“Ah yes, I remember the great outdoors,” you lament to your grandchildren over a cup of tea in your underground bunker.

Sure, we’re not quite there yet, but there’s no denying that the world of personal fitness is undergoing some massive changes.

Many gyms in South Africa have already closed their doors for the time being, and some citizens are hoping that tonight’s address by President Cyril Ramaphosa sees a national lockdown declared.

Again, we’re not there yet, but a lockdown could look a little something like this.

I would imagine that there are a few treadmills that had gathered dust for years being hauled out of spare rooms and garages around the world, but it’s just not the same as pounding the open road, is it?

Those old treadmills may not have screens that take you on a virtual outdoor experience, but some of the more moderns ones do.

Mashable’s Rachel Kraus has written about the joys of such treadmills:

…the treadmills at my gym come equipped with screens that automatically play a visual loop of realistic but animated visuals that simulate the perspective of running through a physical environment. For a few minutes you’ll be running on a trail in a shady forest, then you’ll get transported to an urban park for a bit, maybe you’ll run through a town square, and then you’ll find yourself on an empty mountain. The videos are low-fi, even cheesy, but somehow, engrossing. Watching them feels like the healthy, adult version of gazing at the iTunes visualizer: abstractly soothing.

There are many reasons for that, which I won’t go into just yet, but it’s worth looking at one of the companies that dominates this treadmill video space, and is used by Kraus.

LifeScape, by LifeFitness, was introduced in 2012, and here’s their original promo video from the same year:

Not quite the same as pounding the Sea Point promenade as folks in activewear walk their designer dogs (which will all suffer immense breathing difficulties in years to come, because they’re abominations of nature), but you’ll just have to make do.

How about a jog through Germany?

I’m not sure whether the music is optional. I sure hope so.

For those who want a jog through northern California’s Trinity Mountains, don’t stress. Tick that box:

Perhaps mine could be tailored to include extreme wheezing, followed by swearing, and then more wheezing at various points throughout.

Gary McNamee, the CEO of running simulator software company Outside Interactive, says that running on a treadmill is “a heck of a lot more about psychology than it is about fitness”:

McNamee explained that Outside Interactive was born from the goal of trying to make running on a treadmill “suck less.”

They’ve found that simulators that allow people to feel like they’re making progress, as well as have something engaging to look at, is the solution to the “suck less” quandry.

“It’s an all encompassing experience,” McNamee said…

While McNamee very much took into account the psychological element of nature simulations in Outside Interactive’s software development, it was never intended to help enable a meditative state. However, he has seen that it can have that effect.

“A happy accident is a good way to think about it,” McNamee said. “We are all our own guinea pigs here. When we use the product for software testing, we’re human too.”

Running and meditation don’t go hand in hand for me, but I’m just one guinea pig of many.

Namaste inside, friends.

[source:mashable]