat Burn, Cardio, Interval, and HIIT programs, available in a variety of lengths and difficulties.

Based on your choice, CardioGoals will guide your speed and effort, and you’ll be awarded points based on your accuracy.

For your first time, we’d recommend a 20-min, medium-intensity HIIT workout in a world of your choosing. If Medium turns out to be too easy or too hard, next time just change the difficulty level accordingly.

20-min Performance Mode

Set your base level and then follow your progress! In Performance mode, you get to choose a time, and then set a distance record for that time.

When it’s time to check your progress, you can challenge your distance record (or anyone else’s in the community for that matter), and you’ll race the ghost of your past performance, trying to do better.

For your first time, we recommend that you set a 20-min distance record. Two weeks or a month later, come back and try to beat it to see if you’ve progressed.