RESUMEN
PURPOSE: Brief, high-intensity cycling is popular because physiological benefits accrue with a short workout time, but burning pain in the quadriceps is a potential barrier to engaging in this type of exercise. Virtual reality (VR) can temporarily decrease pain, but its effect on muscle pain during high-intensity exercise is unknown. The primary purpose of this experiment was to test whether adding interactive VR (I-VR) to high-intensity cycling could reduce quadriceps pain or improve performance. METHODS: Ninety-four adults who were physically active in their leisure time and age 18 to 29 yr completed three 30-s sprint interval cycling trials at a high resistance (0.085- and 0.075-kg resistance to the flywheel per kilogram body weight for men and women, respectively). In this randomized between-subject experiment, participants cycled while wearing a head-mounted display and viewing either (i) a dynamically changing cityscape perceived as interactively cycling through a virtual city (I-VR group) or (ii) a static picture of the cityscape with instructions to mentally imagine cycling through that city (static VR/motor imagery control group). RESULTS: Sphericity-adjusted 2 × 3 (group-time) ANOVA revealed a significant group-time interaction (F = 4.568; df = 1.499, 133.301; ηp = 0.047, P = 0.021) for pain intensity. With I-VR, pain intensities were 13.3% (mean, 4.60 vs 5.31; d = 0.28) and 11.8% (mean, 5.68 vs 6.44; d = 0.27) lower at sprint trials 2 and 3, respectively. The group-time interaction (P = 0.412) was not significant for total work. CONCLUSION: Compared with a static VR/motor imagery control condition, I-VR during brief, high-intensity, fatigue-inducing leg cycling attenuates quadriceps pain intensity without reducing performance.