Wii Fitness Game Reviews 3

Review of Fit in Six for Wii

On May 23, 2011 2:06 pm, by steve
Fit In Six by
Platform: Wii
Rated:E
2 of 5 stars – “Comprehensive set of exercises, but otherwise not a stellar offering from Ubisoft mainly due to lack of motion tracking.”
by ,
Written on May 23, 2011

Ubisoft has had an interesting history with exercise video games.

The first exercise game they released, My Fitness Coach, was a true pioneer in exergaming. Many of its features, while considered rudimentary today, were ground breaking things that had never been done before. It was a best-seller, for good reason. In many ways it set the foundation for the introduction of Wii Fit and the huge interest in exergaming to follow.

After this, Ubisoft came out with a long list of duds. My Fitness Coach 2 was a decent title, but horribly marketed. Your Shape with Jenny McCarthy was a disaster (Ubisoft somewhat redeemed itself by developing Your Shape: Fitness Evolved for the Xbox Kinect, which more or less realizes the dream begun with the original Your Shape). Ironically, Ubisoft’s greatest success in exergaming was not an exercise game at all. It was Just Dance, which got people shaking their booties and doing the mashed potato all over the country.

Fit in Six is Ubisoft’s newest entry into the “pure exercise gaming” world.

You start out the game by inputting your name, height, weight, and sex. There doesn’t seem to be an option for a balance board to measure your weight. One thing I found very, very annoying was that in order to input my age and weight I had to click…and click…and click…and click the arrow buttons (the default age is 25 and the default weight is 132, let’s just say I’m not close to either of those). Not a happy start.

The next screen says “Find Your Balance” and then shows a green bar, a blue bar, a lot of numbers, and five colored icons on the bottom of the screen. What I found ridiculous about this is that there is no kind of explanation or even a help screen about what this means. The icons and colors are hardly intuitive. It would have helped if they’d simply put a hover-over to explain what this all means and how I’d be using this in the game. Again, not a promising start.

On the next screen, I can choose my goal. They are:

  • Healthy Back (8 mins)
  • Better Foot Stability (7 mins)
  • Core Centering (7 mins)
  • Core Conditioning (5 mins)
  • Flat Belly (5 mins)
  • Easy Lifting (9 mins)
  • As Quick as a Flash (9 mins)
  • Pure Power Kicking (9 mins)
  • Rocking Abs (8 mins)
  • Slim Waist (8 mins)
  • Stretch Your Back (9 mins)
  • Superset Workout (9 mins)
You start the workout, and it basically consists of a string of standard exercise routines (such as stretches, crunches, and so on).
The on-screen trainer is a drawn figure that’s more cartoony than photorealistic, something I’ve grown used to with the Wii’s limited graphics. The trainer shows you the move to do on-screen. While the animation of the trainer is pretty accurate in demonstrating the technique to you, bottom line, it takes a lot of time to figure out how to do the “mirror” version. I would have liked to see the ability to examine and rotate the character’s motions more carefully (which existed even on last-generation Jillian Michaels games).
Interestingly, Ubisoft does let you hook up a USB Webcam (such as the one that came with Your Shape) to the Wii. But all this does is show a video of yourself in the corner of the screen. I didn’t find this useful in the least, in fact I found it distracting (if they wanted to make it more useful, they would have at least made it a split screen and made your video image the exact same size as the on-screen trainer’s).  There is no attempt at doing any kind of motion tracking with the camera, probably a good decision after horrific attempts to do so with games like Your Shape and Racquet Sports.
Not only is there no motion tracking with the camera, the game doesn’t even attempt to use the Wii controls at all to check accuracy or progress. This makes it just like an exercise video. To be honest, I’m torn as to whether this was a good idea. On the one hand, it’s nice not to have to deal with the kinds of inaccuracies from Ubisoft’s previous exercise games (which were fraught with false positives and the on-screen trainer shouting platitudes to you even when you don’t do the exercise right). It seems like they’ve given up trying to figure out motion controls, which is a shame.
As with all video games, it’s tough to do exercises on the floor and watch the screen at the same time. To some extent, you need to do the exercises over and over until you memorize them. The voice prompts of the on-screen trainer are pretty good, telling you when to move, when to breathe, when to relax, and what parts should be moving.
At the end of each workout, you can rate them. There’s no online integration or anything–rating an exercise just lets you keep track of which exercises you like.
One thing that Fit In Six does very comprehensively is offer “Classes”. Again, these are basically basic exercise routines strung together to form a “fitness class” the kind you might find in a gym. Here’s a list of all the classes you can choose from:
Upper Body
  • Sculpted Back (20 mins)
  • Flexible Upper Back (13 mins)
  • Open Chest (15 mins)
  • Sexy Shoulders (9 mins)
  • Sexy Shoulders Pro (14 mins)
  • Strong Triceps (9 mins)
  • Strong Triceps Pro (12 mins)
Core Body
  • Healthy Back (8 mins)
  • Healthy Back Pro (22 mins)
  • Flat Belly (5 mins)
  • Six Pack Starter (10 mins)
  • Six Pack Pro (19 mins)
  • Slim Waist (8 mins)
  • Slim Waist Pro (13 mins)
  • Strong Back (10 mins)
  • Strong Back Pro (21 mins)
Lower Body
  • Beach Workout (21 mins)
  • Beach Workout Pro (26 mins)
  • Shapely Hips (17 mins)
  • Head to Toe Sculpting (30 mins)
  • Glutes Lifting (12 mins)
  • No Muscle Untouched (29 mins)
  • Toned Waist (15 mins)
  • Tight Tush (6 mins)
  • Tight Tush Pro (15 mins)
Fit For Life
  • Baby Carriage (13 mins)
  • Better Foot Stability (7 mins)
  • Carry Heavy Tote Bags (11 mins)
  • Climb Stairs Like a Teen (10 mins)
  • Easy Sit Up and Down (13 mins)
  • Easy Lifting (9 mins)
  • As Quick as a Flash (9 mins)
  • Standing Office Workout (13 mins)
  • Stiletto Workout (10 mins)
Cardio
  • Cardio Warm-up 1 (3 mins)
  • Cardio Warm up 2 (4 mins)
  • Cardio Warm up 3 (5 mins)
  • Fat Burning (11 mins)
  • Fat Burning Pro (20 mins)
  • Fit for Soccer (5 mins)
  • Fit for Soccer Pro (15 mins)
  • Marathon Master (7 mins)
  • Marathon Master Pro (13 mins)

Boot Camp
  • Boot Camp Warm Up 1 (4 mins)
  • Boot Camp Warm Up 2 (4 mins)
  • Boot Camp Warm up 3 (3 mins)
  • Core Conditioning (5 mins)
  • Core Conditioning Pro (12 mins)
  • Intense Arm Workout (12 mins)
  • Power Pushup (11 mins)
  • Powerful Torso Pro (12 mins)
  • Rocking Abs (8 mins)
Kick Boxing
  • Action Circuit (12 mins)
  • Fight and Defend (9 mins)
  • Burning Rist (10 mins)
  • Kickboxing Basics (9 mins)
  • Kickboxing Warm Up 1 (3 mins)
  • Kickboxing Warm Up 2 (5 mins)
  • Kickboxing Warm up 3 (6 mins)
  • Pure Power Kicking (9 mins)
  • Pure Power Punching (9 mins)
Cardio Dance
  • Challenge Your Heart Rate (14 mins)
  • Cardio Dance Basics (11 mins)
  • Energy Empowerment (18 mins)
  • Energy Burner (15 mins)
  • Cardio Dance Challenge (16 mins)
  • Cardio Dance Warm Up 1 (2 mins)
  • Cardio Dance Warm Up 2 (3 mins)
  • Cardio Dance Warm Up 3 (3 mins)
  • Lust for Life (12 mins)
  • Willpower Activator (14 mins)
Pilates
  • Balanced Body (26 mins)
  • Core Centering (7 mins)
  • Energy Flow (12 mins)
  • Improved Flexibility (10 mins)
  • Pilates Complete (35 mins)
  • Pilates Power (25 mins)
  • Strong Core Pro (19 mins)
  • Stretch Your Back (9 mins)
Latin Dance
  • Back to Holiday (12 mins)
  • Caribbean Device (9 mins)
  • Hot Summer (16 mins)
  • Latin Dance Party (20 mins)
  • Latin Dance Warm Up 1 (3 mins)
  • Latin Dance Warm Up 2 (3 mins)
  • Latin Dance Warm Up 3 (5 mins)
  • Latin Love (13 mins)
  • Mambo Night (12 mins)
  • Rhythm ‘N’ Dance (10 mins)

Dance Moves
  • Session 1: Skate (7 mins)
  • Session 2: Stop (5 mins)
  • Session 3: Side ‘N’ Cross Jump (6 mins)
  • Session 4: Two-Step (6 mins)
  • Session 5: Cross Walk (5 mins)
  • Session 6: Set Up ‘N’ Wiper (7 mins)
  • Session 7: Skate ‘N’ Stomp (8 mins)
  • Session 8: Jumping Steps (7 mins)
  • Session 9: Flying Steps (7 mins)
  • Session 10: Compilation (13 mins)

There’s also a section called “Challenges”, which lets you choose from balance, cardio, core body, flexibility, lower body, upper body (it took me a while to realize that these are the “In Six” referred to in the game’s title).
Again, without motion tracking, the Challenges were a bit weak. The game presents a challenge to you, and it’s up to you to do it and to tell the system whether you did it or not. So you’re basically on the “honor system”.

Overall Fit In Six has an impressive, almost staggering number of workout routines. They’re demonstrated pretty effectively by the on-screen trainer. If you’re just looking for a glorified exercise video that has a comprehensive set of workouts for you to try, this is not a bad choice for you.
The problem is that Fit In Six adds absolutely nothing new to the world of Wii exercise games. In fact, it seems to borrow liberally from other games. The Latin dance exercises seems a lot like Zumba Fitness. The fact that individual exercises that can be put together are around 7-13 minutes seems to borrow from 10 Minute Solutions. Even the dance routines seem reminiscent of Ubisoft’s own Gold’s Gym Dance Workout.
The worst thing Ubisoft did, of course, is remove motion tracking altogether from a Wii game. Companies like EA Sports have successfully proven that effective motion tracking can be done, but Ubisoft almost seems to have given up. I do believe that there will be more Wii games that push the platform forward in fitness gaming. This is not one of them.
Rating: 2 of 5 stars.
Wii Fitness Game Reviews 1

Review of Top Spin 4 for Wii

On May 16, 2011 12:46 am, by steve

In fairness to 2K Sports, Top Spin 4 for the Wii isn’t an “exercise game” per se, so it’s a little hard to compare it to workout games like EA Sports Active or The Biggest Loser.
One thing the things I’ve been looking for a very long time is a tennis game that really starts to simulate what it’s like to play real tennis. Early games like Wii Sports Tennis and Virtua Tennis were just a wag-fests, of course. When EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis came out, that was a much more realistic simulation, and it came a little closer to simulating real tennis moves. I played that game so much that I ended up getting tendonitis (which thankfully cleared up after a few weeks).
Top Spin 4 can be considered in the class of “third generation tennis game”. The graphics are the most realistic they’ve ever been on the Wii, and the simulations of tennis shots are very realistic.
As far as its value as an “exercise game”, it seems that 2K Sports has opted to focus less on that, and more on just building something between realistic tennis game and an old controller-based tennis game.
Running on the court is done through use of the Wii nunchuk joystick. And aiming your shot is not done by angling your arm, but rather by quickly moving the nunchuk joystick with your thumb.
Specialized shots like drop shots and lobs are done with buttons. There are only three strokes which are done by making sweeping motions with the Wii remote–and even those are not terribly reliable.
One extremely bizarre thing you’re asked to do is to “hold your remote like a real tennis racket”, with the buttons to the side. Not only does this make pressing the buttons awkward, it doesn’t seem to help the accuracy of the shot. You can have some fun with the beginner or intermediate levels, but the advanced level becomes an exercise in frustration.
There are some nice touches for tennis fans. All of the major tennis stars have licensed their name and images to 2K Sports, and their distinctive shots and skills are clear. You can hire coaches and buy tennis gear with points you earn. And you can play on some of the world’s greatest clay, grass, and hard courts. You can define the number of sets and matches to play, or even start the game on a tiebreak.
If you’re an avid tennis fan and love the simulation aspect of the game, you can get some decent exercise by adding on Riiflex Weights. But otherwise, this is one you can pass on.
3 of 5 stars.
Wii Fitness Game Reviews 1

Review of Michael Jackson: The Experience for the Wii

On May 01, 2011 10:40 pm, by steve

Back in November 2010, Ubisoft released a game called Michael Jackson The Experience for the Wii. I bought my copy back then, but since I’ve been so engrossed in my EA Sports Active-ing, I let this one kind of sit on the shelf. Since then, it’s gotten an impressive 457 (and counting) reviews on Amazon. And unlike with previous Ubisoft games like Your Shape, where Ubisoft shills left laughably obvious fake glowing reviews for that disaster of a game, this time most of the reviews actually seem legitimate. Hopefully Ubisoft is finally getting the message that it’s a lot more efficient to actually give people good quality stuff rather than fooling them into buying junk.

Whatever you think of Michael Jackson’s life and death and the tabloid nonsense that surrounded him all his life, one thing was very clear. The man had a lot of talent, from his childhood to his last days on earth. And his impact on music and the music business was tremendous.

The simplest way to describe Michael Jackson The Experience is that it’s like Just Dance 2, but made up completely of Michael Jackson’s songs. When I heard that Ubisoft was coming out with this game, I rolled my eyes. Was this another attempt at just taking the wildly successful Just Dance series and beating it into the ground by flooding the market with imitation after imitation.

After playing the game a few times, I realize that this is much, much more than simply another variation of Just Dance. Yes, it works like Just Dance in that you hold a single Wii remote in your right hand and mimic the moves of a dancer on-screen. And thankfully, the accuracy is on par with Just Dance 2 (as I wrote in my review of that game, while the accuracy is still not perfect, if you practice the moves enough you’ll find your score gets better).

But this title adds a few more things that Just Dance 2 nor any of its other sequels did not have.

1) There’s a menu option called “Dance School”. These are videos of actual choreographers and dance instructors who have actually work withed Michael Jackson himself. They have an in-depth knowledge of Michael Jackson’s signature moves, and they do an excellent job of breaking them down for you. Plus, they even give advice on proper conditioning and stretching to make those moves. You start out with simple tutorial videos, but as you dance more and more, different lessons are “unlocked” for you. The more advanced lessons actually go through some of Michael Jackson’s actual dance routines in his videos and tell you exactly how to do them.

2) Of course, the bulk of the game is to, no pun intended, “Just Dance”. Unlike the Dance on Broadway title, the dance moves you see here aren’t dumbed down interpretations of Michael Jackson songs–they’re the actual choreographed moves from the music videos. You can get a decent score just by matching the movements of your right hand, but for the full experience (and the best score), you need to learn the actual choreographed routine. The best way to do this is to play the game over and over again and each time focus on a different body part (for example, focusing on arm movements first, leg movements second, and putting them all together). Or, like I said, most of the most popular routines are broken down in the Dance School videos.

Trying out a few of these gave me a newfound appreciation for how athleticly conditioned Michael Jackson must have been. Even when I matched the movements only 50-70%, I was still out of breath. Each dance is categorized by difficulty (easy, medium, hard). One very cool feature of the game is that for some songs, you can play as Michael Jackson or as a backup dancer, each with varying degrees of difficulty. The game also supports multiplayer, so on some songs multiple people can dance at once to simulate your own Michael Jackson video!

Here are a list of the tracks on the game:

  • Working’ Day And Night (Off The Wall – 1979)
  • Beat It (Thriller – 1982)
  • Billie Jean (Thriller – 1982)
  • The Girl Is Mine (Thriller – 1982)
  • Thriller (Thriller – 1982)
  • Wanna Be Startin’ Something (Thriller – 1982)
  • Bad (Bad – 1987)
  • Dirty Diana (Bad – 1987)
  • Leave Me Alone (Bad – 1987)
  • Smooth Criminal (Bad – 1987)
  • Speed Demon (Bad – 1987)
  • Street Walker (Bad Special Edition – 2001)
  • The Way You Make Me Feel (Bad – 1987)
  • Black Or White (Dangerous – 1991)
    Heal the World (Dangerous – 1991)
  • In the Closet (Dangerous – 1991)
  • Remember The Time (Dangerous – 1991)
  • Who is It (Dangerous – 1991)
  • Will You Be There (Dangerous – 1991)
  • Earth Song (History – 1995)
  • They Don’t Care About Us (History – 1995)
  • Ghosts (Blood on the Dance Floor – 1997)
  • Money (Blood on the Dance Floor – 1997)
  • Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough (Off the Wall – 1979)
  • Rock With You (Off The Wall – 1979)
  • Sunset Driver (Ultimate Collection – 2004)

Overall, Michael Jackson The Experience is a great game which you can add to your workout regimen–if you’ve always wanted to dance like Michael did in his music videos, now’s your chance! And the great thing about it, after you’ve learned all the moves, they’re yours to keep.

4.5 of 5 stars.

Nutwiisystem Information 1

And we’re back!

On May 01, 2011 9:54 pm, by steve

Hey everyone,

To my shock, it’s been over a month since I last posted. Where I last left off, I had a small number of exercise dates to go with EA Sports Active 2, and then I got the flu, followed by a nasty cough. I eventually recovered from that, but then things got busy at work. And then spring came, and I started riding my bike. And then I rode into a pothole and flipped over, getting bumps and bruises and lots of soreness and two skinned knees (thanks Queens, NY) which meant weeks before I could exercise again.

I guess in some ironic way, it’s fitting that I write a diet and exercise blog and fell off the wagon. Well, here I am climbing on again. In the coming weeks I’ll be finishing what I started with EA Sports Active 2 (albeit a month and change late), and I’ll be figuring out what Wii workout game to tackle for the next round.

In addition, I’ll be resuming my review of Wii exercise games. There haven’t been much of late, but I have been sitting on EA Sports NFL Training Camp and Michael Jackson: The Experience for a while, so I’ll have my usual in-depth reviews of those. In addition, the games Fit in Six and ExerBeat have been or will shortly be released, so I’ll be reviewing those as well.

I haven’t logged in to our group’s EA Sports Active account in a while, I hope the rest of the team has been a bit more active than I have been? I start again now 🙂

Addendum as of 5/16/11: wouldn’t you know it, but days after I typed this, my scraped knee got infected and turned into bursitis. Thank God, I’m okay. But it was a painful time when even bending my knee was excruciatingly painful. After some antibiotics the swelling has gone down, but it pushed back my exercise routine yet a few more weeks 🙁

Nutwiisystem Information 1

Cough Cough…Should You Exercise with the Flu?

On Mar 17, 2011 5:28 pm, by steve

So, for those of you who have been doing the math, this week was to have been my ninth week in my EA Sports Active 2 9-week workout. I have been fastidiously keeping to the Monday-Tuesday-Thursday-Friday schedule set by EA Sports Active 2, even to the point of doing double workouts on weekend days to make up for missed workouts and, as you’ve seen, taking my Wii with me to all parts of the country when travelling.

Well, last Friday I had that “oh, no, I’m coming down with something” feeling. Sure enough, by Sunday I was in bed with a big fever, body aches, and chills.

Those three remaining workouts (Friday, Monday, and Tuesday) were almost mocking me. I thought to myself…should I just buck it up and make it through those workouts? Hey, maybe sweating will even help my body fight the infection and clear my fever faster, right?

After looking it up online, the answer was clear.  It’s a bad, bad idea to work out with the flu. While working out when you’re healthy can help your body build up its immune system, once you get the flu, it’s time to stop and let your body do its thing without getting in its way. Trying to exercise in the middle of an illness may make you sweat more, but it’ll also weaken your body’s ability to fight what’s going on inside it, and may dehydrate you to boot, at a time when your body needs hydration (there’s a reason everyone always tells you “drink plenty of liquids”).

Happily, as of this writing (Thursday), the fever has passed, although now I’m stuck with a bad bronchial infection. So I’ll be taking it easy for a little while.

The one thing I do NOT know is, will EA Sports Active 2 let me pick up where I left off, let me finish the last three workouts, and “count it” as a completed program? Or will it tell me “tough luck…the last 8 1/2 weeks of work don’t count and you’ll have to start all over again?

We shall see when I’m ready to start exercising again (hopefully in a week or so). In a meantime, just repeating a plea to the developers of EA Sports Active 2: PLEASE let us adjust the individual days on our own workout schedules once they’re set!

In other news, I noticed that our NutWiiSys group on EA Sports Active has just surpassed a total distance of 115 miles run. Way to go, team! 🙂

Nutwiisystem Information 6

Replacement Resistance Bands for EA Sports Active 2

On Feb 16, 2011 12:21 am, by steve

UPDATED 7/25/11

My original title to this post was going to be “my workout yesterday was a snap!” But I figured I’d go with a more direct title.

I’ve been using the same resistance band since I first opened my original EA Sports Active box in 2009. Yesterday while doing my workout on EA Sports Active 2, the inevitable happened–it snapped right in my face. (EA Sports can rest assured I won’t be pressing charges–happily, the resistance band was so flimsy in the first place it could not possibly have inflicted damage. Plus, the thing had been fraying for a long time, so out of sheer curiosity I kept using it until it finally snapped).

Broken EA Sports Resistance Band

If you read my original post, you’ll note how flimsy I felt the band was. Happily, the one that was included in EA Sports Active 2 (the green one) is a little sturdier. I decided to refer back to my original post for instructions on how to assemble the EA Sports resistance bands (while the EA Sports Active instructions were confusing, I can’t even find instructions in EA Sports Active 2 on how to do it!)

Green resistance band

EA Sports doesn’t sell resistance bands unless you buy them when buying a second set of sensors. A great (and cheap) set of replacement bands from Psyclone Games is available at Amazon. Their Wii Resistance Bands come in three sizes and have pretty good reviews on Amazon. What’s unique about these versus other similar bands is that the straps are wider, giving you room to hold your Wii remote and nunchuk. At less than $10 for three bands, the price is certainly right.

For the ultimate replacement for EA Sports Resistance bands, consider these well-reviewed Bodylastics Resistance Bands with 254 pounds of resistance bands.

These are “industrial strength” resistance bands which come in varying degrees of tension, meaning that depending on how you’re feeling any given day you can adjust the amount of the weight you use each day.

With the flimsy EA Sports resistance band, they tell you to “increase the amount of the band under your feet to increase the tension, which is not the best technique, because you end up stretching the band more than it was designed to be stretched).

The nice thing about these is that you’re not limited to using them with EA Sports Active–you can use them to work out anywhere, anytime (the Bodylastics bands come with a book of ideas).

Nutwiisystem Information 6

Two Players on EA Sports Active 2: Exercising with a Friend

On Feb 12, 2011 10:34 pm, by steve

Today, I hit my halfway mark on my 9-week fitness program with EA Sports Active 2. Interestingly, the workouts are getting more intense now. When I only had to do 180 “footfires” before, now I have to do 250. Who knows what’ll happen on the ninth week–I may be “foot firing” for hours!

Have been meaning to write about one of the pretty cool features of EA Sports Active 2: the ability to work out with a friend.

I had a chance to talk with one of the product managers of NFL Training Camp for Wii a few months ago (I still haven’t written a formal review of that game, but it’s a lot along the lines of EA Sports Active 2). He told me that when they interviewed NFL players to ask them what motivated them the most, most of them gave one reply: competition.

With other Wii fitness games, sometimes I stop because the games get a little tedious. But the ability to add a second player to EA Sports Active 2 really expands how fun this game can be.

To get started with two players on EA Sports Active, you need a second set of controllers. You can get these in one of two ways: by purchasing extra controllers from EA Sports directly, or by purchasing EA Sports Active NFL Training Camp. Specifically, you will need three things: the arm band, the leg band, and the wireless USB receiver dongle that communicates with the controllers.

Once a set of controllers are associated with a given player, they remain that way (in other words, player 1 will always use one set of controllers, player 2 will always use a second set). You need to be very careful when setting up the controllers, as if you do thing in the wrong order you can confuse the system.

If you do end up finding that one or both controller are not recognized, you’ll need to reset them. Here’s how I did it:

1) Unplug all the USB receivers from the Wii and turn the Wii off. Make sure all controllers are off.

2) Plug in one USB receiver, turn the Wii on, and start up EA Sports Active 2. Open up one of the profiles.

3) Go to Help and Settings. Click “Settings” and then “Rebind Peripherals”. You’ll be walked through a simple process. First, you’ll hold down the power button on the arm band to associate it with your profile. Then, you’ll do the same with the  leg band. Make sure you turn on only one arm band and leg band.

4) Repeat steps 1 through 3, this time plugging in the other USB receiver and choosing another profile.

5) Now, each USB receiver is associated with a respective player. Plug in both receivers, and you’re good to go.

For some reason, the nine-week workout program doesn’t support with two players–that you need to do alone. But any individual workout (or custom program you put together) can be played with two. Here’s my girlfriend Lisa and me competing in a number of sports activities.

As you can see, the calculation of calories burned is different depending on the player (yes, I weigh a LOT more than she does).

The “winner” of the competition is not so much who runs faster or is stronger, but who does the  exercises most accurately and efficiently. Some of the games get downright competitive. It’s a great way for couples, friends, or family members to get a great workout together.

If there’s going to be an EA Sports Active 3, I would hope that they could figure out a way to introduce more “head to head” type competition and more interactivity. But for now, this is probably the best multi-player exercise title out there.

Nutwiisystem Information

And the Nutrisystem begins…again.

On Feb 05, 2011 2:41 pm, by steve

So, I returned home to New York yesterday from Florida. Thus endeth the string of business trips to warm, temperate climates.

Now, over the last week, I’ve been saying that I was going to start the Nutrisystem. So it became a running gag that each meal I had was going to be the “next to last meal before the diet starts”. There was that breakfast in the Holiday Inn Express in Scottsdale I told you about. And the gourmet lunch at the resort in Florida. And the burger and fries at Darryl Strawberry’s Sports Grill. You get the idea.

Well, today the diet officially begins…again (it’s been almost 2 years since the last time I tried this diet). As I mentioned, prior to my trips I totally cleared out my fridge except for the Nutrisystem shipments that came in a few weeks ago.

So today for breakfast, I had this:

Nutrisystem Pancakes

For lunch, I had the “meatball parmesian sub”.

Nutrisystem Meatball Parm Sub

For dinner, I had the stuffed shells (also a delicious-but-small entree from their frozen collection) and I also enjoyed a coconut almond bar and crunchy nacho crisps for my “snack” and “dessert”.

A far cry from the sumptuous meals on Marie Osmond’s infomercials, eh?

Both of these are from Nutrisystem’s frozen foods, which are a standard option in the plan nowadays. The frozen foods taste much better than their non-frozen foods, but the portions are much smaller. I did supplement my meals with a banana and apples (I bought a huge bag of apples and a huge bag of oranges to prepare for the diet–with Nutrisystem, you are supposed to supplement their meals with fruits and veggies).

It was a big contrast to the all-you can eat buffets in Florida I was enjoying only a short time ago. Although after a week of pigging out, it actually feels kind of good to “reset” my body again.

I don’t plan on staying on Nutrisystem forever, and I won’t make the mistake again of forcing myself to fanatically adhere to the diet day in and day out. I did that last time, and because the habits never became part of my lifestyle, once the diet ended the old habits reverted and I regained most of the weight I’d lost.

So this time, If I’m out at a ball game or on a date or whatever, I’ll still eat “real” food. But for the rest of the time I’ll use the Nutrisystem to try to force myself to get used to eating smaller portions and lower glycemic foods.

And of course, there’s the exercise. One thing I’ve found after three weeks of EA Sports Active 2–weight loss will not come if you don’t mind BOTH diet and exercise. What I found myself doing was, the more I exercised, the more subconsciously I felt I could indulge when eating (it was so easy to justify that extra dessert knowing I’d work it off).

Speaking of EA Sports Active, I have fallen behind a bit–I couldn’t bring the Wii to Florida with me, which meant I couldn’t work out for the whole week. So today (a rest day), I made up two missed exercises, and on the next few rest days I’ll plan to make up the remainder of them. I’m up to 11 total, which still puts me behind dbqhams (with an impressive 25), holythorn, DancingLaura, and dianska…but I will catch up!! 🙂 For the others in the group–chop chop!! 🙂

Nutwiisystem Information 4

Wii Fitness on the Road: Traveling with the Wii

On Feb 03, 2011 8:48 pm, by steve

lunch at the desert botanical garden in phoenix arizonaSo, I’m writing this from 2500 miles away from home and 35,374 feet in the air. My company sent me on a business trip to Phoenix, Arizona. Believe you me, it was tough spending the week away from the 6 degrees (yes, it was 6 degrees when I left) and 19 inches of snow in New York to come to the 73 degree sunshine in Phoenix, but I manged to survive.

I haven’t started my Nutrisystem yet (I will when I get home), but I started the week trying to eat healthy. Here’s a picture of me ordering a veggie wrap at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. As far as veggie wraps go, this one was phenomenal. It had mashed sweet potatoes, avocados, onions, and I think a little potato salad. It was really tasty, I wish I had asked them for the recipe.

Now business trips are always dangerous for my waistline. I always end up eating all kinds of junk, and if I have an exercise routine going, it usually throws me way off. Not this time, I told myself. So I decided to haul my Wii with me on the trip so I could keep up on my 9-week program.

For all the talk of how Sony or Microsoft’s new game systems are going to take over the world, this is yet another point in the Wii’s favor. It’s very easy to lug around. I can’t imagine hauling a heavy appliance like the Xbox or the PS3, but with the Wii, I just threw it in a padded bag and put it in my checked bag. No fuss, no muss (TSA regulations do say you need to take it out separately, like a laptop, if you’re carrying it on).

I made a list of things I had to pack. They are:

1) The Wii
2) The power adapter
3) The video cable (you need to check with your hotel to make sure they have a TV that can accept audio-video inputs–thankfully my Holiday Inn Express did)
4) One Wii Remote
5) The EA Sports Active Resistance Band
6) The Sensor Bar

That’s it. It didn’t add too much extra weight (whatever weight it did add I just considered strength training for the trip :)).

It was a snap to set up at the hotel. I stayed at my favorite Holiday Inn Express (located at 3131 Scottsdale Road in Scottsdale, AZ), and they had new LCD TV’s with audio/video connectors in the back. All I had to do was plug everything in, re-configure the Wii sensor for above the TV versus below, and I was set to go.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the Wii connected to the hotel Internet because the hotel’s Internet has a screen where you have to accept terms and conditions on a Web page before proceeding. But the Wii’s Internet Channel is designed in an annoying way where you can never get to the screen to accept the terms and conditions, so it just kicks you off. Hopefully Nintendo will fix this in an update to their Internet channel, but I’m not holding my breath. In any case, for those in the NutWiiSys Exercise Group, rest assured that I’m still plugging away! Hopefully my numbers will update as soon as I plug in when I get home.

So, for the week, I got three of my four workouts in. I put a bath towel or two on the floor to do the floor exercises. Being on the third floor, I was a little afraid that “foot fires” were going to make too much noise for the folks downstairs or send me crashing through the floor, but happily neither happened.

I was a little burned when I did my Tuesday exercise. I finished the exercise at about 10:00 PM. To my dismay, after I finished the exercise, EA Sports Active 2 told me that I hadn’t done my Tuesday exercise at all. Turns out when I finished the exercise, it was already past midnight, so my exercise counted towards Wednesday (which was normally a rest day). Maddeningly, I didn’t have any option to go back and have the exercise count towards Tuesday. Which means I’ll need to make up Tuesday later on in order for the system to know that I “finished” my 9-week program. Oh well, I guess I can spare one “free” exercise, but hopefully EA Sports will fix the very limited control you have over workouts (I actually remember it being much more flexible in Sports Active 1).

Anyway, I think overall it was a positive experience travelling with the Wii. I ended the week on a rather unhealthy note–the Holiday Inn Express breakfast buffet is truly sumptuous–today before my flight home I had bacon, an omelet, a biscuit with gravy, cranberry juice, and a banana…I figured I may as well treat myself to one last bad meal before the Nutrisystem starts as soon as I get home (I won’t have a choice, because I completely cleared out my fridge before my trip!)

UPDATE: I wrote the above from the plane and never got a chance to publish it. Right I’m now typing this from West Palm Beach, Florida. Turns out I had two days at home before they shipped me out again for business. Now before those of you in more frigid temperatures start throwing shoes at me, bear in mind that while I am technically sitting in a Club Med, the room is stiflingly hot and the air conditioning is not working. Although I gotta say, the food is good. Too good.

In any case, I’ll be flying home tomorrow and have a lot of EA Sports Active workouts to make up. And I will make them up, I promise! And I will start the Nutrisystem too. Because there are no more business trips coming up for a while. 😛