In the depths of winter, it can be tough to drag yourself out of your cozy apartment to the fitness center or playing field. Sure, you can always lift some weights or do a few downward dogs at home, but that doesn’t work for everyone—including yours truly. If I don’t have an instructor and classmates to encourage me in a studio, I’m much less motivated to move. So when I got the opportunity to try a new line of virtual reality workout classes led by ’80s fitness icon Jane Fonda, I was intrigued. Could VR help bridge the gap between home and gym? I thought it was worth a shot. Besides, who in their right mind would pass up the chance to work out with Jane freaking Fonda?
Fonda’s four classes are exclusively available on Meta Quest via its Supernatural fitness platform, so once my Meta Quest 3S ($300, meta.com) arrived in early February, it was time to test.
The Quest 3S in action
The device turned out to be pretty user-friendly, walking me patiently through all the necessary setup steps. After I played around with the functions and settings, I navigated to the Meta app store, installed the Supernatural app, and chose the class that sounded the easiest, figuring I would start slow—Jane Fonda: Stretch. In this three-minute session, Fonda herself—resplendent in a black sweatsuit embroidered with Supernatural’s zigzag logo (no classic leg warmers for this one)—took me through a few gentle neck stretches, standing spinal roll-downs, and side lunges in the middle of a pond in Korea (Gungnamji Pond, to be specific). Even though the routine was short, it offered a much-needed few moments of calm after a hectic workday—and the chance to move my body and boost my energy levels after sitting in a desk chair for hours.
Next time I hung out with Jane, Ludacris crashed the party. In the 19-minute-long Box With Jane Fonda & Ludacris, the fitness icon and rapper show you a few basic boxing moves at the mouth of an active volcano, then recede into voiceover as the workout starts in earnest. Targets suddenly began flying at me: big white and black bulbs (to hit with my virtual boxing gloves) as well as shining arrows (to sidestep and duck). Throwing punches one after another as I bobbed and weaved, I felt like a character in Mario Kart. Meanwhile, the hip-hop-heavy soundtrack roared to life, complementing the rapid-fire pace and raw force of the punching motions. Even though I had chosen the low-intensity version of the class (you could also pick medium or high), I was still sweaty and out of breath within a few songs, and my arms, legs, and back even felt the effects of all that work the next day.
While there are four Fonda classes in total, I wasn’t able to test the fourth, a team workout designed for up to three people, since none of my friends had the device (and I wasn’t interested in teaming up with a rando). That left only Flow with Jane Fonda, a 23-minute-long aerobics class that throws it back to the icon’s fitness heyday: It featured soaring ’80s hits like Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” and Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” and Fonda even donned a nostalgic high-cut leotard, wide vinyl belt, gray leggings, and fuzzy leg warmers. Like Box With Jane Fonda & Ludacris, the class comes in three different intensity levels and involves striking rapidly moving targets. Materializing amid the picturesque ruins of Machu Picchu, Fonda kicked things off with some simple warm-up exercises, like stationary marching and cross-body stretching. Then, it was time for target practice. Using baseball-style bats, I went into video game mode again, swinging at piñata-style bulbs that exploded in a shower of virtual confetti whenever I managed a direct hit. Soon, I fell into a smooth rhythm that felt almost like dancing—and was just as physically strenuous.
The bottom line
Overall, I enjoyed Supernatural and the Jane Fonda workout classes. The sheer convenience can’t be beat—no commute to the gym! Second, though I’m no VR connoisseur, I was struck by the immersive quality of the experience. While I won’t pretend that virtual reality measures up to, well, actual reality, it did engross me enough that I was able to lose myself in what I was doing. (Besides, its stunning vistas are a draw in their own right—I frequently caught myself swiveling around to take in sights as diverse as the Temple of Horus in Egypt and the surface of the moon.) Stylistically, I also meshed well with Fonda’s mellow approach to instruction. Unlike some of the drill-sergeant-esque trainers I’ve encountered before, she (or, rather, her Supernatural avatar) doesn’t bark orders at you or demand your blood, sweat, and tears.
