"Hello and welcome to Body Break; with Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod!"This was a phrase I hadn't heard in a very long time until the other night when we were watching a rerun of Deal or No Deal. The first thing I noticed was that both Hal and Joanne, who are both familiar to me from birth thanks to growing up in a town with no cable, look exactly the same now as they did when I was a kid. And if you think it's because it was an old episode, think again! They spent most of the 90 second clip talking about the Wii!! If you look closely at the photo, you can see a very fuzzy Joanne standing in front of a very fuzzy Wii game screen.
The episode focused on using games to increase your physical activity. Maybe it's just me, but I was surprised to see them touting the Wii as a way of getting active. I have played Wii tennis and Wii boxing before and while both can definitely get the heart rate up, it is by no means a replacement for a good, old fashioned workout. (On a side note, divorce rates would be much lower if all married couples played Wii boxing. Seriously. Think about it - you are pissed with your partner for whatever reason... work out that frustration by kicking the crap out of him/her on screen instead of arguing. I should be a therapist! Anyway, I digress.)
So do I agree with Hal and Joanne about the use of the Wii to get active? Like I said, it's by no means a replacement for lifting weights, a bike ride, or playing soccer, but in a society where both childhood and adult obesity rates are skyrocketing I guess we have to take whatever improvement we can get.
Keep fit and have fun!
2 comments:
They say that all that's needed to consider yourself active is 30 second bursts of activity to get your heart rate raised for a half an hour to 45 minutes. So, essentially the Wii could easily help several people get fit. I find it interesting that several fitness professionals I know (my trainer) have expressed interest in trying it out on some of their clients to see how good of a workout it could actually be.
I agree though, playing the Wii all the time is not a good substitute for actually getting out and exercising. I think if used in conjunction with regular real life physical exercise it would be a great tool in getting today's youth to be more active. But so far, the people I've seen playing the Wii Fit games are actually already active people who just wanted to do something active inside the house and not just out! So good for those people.
It's a good concept at the very least, right? lol
I've got the Wii Fit and it actually is quite a workout. There's a lot of different activities on it. I'm trying to spend about an hour each weekday on it.
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