The first week of my 30 day challenge to exercising using the Nintendo Wii is done and I’m feeling pretty good about the whole thing. I’ve lost about seven or eight pounds, but I can’t attribute all that to swinging my arms around while playing video games. I’m also eating better and cutting out the extra calories. And as anyone who has ever dieted will tell you, the first week or two of a new eating pattern almost always results in weight loss of some sort.
Again, I’m not doing this to lose a lot of weight as much as I’m hoping I can raise my general fitness level, get into exercising and improving my health and maybe lose a few pounds in the process.
Some general impressions:
- Wrist Weights Make a Difference: A day ago I tried a little experiment. A few hours after my regular workout with wrist weights I brought up Wii Tennis and played for about 10 minutes. I didn’t get nearly the same workout I did when I was using the wrist weights earlier that day. I’m going to go another week with the weights that I have, but I’m already thinking I might want to increase or add to the weight at some point in the future.
- Wii Sports is the Best Workout Game: At least, it seems to be for the moment. Zelda doesn’t really require much movement except in some combat and Rayman’s Raving Rabbids can give you a quick workout, but most of the really fast moving games are so short that it’s hard to get much of a workout. The exception might be the Rayman dancing games, but only if you make a conscious effort to move your arms with the beat and not just flick your wrist. I don’t have any games right now, but I’m open to suggestions. Wii Play looks promising, but I don’t know if I can afford to keep buying Wii games.
- Don’t loudly proclaim “I love my Wii!” in the office: ‘Nuff said.
Onward to week two!
One Response to “Wii Exercise Experiment – Day 7 – First Week Results”
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pyRAnHa says:
Don’t acceped to much from Wii Play. It’s allready released here in europe for some time and it’s more link of a techdemo for the Wiimote, the a actual game. It shows all the possible movements with your Wiimote in some minigames. But all games are for 1-2 players only. Since Wii Play costs only 10€ extra, if you buy a second Wimote the price is ok, but it’s far away from Wii Sports or other “real games”.
The tank game is a lot of fun and i’m looking forward for a “real” game of this kind.
January 9th, 2007 at 4:50 am