Virtual reality cycling leads to less muscle pain, finds study
The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Georgia, sought to build on previous research which found that undertaking exercise with the help of virtual reality helped patients, including people with chronic back pain, better manage their condition.
Doctoral student Carly Wender of the College of Education’s department of kinesiology, decided to investigate whether the use of virtual reality would likewise reduce pain experienced during exercise.
94 people participated in the study, all of them wearing a virtual reality headset while undertaking three 30-second sprints, with a four-minute recovery period in between.
Half of the subjects were shown a changing urban landscape to enable them to feel as though the were riding through a city. The rest were given a static picture of the same cityscape and asked to imagine that they were riding through it.
The former group experienced between 12 and 13 per cent less pain in their quadriceps during the second and third sprints compared to those who were shown the static picture.
Both groups achieved a similar level of cycling performance, meaning that relief from pain was not linked to potentially reduced cycling performance in the group shown the interactive cityscape.
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