Make treadmill runs and indoor bike workouts even more fun with these virtual fitness challenges that add medals, competition, and camaraderie to your workout.
Cardio exercises like running, cycling, swimming, walking, and rowing are critical to your fitness journey. They can get boring, however, especially if you do them indoors on treadmills, bikes, elliptical or cross-country trainers, and rowing machines. These virtual fitness challenges spice up your exercises by giving you goals to work towards, friends to compete against, and even full-screen immersive videos for running.
1. Myles (Android, iOS): Virtual fitness challenges for walks, runs and biking
Myles is a training app for virtual walks, runs or bike rides. Choose the type of training you want from 14 pre-selected trails with different distances and try it in the app. Myles will add your miles traveled to your route.
The trails come from all over the world, such as an Inca Trail, Wembley to Buckingham Palace, Bolivia’s Death Road and so on. You can always check your current progress on the trail map and instantly switch to Street View to see what you would see in real life if you did the trail.
As you tread the trails, earn trophies along the way. Myles can also be used for group activities to team up with friends to achieve goals together. Several people have found that using social fitness apps with friends is a great motivator to exercise regularly.
The Myles app is currently syncing with Garmin, Strava and Under Armor Connected fitness devices and data to automatically track your workout. However, if you don’t use them, you can add the data manually.
Download: Myles for Android | iOS (free)
2. The conqueror and my virtual mission (web, Android, iOS): virtual fitness challenges with medals
Myles is great for occasional exercise, especially for users who want a free option. But one of the best motivators to stick to a fitness routine and push yourself is when you are ready to put your money on the line. The Conqueror is one of the most popular virtual fitness challenge apps on the web.
These are all distance challenges that you must overcome alone while running, cycling, rowing, walking, skiing, swimming, in a wheelchair or on an elliptical machine. The app syncs with multiple fitness services and smartwatches, and you can also enter data manually.
The challenges include climbing Mount Everest or Kilimanjaro, swimming in the English Channel, hiking the Great Wall of China and much more. Each challenge is paid for (usually around $ 30). With this fee you get the Conqueror Quest, street view pictures, virtual postcards (which you unlock as you progress through the game) and at the end a cool medal. These medals are actually the best reason to face the challenges of The Conqueror and are shipped worldwide.
You can also take on a challenge as a group so that all of your distances add up. It’s a nice way to train with friends and end up sharing medals with a story to tell.
If you’d like to use The Conqueror as a free version, try out their sister app, My Virtual Mission. Here you create everything yourself, like with Myles. And of course no medals.
3. BitGym (Android, iOS): full screen, first-person view of virtual runs and journeys
If you use an indoor trainer like a treadmill, bike, elliptical machine, or rowing machine, then you must definitely try BitGym. Put your tablet or phone on top of the machine and launch this full screen app to be transported to a distant country. It’s a first-person view of what it would be like to run or cycle in this place.
After choosing your machine, choose one of the free virtual walks or runs. Some of the tours also have a bus that will take you to speed up or slow down (and even talk about interesting places as you drive past them). It’s like a free version of indoor bike trainers like Peloton, NordicTrack, and Echolon. You can change the ambient noise in the on-screen menu and switch subtitles on and off.
The app also uses your front camera to track your movements and automatically adjusts the speed of the virtual tour accordingly. This didn’t work well in our test, but your mileage may vary. Even so, it’s easy to adjust the speed settings in the menu.
Download: BitGym for Android | iOS (free)
4. Ambalco (Web, Android, iOS): Free Zwift alternative for virtual rides during indoor cycling
If you can’t ride outside alone or with friends, then indoor cycling training apps like Zwift are second best. Most are paid, however. Ambalco is a completely free indoor cycling trainer with the ability to compete against others online.
When you’re out on your indoor bike, visit the Ambalco website and play any video (it even works on TVs). You can choose videos or rides based on their most popular, newest, duration (15 minutes, 45 minutes, 60 minutes) and location (Paris, California, Moscow and more). You can then play the video for an immersive, full-screen experience that will automatically play as it was captured.
There is a second “interactive mode” that is interesting. Download the Ambalco app on your smartphone and tuck your phone in your sock or strap it to your leg. It uses the phone’s sensors to determine your current speed and play the video according to your speed. It’s pretty neat and works well.
Also, you need to enter your nickname in the web browser and on the phone at the same time. Then ask your friends to join the same video using their nickname and you can virtually “run” against them.
Download: Ambalco for Android | iOS (free)
5. Ironman Virtual Club (Web): Virtual challenges with rewards for winners
You have probably heard of the legendary Ironman, one of the toughest triathlon races in the world, which takes place several times a year. During the 2020 pandemic, the official Ironman website launched a virtual club where athletes can virtually test their limits.
The Ironman Virtual Club (IVC) is a free web app that can sync data with the most popular health apps and the best fitness trackers. Your dashboard shows your latest cycling, swimming or running data while converting your distance into points. Points can be converted into credits to buy things from the Ironman Store.
The IVC’s event area offers virtual races and stand-alone virtual fitness challenges such as bike tours and runs. Join one to compete on a global leaderboard. Some of them have sponsors who offer prizes like store credit. So along with the Fit, you will also get a nice bonus.
Iron Man is a global community of motivated athletes, and you must be in good shape to overcome these challenges. You can find and join local chapters and groups through the app to make new friends to compete with.
Don’t overdo it on fitness challenges
No matter which of these fitness challenges you choose, make sure you don’t go too far. It’s tempting to think you should “climb Everest,” but don’t just jump in; Take baby steps. Even if you’ve done an Ironman triathlon before, for example, doing it with equipment alone that puts stress on your mind and body in other ways is a whole different experience. These virtual fitness challenges are designed to help you achieve more and not burn out.
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About the author
Mihir Patkar
(1260 published articles)
Mihir Patkar has been writing about technology and productivity for some of the world’s leading media publications for over 14 years. He has an academic background in journalism.
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