The Geek's Guide To Finding Fitness In Front Of The TV: Wii Fit Active Fat Fighting

I'm a thirty-something geek who has been leading an overwhelmingly sedantary lifestyle for decades.

Over the last few years, my coach-potato lifestyle has finally started to catch up with me - gone are the days when I can settle down in front of the TV for a gruelling 8-hour video games-and-crisps session every day without gaining a pound.

The slow but steady ballooning of my belly, and the fact my man boobs are getting to the point where Victoria's Secret will probably be calling and offering me modelling work soon, has finally triggered a reaction - I need to sort this out.

I don't want to be carrying 30lbs plus of unnecessary weight around with me; that violates the key principles of Active Laziness which I learned from the student wizard Victor Tugelbend in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel "Moving Pictures".

To be truly lazy, you need to be efficient - carrying unnecessary weight around all day takes a lot of effort; walking upstairs with saggy, atrophied muscles takes a lot of effort. The Active Lazer doesn't like expending unnecessary effort!

With that in mind, I decided that investing a little effort into getting into reasonable shape would pay for itself pretty quickly, allowing me to laze more optimally in future.

Ok, so I've got myself an objective - do some exercise, with the aim of losing a bit of weight and toning up my World Of Warcraft-slackened muscles. But where to start?

I already do a bit of walking.... its a good, healthy activity, but on its own it isn't really an efficient way to lose weight in terms of time invested doing it - you have to walk a LONG way to burn off the calories present in a Mars bar. About 3 miles in fact, which could easily take 90 minutes at a normal walking pace.

That'd leave me 3 miles from home and in need of a Mars bar to fuel me for the walk back. Ok, so that problem could be solved by walking 1.5 miles away and then back home. But however you slice it, it's still 90 minutes.

Walking fast would cut that time in half, but that would mean I'd end up sweating and out of breath in full view of other human beings, and that's not an option (at least not with my body in its current state). Even then, it would still require spending 45 minutes away from most of my electronics, and as a geek that's about as appealing a prospect as a sharp kick to the kidneys.

Fortunately however, we finally have a geek-friendly solution. No embarassing sweating in front of annoyingly buff gym-goers and no painful separation from my games and gadgets required. It sounds too good to be true, but thanks to the magic of technology it is now possible to exercise, and get a reasonable workout, in the privacy of your own living room. You don't need lots of bulky "home gym" equipment, and better still you actually NEED to be watching your tv the whole time.

We have Nintendo to thank for this near-miraculous state of affairs, as they have single-handedly shattered the idea that video games have to involve sitting still and moving only your thumbs. With the release of their Wii console, with its motion-sensitive controls, Nintendo have provided a way to get people off their butts and combine video games with exercise.

There's a wide range of fitness titles available for the Wii (many of them don't like being labelled as games, but they are. In fact some of them simulate other games, like tennis, so they are doubly gamey)... so many in fact that it can be a little daunting getting started.

I've had a go on a few different Wii fitness titles to see how effective they are, and how well they can help me realise the crazy dream of getting back into the "normal" category on the BMI scale (which admittedly isn't a very reliable scale) and getting up the stairs without stopping for a good wheeze.

The three titles I've been focusing on are Wii Fit Plus, My Fitness Coach and EA Sports Active. Between them, these three games (or "personal fitness packages" as they probably prefer to be called) are going to be helping me get in shape. Who knows, maybe I'll even having a beach-ready "mankini body" in time for summer!

That rather disturbing mental image aside, I'll be comparing these three titles and revealing the strengths and weaknesses of each.

My Fitness Coach:

Pros: Allows you to input and track your activity and various fitness-related stats - you can input your weight, bicep, waist and thigh measurements for example, and the software will graph these for you (it can't weigh or measure you though - you'll have to do that yourself).

It has lots of unlockables (music, outfits, locations etc) to reward you for sticking with it .

The routines include warm-ups and cool-downs, and are well designed.

It allows you to include certain fitness equipment you might already have - hand weights, gym balls, heart rate monitors or a step) . It has 500 exercises and combines these to form suitably varied workouts.

Cons: Needs a lot of space in front of the TV... if your room is small, you'll struggle with this one.

It comes across as a customiseable workout DVD more than a truly interactive fitness aid sometimes , although it does ask for your feedback on how intense you found the routine, and based on your answers it will step things up or down for you next time to make sure you are getting a suitably intense, but not over-the-top, workout. Some people will find this style a plus rather than a negative - not having to carry a Wii controller while you exercise does free you up and makes movements more natural, but prevents the Wii having any way to measure your actual performance in the workout.

Some of the exercises require you to roll around in the floor, which can be uncomfortable if you don't have a room full of yoga mats.

The most significant problem with My Fitness Coach for me is that it doesn't detect if you're actually doing the workout (let alone doing it correctly), so you can slack off as much as you like (and the on-screen trainer will carry on praising your performance!). For me, this is a fatal flaw - if it gives me such as easy escape route, I know I'll end up taking it. For this reason alone, My Fitness Coach is the weakest of the three titles for me, but if feedback on your actual performance isn't important to you, you may find you get more out of this one than I did.

Wii Fit Plus:

Nintendo's own fitness offering, which you can get bundled with the Wii Balance Board. I haven't tried the original Wii Fit (non-Plus), but from what I've read, it had some major flaws, many of which have been fixed in the new Plus version. Wii Fit Plus allows you to create your own custom workout routine, or you can pick from a number of built in ones.

Wii Fit Plus contains a lot of fun games as well as more conventional workouts, being split between various "proper" exercises presented by a virtual personal trainer (mainly yoga-based, but also some muscle-focused exercises) and "silly" exercises featuring your Miis which cover things from hula-hooping on the balance board to "juggling" whilst walking on a large ball in a virtual big-top.

Wii Fit Plus has a more "Eastern" exercise philosophy behind it, which manifests in the emphasis on balance, grace and rythmn rather than the more Western "pumping iron" philosophy. It also includes a bit of mind / body stuff in some of the games (like having to perform a movement only if the number displayed is less than 7, or bend in the right directions to light up on screen numbers to make them add up to 10, or my favourite - go jogging around Wii Fit's "Wuhu Island" and then get tested on various things you should have spotted on the way around).

Pros: A great range of fun games as well as interesting workout routines.

It uses the balance board to weigh you, and charts your weight loss (or gain) on a graph, which is a great motivator and helps show how you're getting on. It also allows you to input your waist measurement (which you'll have to measure youtself) and it can then chart that for you too (waist size is considered by many to be a more accurate way to track improving fitness than BMI).

It also tracks your performance, so you can't slack off - games like hula hoop use the balance board to measure how many gyrations you've performed, and the jogging exercises use the Wii remote to measure your movement to some extent. Many of the yoga poses use the balance board to measure your centre of gravity during the movement, and feedback is then given based on that.

Some of the games really do get you out of breath - especially the jogging ones. There's even a free-jogging mode where you can switch over to normal tv and watch that while the Wii remote keeps you audibly informed about your progress and time remaining.

If you have a Stepper, you can (unofficially) use this for the jogging games rather than just jogging on the spot - you keep the Wii remote in your pocket, so the game can track your progress and measure the intensity of your jogging. I found jogging much more comfortable (and exhausting) using the Stepper than just jogging on the spot on the floor (which made certain parts of my feet quite sore even with running shoes on).

It has a calendar to track your progress, and gives you a stamp for every day you complete the "body test" (which is essentially a simple weigh-in, with a couple of basic balance tests thrown in).

Cons:

Some of the health tips it throws out seem pseudoscientific at best (especially the "Wii Fit Age" it gives you every time you take the fully body test), and its heavy reliance on BMI as the main indicator of progress probably isn't the most accurate way to do things.

A lot of the games and workouts are focused on balance and rhythmn, and won't help you burn calories intensively or strengthen muscles. There's very few upper-body strength-boosting exercises (other than a few push-up variants using the balance board).

The personal trainers (choice of two - male or female) only seem to have a handful of lines, so you'll hear the same few things repeatedly, which can become annoying.

Overall, Wii Fit Plus is a great program, and by far the best of the three in terms of having fun (the arm-flapping game which features your Mii flying around in a chicken suit is a prime example). Its focus on balance over fat-burning means it isn't the best weight-loss aid of the three though - other than the jogging it rarely gets me properly out of breath. Its ability to keep track of your weight is a great motivator, and I like having this integrated through the balance board rather than having to weigh myself elsewhere and enter the details myself.

EA Sports Active:

This one comes with two accessories - a leg strap and a resistance band. For many of the exercises, you put the nunchuck in a special pouch on the front of the leg strap, allowing the game to track the movement and position of your leg.

Pros:

The innovative leg-strap allows this game to measure your performance more accurately than any other fitness software I've seen on Wii - while it isn't 100% accurate, it allows the game to give you good feedback about how you're doing, and if you're making mistakes it can tell you what you're doing wrong and how to correct it. It also keeps an approximate live count of calories burned (which seems to err somewhat on the optimistic side) on screen while you exercise.

The game includes videos of real instructor actually doing all the exercises, complete with leg strap and Wii remote, and these videos are very helpful. If you find yourself unsure of what to do, you can just press the minus button on the Wii remote and watch a short video clip that explains things clearly, and shows you exactly what movements to make.

The resistance band allows all kinds of resistance-based muscle exercises that the other games can't offer, and is used for a wide variety of things from bicep curls to bent over rows.

The game includes a huge number of built-in workouts, designed to give you a balanced workout focused on a specific area (such as cardio, or upper body). It also allows you to create your own workouts.

Like Wii Fit, it includes a calendar to track your progress. It gives you a score and a medal (gold, silver or bronze) for each day when you complete all the check boxes on your daily journal (which requires you to complete a workout, and fill in two simple surveys detailing things like what activities you've been doing outside of the game and how many portions of vegetables you've been eating).

It includes a range of trophies that you earn by meeting the required criteria (such as burning a total of 10,000 calories, or completing a certain number of workouts). It also includes goals, weekly and monthly, and shows your progress towards these, which can be a great motivator.

As well as standard exercises like squats, lunges, bicep curls etc, it includes some sport-based modes, based on boxing (but against targets, not other boxers), baseball and inline skating. It even has some dance-based workouts that will have you waving your Wii remote around like something out of Saturday Night Fever.

It doesn't require the balance board, but if you have one it incorporates it into the workouts.

Of all the fitness games I've looked at, this one really leaves me exhausted and feeling like I've had a "proper" all-over workout. I've also noticed by fitness improve since I started using this one - the first time I did the basic 30 minute workout I was completely exhausted and could barely complete it. After using it for a couple of weeks, I can complete the same workout much more easily (I don't get out of breath quite so embarassingly quickly as I did at first). I've also noticed my legs and arms have become a bit firmer and my general energy levels have increased. I didn't get this noticeable an improvement in my fitness in over a month of using Wii Fit Plus on its own, although both have helped me lose weight.

Cons:

It doesn't track your weight or other stats.

In some of the exercises its easy to get caught up in the nunchuk cable.

The resistance band supplied with the game really isn't very resistant at all (even if you fold it over itself as suggested in the manual), although that isn't a major problem as you can pick up a better one very cheaply from any fitness store.

Overall, I found EA Sports Active to be a clear winner in terms of getting my heart rate up, burning calories and generally improving my fitness.

At the moment, I find myself using EA Sports Active for my main workouts, and using Wii Fit Plus mainly for graphing my weight and for its fun jogging modes.

In January 2010 I've lost 12lbs so far, by combining Wii-based exercising and cutting down on junk food, and I do feel a bit fitter than I did before. And all without having to venture away from my tv :)