Online Group-exercises for Older Adults of Different Physical Abilities
This addresses the issue of social isolation and low physical activity in older adults, particularly those with limited gym access, but it is incremental as it applies existing virtual environment concepts to a specific demographic.
The paper tackled the problem of physical and social inactivity among older adults by designing and validating Gymcentral, a virtual fitness environment that enables personalized exercises from home with remote groups and coach supervision, resulting in reported feasibility and effectiveness from an intervention study in Trento, Italy.
In this paper we describe the design and validation of a virtual fitness environment aiming at keeping older adults physically and socially active. We target particularly older adults who are socially more isolated, physically less active, and with less chances of training in a gym. The virtual fitness environment, namely Gymcentral, was designed to enable and motivate older adults to follow personalised exercises from home, with a (heterogeneous) group of remote friends and under the remote supervision of a Coach. We take the training activity as an opportunity to create social interactions, by complementing training features with social instruments. Finally, we report on the feasibility and effectiveness of the virtual environment, as well as its effects on the usage and social interactions, from an intervention study in Trento, Italy