Wii Exercise Experiment – Day 3 – Using Wrist Weights

First, let me state up front that using wrist weights while playing Nintendo Wii is profoundly stupid.

Wrist Weights: For the fat gamer with questionable fashion sense.

Swinging your arms around with extra weight attached to the end is a sure-fire way to throw out an elbow or shoulder or really hurt yourself, someone else or your beloved flat screen TV.

I’m saying this because I’ve read all sorts of stories about “Wii Elbow” and sore muscles and joint injuries from playing Wii Sports too much. While a short 30 minutes of playing the Nintendo Wii as it should be played doesn’t run much risk of injury, I can definitely see how playing 30 minutes of Nintendo Wii with wrist weights CAN lead to injury (other than stabbing someone in the eye with a Wiimote).

It is only the third day of my experiment I can definitely feel the weight pulling against my joints when I play Wii Sports. I feel most of the pull in my elbows. At the end of each workout they are more sore than anything else, which tells me I’m probably overdoing it a bit. I have also noticed that when I’m using the wrist weights my motions have become a good bit slower and more deliberate. I think I’m doing this because I know subconsciously that I could really hurt something.

Do the weights help me burn more calories? It feels like it. I notice myself getting more tired after playing 30 minutes with weights versus playing 30 minutes without weights.

The weights that I’m using are actually ankle weights. They were a bit too big to fit snugly on my wrists, so I had to take out one of the little sand compartments to make them short enough to fit tightly on my wrist. The first day I didn’t have the weights on very tightly and ended up giving myself some strange canvas burns on my wrist from the weights sliding up and down on my arms. Live and learn.

The weights themselves are a little over four pounds a piece. That doesn’t seem like much until you swing them around for a while. They provide enough resistance that I know they’re on without totally wearing my arms down in a matter of minutes. I’ve already thought about putting two sets of weights on one arm to add more resistance in the future. I’m going to wait and see how sore my arms are over the next week or two.

For now I’m just going to stick with my initial weight amounts and keep the ice packs handy.