It was a nice surprise to see our UCLA study mentioned in this! “Virtual objects cannot put up any real-world resistance, so VR games are no good for strength training. Researchers at UCLA got around this by augmenting a cable-resistance training machine with a VR headset running a tower-defence game (in which the player must protect a stronghold from waves of virtual enemies), so that pulldowns, deadlifts and other moves triggered different attacks. Two groups trained for four weeks, one with the VR add-on, the other without. Members of the VR group showed greater improvement in strength, endurance and peak leg power. And they perceived their exertion level to be lower than it actually was.”

See you there!

MY CORE BELIEFS AFTER 20 YEARS OF INTENSE STUDY: 1. The modern fitness industry is fundamentally broken, and I know because I helped build it. I founded Bodybuilding. com in 1999 and grew it to nearly $500 million in annual revenue. I saw from the inside that the entire industry is designed around a lie: that information and motivation are what people need. They're not. 80% of people still don't exercise enough. The industry profits from selling hope and then watching people fail. Now I'm building the thing that actually works. 2. Exercise is a brain problem, not a body problem. The body is almost always willing. It's the brain that says no. Exercise adherence is 99% psychological. Your brain evolved to conserve energy, and it will veto exercise before your conscious mind even gets a vote. Every failed gym membership, every abandoned New Year's resolution, every "I'll start Monday" — that's not weakness. That's a million years of evolution doing exactly what it was designed to do. The only way to win is to stop fighting the brain and start designing for it. 3. You have to make exercise disappear. Distraction doesn't work. Watching TV on a treadmill is just suffering with a screen in front of it. What works is dissociation — becoming so absorbed in an experience that your brain literally stops monitoring how hard your body is working. The insular cortex goes quiet. Time warps. Thirty minutes feels like five. That's not a metaphor. That's neuroscience. And it's the entire design philosophy behind everything I build. 4. Identity is more powerful than motivation. Motivation fades. Habits break. But identity persists. If someone sees themselves as a Crystal Breaker who does battle three times a week, they'll keep showing up — not because they should, but because that's who they are. The 300-millisecond identity veto is real: your brain checks every behavior against your self-image before you're even conscious of the decision. Our job isn't to motivate people to exercise. It's to make them into someone who wouldn't dream of stopping. 5. Humans are tribal animals pretending to be individuals. We are wired for belonging. Social isolation is as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The brain's default network processes social information even when we're doing nothing. People work 24% harder when their team NEEDS them. The future of exercise is obligation to a tribe you love. 6. The game around the game matters more than the game itself. In every truly addictive game ever made, the core gameplay is only about 10% of what keeps people coming back. The other 90% is progression, social systems, live events, competition, status, and identity. We have an incredible VR experience. But if we don't build the meta-layer — the teams, the daily reasons to open the app, the faction wars, the things that pull you in between battles — we're leaving 90% of the addiction on the table. 7. Dark patterns can be used for good. Variable rewards, loss aversion, sunk cost, FOMO, social pressure — the gaming industry weaponized these psychological mechanics to extract money and time from people with nothing to show for it. We use the exact same playbook, but the addiction delivers real health outcomes. Muscle growth. Fat loss. Reduced depression. Cognitive improvement. When the manipulation genuinely serves the person's wellbeing, it's not a dark pattern anymore. It's medicine in a better wrapper. 8. The biggest market in fitness is people who hate fitness. 65% of Americans feel too intimidated to join a gym. That's not a segment — that's the majority. And no one is building for them. Planet Fitness tries, but you still walk onto an open gym floor with mirrors and strangers. We put you in a private booth where no one can see you, no one is judging you, and you're too busy fighting a boss to care what you look like. 9. Words are architecture. The language you use literally changes the neurological response to the experience. "Battle" activates excitement. "Workout" activates dread. "Crystal Breaker" is an identity. "Gym member" is a transaction. We don't have trainers — we have Hero Trainers. We don't have gyms — we have Arenas. Nobody describes skiing as "burning 400 calories." They say they went skiing. If your members are describing what you built using the language of suffering, you've already lost. 10. We're not building a gym chain. We're building a new sport. Thirty-minute battles. Teams of twelve. Seasonal leagues. Three factions at war for territory. Champions, Powerups, elemental strategy, deck building, live events, and a meta-layer that plays out on your phone between battles. The ambition is 1,000+ locations worldwide. But the vision is something that's never existed before — a physical sport born inside a virtual world, where every rep is a move in a game that millions of people play together. That's what we're building.

We started Black Box VR Fitness because we believed that turning serious resistance exercise into an immersive game could make exercise more effective, more engaging, and more accessible than anything that came before it! A wave of brand-new research is now backing up that vision with hard data. 6 recent studies: blackbox-vr.com/the-science-…

A brand new meta-analysis on virtual reality exergames and their weight loss effects was just published in Nature! Here is what they found... (And remember this was just using VR and a simple, cardio-only game.) CONCLUSIONS More Fat Loss Than Traditional Exercise Protocols "Results indicated favorable trends in body mass index (BMI) reduction, waist circumference, and body fat percentage among participants engaged in these interventions for three months or longer. These improvements were statistically significant compared to control groups following traditional exercise protocols without VR augmentation." More Fun = Better Adherence! "The immersive nature of VR also exerts psychological benefits beyond motivation. It can induce stress relief and distraction from discomfort or fatigue usually associated with physical exertion. Such positive affective responses may contribute to enhanced exercise tolerance and improved overall user experience, thereby reinforcing long-term engagement with physical activity." Better Personalization! "Through adaptive algorithms, VR systems can calibrate exercise intensity and complexity based on user performance and real-time biometrics, optimizing workload to promote effective fat metabolism while minimizing risk of injury. This personalized approach heralds a paradigm shift in exercise therapy, transitioning from generic prescriptions to data-driven, individualized programming." Not A Gimmick! "Incorporating VR into exercise paradigms is not merely a gimmick but a substantive enhancement of traditional weight management tools. By bridging the gap between digital entertainment and physical activity, VR-exergames can revolutionize exercise engagement and efficacy…"

FITNESS INDUSTRY: We need to stop looking at the gym down the street as our competition. Our real enemy? It's the couch. It's Netflix knowing exactly what cliffhanger keeps someone binge-watching for six more hours. It's TikTok's perfectly-timed dopamine hits turning "just five minutes" into two hours of scrolling. We're not competing with other gyms – we're competing with BILLION-DOLLAR tech giants who have literally engineered addiction. Think about what we're up against: - YouTube's algorithm analyzes billions of data points to predict what keeps you watching. - Video game companies hire psychologists to design reward loops that trigger the same neural pathways as gambling. - Social media platforms use machine learning to send notifications at the perfect moment to pull you back in. - They test every pixel to maximize engagement, now with advanced AI. Meanwhile, we're expecting people to get excited about three sets of ten reps? Come on. But what if we used these same psychological principles for good? I'm not talking about slapping a points system on an app and calling it "gamified." I mean really understanding what makes games like Fortnite so compelling that people lose entire weekends to them. It's the narrative progression, the skill trees, the perfect difficulty curve, the social dynamics that make you not want to let your team down. Imagine workouts where every session is part of an epic quest, where your reps translate into meaningful progress in a virtual world. Where missing a workout affects your team's performance in a mission. Where difficulty adapts in real-time to keep you perfectly challenged. Where there are mystery rewards and plot twists that only reveal themselves through consistency. This isn't just adding game elements to fitness; it's reimagining what a workout can be. The technology exists! The psychology is proven. If we keep offering the same tired routines while Big Tech gets better at keeping people glued to screens, we're going to lose this war. But if we can harness these same powers of engagement for physical health? We could change the world. That's a quest worth completing!

My son @RaidenDeluca has lost 60 pounds and gained strength and endurance since he started working out at @blackbox_vr! Today, he completed his first @SpartanRace race. Proud is not a strong enough word!

The results of our third peer-reviewed UCLA scientific study on Black Box VR shocked even me! Using our advanced AI and immersive technology, participants saw DRAMATICALLY better fitness results than traditional gym workouts in half the time. More strength. More fat loss. More motivation. All while actually enjoying the experience. This isn’t my opinion. This is scientific proof that gamified VR fitness isn’t just fun, it actually works better. Why would you workout at a regular gym or at home and get worse results? smh

A BRAND NEW STUDY has shattered the myth of what actually works for staying motivated. Here’s what you need to know…

Sometimes I can get it right in one take, but most of the time I do or say something stupid and have to re-do it. Sometimes it takes ten tries. Haha. Here are a few dumb mistakes. 🤣

What do you think? Should gyms be forced to make cancelling as easy as it is to sign up? Have you ever been stuck in a gym contract? #clicktocancel

The hardest thing to do in business: create a brand new revolutionary category! There is no playbook. You have to figure it out from scratch. You not only have to create the brand new product or service, but also change people’s beliefs and behaviors! Great examples are Uber, Tesla, and Netflix. I’ve dedicated my life to creating a new category: Immersive gamified fitness. Instead of workouts being boring and painful, they become addictive, rewarding, fun, and most importantly… easy to stick to for life! Adherence is the only secret to fitness success. I’ve seen the power it has. I won’t quit until the entire world knows about it. It’s too important.