Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

McDonald’s has a new promotion right now. If you order one of their premium salads and a drink, you can get a Yourself! Fitness DVD. I can’t find anything about it on the McDonald’s website, but Yourself! Fitness is promoting it on theirs.

• McDonald’s USA – Food, Nutrition, & Fitness

• Yourself!Fitness: Choose Your Program

I got the Cardio DVD and the Yoga DVD the other day and I just finished doing a workout with the Yoga DVD. The workouts are very similar to the Yourself! Fitness game for the PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Here is how a workout is different with Yourself! Fitness vs. the DVD.

• Maya is a little more talkative. She explains her movements a little more than she does with the Yourself! Fitness game.

• You cannot stop the workout and have the move explained in further detail. That’s probably why they include more explanation during the workout.

• The indicator is the same except it doesn’t tell you how much time is left on the workout like it does on the game. Of course, all the workouts are only 15 minutes long, so knowing how much more time is left is less of an issue. With the game, there is a counter on the left hand side that tell you how much longer you have. I find that really helpful and missed it on the DVD.

• You can’t stop a movement and ask Maya to make the workout easier or more difficult. Once you choose a difficulty level, you’re stuck with it for the entire workout. In the game, you can stop it at any time and ask for a more difficult workout or easier. It’s a great feature of Yourself! Fitness.

• You can’t choose your workout environment or music like you can with the game. The Cardio DVD uses the Urban workout environment and the techno music every time. I really like being able to change the venues.

• The DVD is actually a little bit better as far as stretching after the workout is concerned. It still only stretches the hamstrings and the quads, but it allows for more time stretching after a workout. I really recommend doing the Yoga DVD when your finished with the Cardio DVD so that you get a full stretch after your workout.

The ways in which the game and the DVD are similar:

• Maya is still very cut and dry. This is a great feature. She just explains the moves and stays quiet the rest of the time. There is none of that silly workout patter.

• There is still an indicator telling you which move you are going to do next and how much longer you have on the current move. That is really helpful on the Cardio workouts when the movements change rather quickly. I tend to really worry about keeping in step and the indicator really helps for that.

• You get to choose the intensity of your workouts. You can choose “Ease Me Into It” or “I’m Up For A Challenge.” On the Cardio workout, you can tell Maya whether you have a step-bench or not for different workouts.

I’m so glad to see Yourself! Fitness get this opportunity. I want to see them release a second version of Yourself! Fitness that fixes some of the minor problems with the program and add new features. This might be the promotion that they needed to get that done.

You can find out more information about Yourself! Fitness here:

• Starling Fitness » Yourself! Fitness for the Xbox

• Starling Fitness » Silver Status on Yourself! Fitness

• Starling Fitness » Yourself! Fitness for Playstation 2

• Starling Fitness » Gold Status on Yourself! Fitness

• Starling Fitness » Workout 35 on Yourself! Fitness

• Starling Fitness » Yourself! Fitness and Xbox 360