This new Wii game called Sports Active looks pretty interesting. It’s compatible with the Wii Balance Board, but it also uses a cool leg band thing with the Wiimote nunchucks. In addition, there is a flex band included to increase the difficulty of some of the exercises. It doesn’t come out until May, so it will be a while before I can try it out.
Here is a video about it:
Shape Magazine and Nike have teamed up to offer a FREE 40-minute workout featuring Serena Williams. You can download it here:
This workout has you walking or running and then gives you several strength training exercises to do between the bouts of running. There are lunges, squats, and the idiotic triceps dip, which is an impossible move for a beginner made more difficult by adding a leg extension. Many of the strength training exercises are just too complicated to be described with words. For some people (like me), even photographs wouldn’t help. Ideally, Nike and Shape would have put videos on their websites showing beginners HOW to do these exercises, but they didn’t.
I used this workout on a treadmill with my Nike+. I was worried that the Nike+ might pause the workout because I was standing still for some of the exercises, but they never lasted long enough to trigger the Nike+ pause feature. The seamless integration with Nike+ is a true positive to this workout.
Another great feature of the workout is its versatility. Just because the audio track is 40 minutes, doesn’t mean you have to dedicate that long to exercising. If you are a beginner or only have a short amount of time, you can choose to bow out at the 20 or 30 minute marks. Serena gives you instructions to end your workout early if you are too winded or short on time.
The music is pretty heavy on the Rap side of the music spectrum, but it was never irritating enough to make me want to end the workout. My two favorite artists in the mix were Time Machine and Jacques Renault. I found them on this mix on Amazon:
If you have been feeling bored on the treadmill or running outside, this is a FANTASTIC workout to try and you can’t beat the price! Thanks Nike, Shape and Serena Williams for making this available to us!
The workouts from iPump cost two bucks a piece and they are worth every penny. I worked out with iPump Fat Burn.
They have a FREE workout that you can download to your iPhone to see what they are like:
They have many other workouts to choose from. You can see them all here:
Each exercise has a video showing how to perform the exercise correctly. To play the video, press the green circle with the letter P in it. I didn’t notice this the first time I used iPump and wrote a VERY different review of this application. After a few emails with Craig Schlossberg, the founder of PumpOne, he pointed out where the play button was. That dedication to customer service is what separates a good company from an excellent company.
The videos showing how the exercises work are only accessible when you have Internet access, but you don’t need the videos to complete the workout. After you’ve done each workout several times, you can probably do the whole thing just by looking at the exercise photos. I tried accessing iPump Fat Burn while my iPhone was in Airplane Mode and it allowed me to go through the whole workout just showing me the photos and instructions. When I tried to play a video, it just popped up a dialog box saying, “This movie could not be played,” and let me continue.
As with MANY exercise programs, their idea of a beginner workout is sorely mistaken. Take, for example this exercise: the push up.
Asking a 200 pound beginner to do a push up is like asking them to do a bench press with nearly 200 pound weights on the bar. What trainer in their right mind would have a beginner bench press almost 200 pounds? That is essentially what you’re asking a beginner to do when you have them do a push up. Sure, you don’t need “special equipment” to do this exercise, but a first-timer should be doing a modified push up or push ups against a wall in the beginning. Asking beginners to do push ups or bench dips is just an exercise in frustration or a recipe for injury. As a beginner, if you find any of the exercises to be too advanced for you, do your best, modify the exercises or skip them altogether until you are strong enough to master them.
Despite their miscalculations about what beginners can actually do, iPump Fat Burn is a great workout tool. You could take it with you to the gym, use it while traveling or just workout at home. You don’t need any exercise equipment to do the workout aside from a bench or stool that can support your full weight. More importantly, PumpOne is a company that is dedicated to customer service. If you are looking for something to change up your workout, then try one of the iPhone applications from iPump.
I’ve been attending the Interactive portion of the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. I attended a Core Conversation session called: Reduce MySpace Between Waist & Thighs So Wiki Live Longer. It was about using technology to be active. It got off to a rocky start, but ended strong. Here are my notes:
David Eckoff President, Revolutionary Ventures
Biray Alsac Health/Fitness Educator, FITTmaxx Institute
David Eckoff:
So many of us are plugged in all the time. Unfortunately, that comes at the expense of fitness and health. We’re not going to talk about theory.
Twitter: Follow DavidEckoff
Biray Alsac:
Biray is pronounced BEEReye.
She has worked on exergaming. It’s not just to do exercise, but the motivation is important as well.
How inactive are we as a country? She’s trying to scare us with all the CDC findings about obesity. HELLO! We came to this session for a REASON! I think we ALL agree that being fat is BAD!
Exercise 30 minutes a day. We all know this, yet 51% of the US does not move.
We tend to blame technology on that. Why aren’t we doing it?
David Eckoff: How can we use technology to its advantages?
Biray Alsac:
Stop calling it exercise. She brings up the OLD cliche of taking the stairs instead of the elevator.
Theory of Change: Precontemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, Maintenance
Most technology focuses on precontemplation, contemplation and preparation stages.
She just stole the Weight Watchers speech from two weeks ago.
If you’re not an exerciser, you’re not around people who like to exercise.
Technologies that are good for exercising:
Gyminee.com You can track your workouts online. There are TONS of these kinds of websites and each one is different. Some are very social. Some are focused on athletic events like triathlons. With Gyminee: every time you complete a workout, it will cross link to Twitter. Then people can look at your workouts and see what you did. It spreads your conversation about exercise. It’s important to get people to start talking about being active.
MapMyRun will map your routes.
Fitizens Fitness professionals can hook up with the enthusiasts.
Exercise Friends Find a workout buddy
EC-Fit You put your workout schedule and it will call you or text you to remind you to workout. Or after your workout asking if you completed your workout. (Sorry, couldn’t find the link to this one and she didn’t have any visuals to give me a clue.)
Stickk.com You put out a contract on yourself and you put money down if you don’t do the goal. Not just for fitness.
WalkerTracker.com Works with your pedometer and posts a widget on your blog that counts your steps.
These all send a message that say “I’m doing something about being active.”
Twitter: Follow Befitt
Food Tracking:
Utterli.com phone podcasting
Posting pictures of all your food and knowing everyone is going to see it, then you’re make different decisions about what you’re going to eat.
David Eckoff: If the tools make it convenient, then I’m more likely to do it.
Biray Alsac:
Fitness Podcasts: Nutrition Diva Podcast, Cardio Coach, Gymp3, Pod Fitness
Gadgets: Nike Plus, Heart Rate Monitor, Body Bugg
Twitter Apps: TWYE: Tweet What You Eat, Food Feed Twitter: @having a banana, Twit To Fit, Twittercise
David Eckoff: It’s good to be plugged in to people who are into this. It will be motivating. Surround yourself with people who are active and fit. Raise the standard of your peer group. You’ll become like your peer group.
Biray Alsac: Second Life There is a huge fitness community in Second Life. The have virtual classes where you can spin on your exercise bike on Second Life with their VOIP.
David Eckoff: We are in the first generation of exergaming. By the time the second and third gen of exergaming comes out, it will be so awesome.
Biray Alsac:
Wii Fit is a gateway game. It’s a stepping stone to REAL fitness.
100 Fabulous iPhone apps for health and fitness
David Eckoff:
Non Tech Things That I Do
Get Leverage: Associate pleasure with working out. Associate massive pain without working out. Ghost of the future. Imagine yourself at age 75 without muscle mass. Pleasure with working out. Put yourself through a mental exercise. Focus on what I’m grateful for. Flood yourself with good feelings while you’re working out. Trick your body to feeling good with the workout. It’s not intellectual. You need to actually FEEL it.
Schedule it: I schedule it in the morning because if I don’t do it in the morning, I won’t do it. Schedule it like a meeting. Protect that time.
Hydrostatic Body Composition Analysis: Body composition measurement. It cost about $40. I do it every six months.
Biray Alsac: Go to your local university and see if they have grad students who are willing to do this to you.
David Eckoff:
Self Identity: How do you see yourself? Think of yourself as an athlete. The most powerful force within the human body is to remain consistent with how we see ourselves.
Static Contraction Training: Who has enough time for anything? Least amount of time, most amount of results. Tony Robbins strength training.
Biray Alsac: We’re not doing enough. We’re going to pay for it in our health care. We’ll have to pay for it in the end. Think about the process of being active.
Eventually, she’ll post a complete list of online tools here:
One of the founders of a new website called Nutritter, was at the session. He gave me two invites to the Alpha release. If you would like to try it out, contact me.
I found this in an advertisement for Aleve.
I thought it was a great motivational photo to paste in a collage with all my pictures of how I want my body to look when I get to goal, so I tore it out of the magazine.
The underlying message of the advertisement is take Aleve and you’ll be able to keep exercising through the pain. THAT message isn’t quite as positive as the initial euphoria of “Never Stop Moving.” Aleve is a non-steriodal anti-inflammatory drug called naproxen sodium. It’s like aspirin or ibuprofen, but totally different than acetaminophen.
For a long time, Advil ran advertising calling their product “Vitamin I.” I’ve even heard runners refer to ibuprofen as Vitamin I. The idea of just popping a pill instead of giving your body the rest it deserves after hard exercise isn’t the healthiest mindset to subscribe to. It looks like Aleve is jumping on that bandwagon.
There are risks to every medication. I’ve written an article here about the problems with over the counter pain relief:
I love the idea of Never Stop Moving. I love the idea of working out every day, no matter what. I HATE the idea of choosing to take an Aleve rather than giving my muscles a rest. In the end, I choose to take the image as inspirational and forget all about what they were trying to advertise.
One of the best motivators is bribery. One good way to get into the habit of exercising every day is to pay yourself to exercise. Whether you’re walking, going to the gym, riding your exercise bike or pounding the pavement, you can motivate yourself to get your exercise done by bribing yourself.
According to the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, it would take anywhere from $9 to $37 a week to convince people to walk for their own health.
He pointed out that one hour of activity per week does not meet government health standards of 30 minutes, five days a week for moderate intensity activity such as walking. In the study, sedentary and inactive adults wanted $36.30 per week to do this much exercise. If they had to go in a group, they wanted nearly twice as much more.
Money is a great incentive. Giving yourself some money every day as a reward for getting your exercise done has worked for me in the past. You can read about it here:
I even created a form to keep track of my weekly bribes:
If you’re having a hard time getting into the habit of exercising every day, try bribery.
Every time I see an advertisement for a new kind of exercise machine, I just roll my eyes and wish they would just quit trying. This time, however, I got a little excited. I got an email about Real Ryder, which is an exercise bike that acts more like a real bicycle.
Introducing the RealRyder: It tilts, turns, and banks like an outdoor bike–works out the core, upper body, legs, cardio, and improves balance the way other indoor cycling bikes can’t.
Here is a video of it in action:
The biggest problem that I can see with the Real Ryder is that you can’t buy one. Just like so many other exercise products being advertised on the Internet, it’s not just a simple case of giving them your credit card number to get one. There is no price listed on their website and buying one isn’t as easy as filling out a form and waiting for FedEx. In fact, you have to contact a Sales & Marketing representative to even find out more information. Additionally, two of these “sales” people have the same last name. That smacks of nepotism to me, and I’ve found that it isn’t the best way to run a company.
The Real Ryder is a GREAT idea. I’d love to see it made into a video game controller so I could play motocross video games using this bike instead of buttons. I have so many good ideas that could work with Real Ryder, but if I can’t just give them my credit card and BUY one, I’m not going to believe they exist.
Update 07-22-12: It is nearly FOUR years later and the SHOP section of their website STILL says “Coming Soon.” I think I can safely assume that they’re never coming.
The media is quick to call us all lazy and unmotivated because many people don’t play with their Wii Fit anymore. Check out this article:
Don’t blame Nintendo for people’s sloth, observers say. The company has marketed its new cash cow brilliantly, and it’s not responsible for whether consumers play the game or not. Nintendo declined to comment for this article, but Wii Fit creator Shigeru Miyamoto has previously gone on record and said that the game is less about people losing weight and more about broadening the videogame market. Still, it seems a little disingenuous for Nintendo to heavily market a fitness tool that’s sitting in more than a million American living rooms collecting dust.
I say the fact that I haven’t played Wii Fit for months is most CERTAINLY Nintendo’s fault. Wii Fit isn’t really the be-all fitness game that we all were hoping it would be. It’s fun, but my heart rate rarely gets high enough to hit the cardio level unless I do the running or hula hoop. There is only so much hula hoop and running in place that I can do before I get BORED!
Not to mention the inordinate amount of time I end up pressing the A button to get to the next exercise. For every 30 minute workout I’ve done, it has taken me 55 minutes of real time. That’s half the time working out and half the time standing on the Wii Balance Board watching a stupid animation or the virtual trainer tell me something that I don’t need to hear. If I spend the same 55 minutes on the treadmill, I burn twice as many calories.
And of course, the daily ridicule didn’t help. If you play every day, the Wii Fit calls you obese and if you don’t play, it bugs the other players wondering where you are!
Sure, I liked the yoga and the balance sections, but those were really games more than a good workout. I can’t wait for a SERIOUS company to create a real fitness game for the Wii Balance Board. I wish Konami would create something for that controller. After ten years of DDR, Konami knows how to make fitness games. Honestly, I’ve been playing DDR for over five years now and I still LOVE it. It’s my favorite active game.
What about you? Are you still playing with your Wii Fit? Is it because you’re lazy like Yahoo Games accuses us? Or have you been doing something else for exercise because the thought of doing any more Wii Fit stepping just makes you cringe with boredom?
Via: An email tip from Iportion.
Last year, I wrote a weekly plan to get you on track for a healthy and active life. If you followed the plan last week, then here is the link to this week’s plan:
The Short Version:
This is the last week of this program, that’s why it’s essential to get a program for support and accountability.
Last year, I wrote a weekly plan to get you on track for a healthy and active life. If you followed the plan last week, then here is the link to this week’s plan:
The Short Version:
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