Home-Based Exercise Gaming for Physically Inactive Individuals

Summary

Current guidelines recommend that adults undertake at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity per week. However, many adults fail to be physically active according to this definition of the World Health Organisation (WHO). This represents a large economic burden to healthcare systems and public health. A number of behavioural and environmental factors associated with modern lifestyles are largely responsible for the high levels of physical inactivity including; motorised transport and sedentary jobs, lack of time, limited access to adequate exercise facilities, lack of motivation, financial constraints and environmental factors including bad weather. In an attempt to overcome many of the common barriers to exercise, members of our research group developed a virtually-monitored exercise intervention that used simple on-the-spot bodyweight exercises to be performed in the participant's home without supervision or equipment. This home-based intervention was designed to be a practical and effective training strategy capable of producing metabolic and functional adaptions while removing many of the common barriers to exercise. Despite promising results, more engaging exercise strategies are needed to motivate sedentary individuals to increase their physical activity.

Inspired by current trends in the fitness market, Sphery Ltd. developed an immersive and motivating fitness exercise game (exergame), the "ExerCube". The ExerCube allows a full-body workout that concurrently challenges physical and cognitive functions and adapts to the fitness and skill level of the individual. The development of a home-based version of the ExerCube has the potential to make this system available to more individuals, reduce major barriers to exercise, and ultimately provide a strategy to improve cardio-metabolic health in the population. Innovative home-based exergames are particularly in demand given the increase in the number of people wanting to exercise at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conditions

• Physical Inactivity

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Home-based exergaming

Participants will undertake one of two 6-week training interventions. In both groups participants will be asked to train 3 times per week (18 sessions total), during which adherence to the training will be measured. To monitor adherence to training and training load (exercise completion, exercise duration and heart rate achieved during workouts) throughout the 6 weeks participants will be given a heart rate monitor.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Bern

  collaborator OTHER

• Insel Gruppe AG, University Hospital Bern

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Christoph Stettler, MD · University of Bern

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

55 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2022-03-23

Primary Completion

2023-01-23

Completion

2023-01-23

Countries

• Switzerland

Study Locations