Future Compliant - Wii Fit

Wii Fit!

I've seen the future of exercise and it looks a lot like a scale without any numbers on it.

OK, "the future of exercise" might be a bit hyperbolic - the Wii Fit is by no means the most perfect exercise aid ever invented, and there is plenty of room for improvement and expansion, but it is, I think, a significant step forward. It's something new, and fun, and most important of all, effective. I've had mine for about a week now and have enjoyed it a great deal. The work outs I get are effective and so varied that the time flows by with ease. Some are simple, others quite challenging, and the Wii Fit ramps up the difficulty at a smooth, sensible rate.

The big, heavy, exciting new component id the balance board, a white, durable plastic board a couple inches thick that looks just like a scale with no numbers on it. It connects tirelessly to your Wii and works in synch with the Wii Fit software that guides you through the various exercises. There balance board really only does two things - weighs you and senses where you're putting weight on it with each of your two feet. But that's enough to really create a whole variety of exercises most of which focus on maintaining your balance while doing something challenging. The board is very sensitive to exactly where your weight and thus your balance is and gives you instant feedback so you can adjust your position or timing to fit the exercises parameters.

Wii Fit offers four categories of exercise - yoga, strength training, aerobics, and balance games. I've only ever done a little yoga, although I've done similar exercises in my various martial arts training routines, and I find the Wii positions a lot of fun. The constant balance feedback makes a huge difference in keeping the position correct, and has a meaningful impact on my ability to achieve and maintain the poses with good form. The Strength Training is more challenging, and includes things like squats, push ups, crunches, and lunges. Again, I was surprised at some of the inventive ways they use the balance board to guide these exercises. The aerobics feature jogging in place, which works by holding the normal Wii remote and the machine deduces your pace from how the remote shakes up and down. This actually works pretty well (note, you don't jog ON the Wii fit), but jogging in place isn't super compelling. There's also a kind of step aerobics that works well and is fun, but the real star is the hula hoop, which is surprisingly challenging and after a minute or two can really get the heart pumping some. The balance exercises are the most like games and the least like exercise, and include variations on skiing and some other odd little games that are enjoyable if not particularly sweat-inducing.

The key feature for all of these exercises is the feedback the game gives you. Much like having a personal trainer in the gym encourages you to do exercises the right way and exhorts you to greater efforts, so the interaction with the Wii graphics on your TV engages and drives you in a way that just working out alone or even with a video cannot. The active feedback, critiquing your stance and rating your performance focuses the mind and fend off that mot pernicious of fitness enemies - boredom.

The Wii Fit is not without its problems of course. First of all is its reliance on Body Mass Index (BMI) for judging your fitness. The BMI is an outdated and not particularly useful measurement scale, especially for people like me with broader, larger body types that don't conform to the human averages. Yes I'm a little overweight, but even when I shed some pounds and get down to what would be a more ideal weight for my body, the Wii will still think I'm fat. So the thing is, you have to do some research on your own and determine how well the BMI applies to you before you give it any credence. On the other hand, the scale is really handy, and seems quite accurate to me, so that feature alone adds a lot of value to the Wii Fit. It not only weighs you, but tracks your weight from day to day and gives you reminders about whatever fitness goals you've set for yourself. I've heard different philosophies about whether you should weigh yourself every day or at longer intervals, but I've always found that weighing myself every day helps focus me on my diet and exercise program more effectively than anything else, and apparently the Wii Fit agrees. It also encourages you to weigh yourself at the same time each day, pointing out that our weights fluctuate by a couple pounds throughout the day.

The one big feature I think is missing (as far as I can tell anyway), is the ability to program a set workout into the Wii Fit instead of having to chose each exercise individually. The selection process provides breaks, but sometimes, especially with the shorter exercises, I'd like to roll right into the next yoga posture or strength exercise without any delay. But that's a minor quibble. Overall, I'm super pleased with my Wii Fit, and excited to not only use it, but to see what other, even more exciting home exercise gear comes along in the future.