Workout Week 34: Environmental Deterrents

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Well, I discovered a drawback to having shorter chains on my ceiling fixture.

I spent nearly two decades in this room with some fairly long chains on the fan, and as long as it was on the breeze was enough to send them swaying. Even with the fan set to low I could see them moving back and forth.

And that was fine… until I got into VR. After a few sessions in which I smacked one of the chains hard enough to send them swinging, and once sending the chains into the fan (with the wall switch not actually controlling the fan for whatever reason, so retrieving them under those circumstances was “fun”), I finally decided it was time to get shorter chains. Long enough to reach on purpose (or at least to reach the one for the fan, with the wall switch controlling the light like it should it didn’t really matter if that was out of reach), but short enough that I probably wouldn’t hit it by accident.

Except making them shorter meant that there was less surface area for the breeze to hit, and they haven’t been moving around. And in less than a month… this happened.

Size set to thumbnail in the hopes it will reduce triggers for arachnophobes. Click to see larger picture if you dare.

Between that and how the weather is affecting the local home invaders, guess I need to step up keeping everything vacuumed. And maybe replace my bedroom’s air vent with something filtered, though how much that will affect airflow from the AC and furnace is questionable at best.

In related news, I’ve been revisiting the idea of saving up for a Murphy bed. Though now it isn’t just for additional floorspace, it’s also for giving invaders fewer places to hide behind or under–I could probably just do a quick vacuum when I put the bed up before a session of VR.

Problem is, I’d really want a freestanding kind for that purpose, something that I could keep away from the wall to clean behind… and I thought I found the perfect one (part of what makes it freestanding is the desk that provides support when the bed is up, and I could use that part for a camera or laptop if I wanted to record my sessions from a different angle), until I learned that its significantly lower price tag is due to the lack of a lifting mechanism and the thing is so dang heavy that even a twin size (a size that seems ridiculously hard to find for the style) requires two people to put the bed up every time. Even living with my parents, that just won’t work for regular usage. (Still not keen on the trifold variety even if they would take up less wall space; while I am tempted just so I can have a Murphy until I can afford a better variety, I’d really prefer something that lets me use a mattress of my choosing instead of limiting myself to getting one made for that exact bed whenever it comes time to replace the thing.)

Anywho, the workouts that are the intended purpose of this series.

I’ve tried Pistol Whip a few times just to get an idea of how the game works, and while I still haven’t made a decision on whether it really is a “workout” it seems good enough to start including in the relevant YouTube series (unlike many an activity from Wii Sports Resort). Perhaps this one will work better at higher difficulty levels… and replaying levels until I complete them versus a “one and done” session like I’m doing for everything else.

As for playing Beat Saber first thing in the morning, I’m still stuck on Normal mode for the handful of songs that I’m not bothering to record–the only time I’ve hit the SS score tier lately was on the one-handed mode for High Hopes while I’m still scoring S in everything other mode.

And I’ve finished the second world of Ring Fit Adventure!

Normally I prefer to do a single level per video, but length-wise I think it worked better to do the previously-forgotten gym in the same session as the next boss fight rather than splitting them up.

Maybe, in the interest of getting more workouts in per week, I should remove the Beat Saber campaign mode from my randomizer and instead do it as the “last” workout I do each week, just like I’m trying to do Ring Fit’s Adventure mode first. That way I’d at least have a guaranteed workout I could do in my room any time of day or night instead of being limited to when my parents are awake so I don’t disturb them by playing right outside of their bedroom the way my consoles would require. (I’ll have to research Pistol Whip’s campaign mode to see if that could serve the same function.)

And finally Zombies Run and the first of the in-game “races.”

As you can see, the run graphics are exactly the same with just the stats being different. The reason for this is because I’d split up the first “race” mission into two sessions, doing the first part on Monday (starting at roughly 8:45 pm, necessitating a short session due to the impending sunset) and finishing it off on Thursday (starting just before 8, allowing a longer session). Realistically, I should have been able to do the entire episode in one go, but there was the previously mentioned issue of the impending sunset by the time the family was finished with dinner on both occasions.

Pity the sunset meant I couldn’t go later just to avoid the summer heat. But at some point even that reflective vest wouldn’t do anything to add to visibility, and while my eyes are weirdly over-sensitive to the light insofar as discomfort is concerned, there’s still a point where I simply can’t see well enough for safety… and on a stretch of road with a lot of tree cover, that point comes sooner rather than later.

From what I’m reading, the New Canton 10K should be next on the list before I return to the normal episodes for a while, and that one I am definitely going to split up into two sessions regardless of what time of day I start. I just don’t have the endurance as yet to try that distance all in one go; even if I did (thinking of the 15 thousand steps I usually get at work), doing it all at once would translate to less time in the day for other things.

I suppose at some point I should try to estimate how many calories I’m burning using Zombies Run, whether for my outdoor walks or for the bodyweight Homefront workouts.

See, I have the VR Health Institute app on my phone that pairs with a heart rate monitor (I’ve been using the Polar H10 on the grounds that it’s suppose to be compatible with this and Yur alike, though thanks to Quest firmware and my general lack of PC VR I haven’t yet had the opportunity to try a working version of Yur) to track my calorie burn, but that app is only designed with Virtual Reality in mind and I’d kind of like to have an easy way to track all of my workouts in one location… an easy way that doesn’t rely solely on my FitBit, that is, since I did bother to buy the monitor.

Just not sure how accurate VR Health is, or how accurate any other tracker is, for that matter; while I’ve yet to compare it to FitBit (that would require remembering to start a workout on both devices), and even factoring in the inclusion of my weight and heart rate in the calculations, it seems a bit weird that VR Health claims I’m burning about 30 calories for a less-than-five-minutes session in Beat Saber while Oculus’s own (not weight- or HR- related) Move app told me I burned… 3.

(Update: I was looking at the wrong number. Oculus Move has been reporting in the 20’s.)

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