EA Sports Active 2 Wii Part I (3.10.11)

I’ve been using EA Sports Active 2 (EASA2) on the Wii for about eight weeks now. First I tried the 21 day challenge, and presently I’m in the middle of the nine week challenge. The game offers many things to most people, and in general it’s an extremely well rounded kick butt workout.

First, they set all action in what they describe as a desert health spa. All activity is virtually outside with clouds, fountains, mountains and dirt paths. I like it. At least for me, it feels more open and airier than some exergames that have solid backgrounds or interior roomscapes.

Second, you can choose your fitness level. They offer easy, medium and hard levels for all of their workouts, which is generally really nice as you can calibrate your 21-day or 9-week challenge to where you feel you are in the fitness spectrum.

I hear from bunches of people who start out on the easy level, which is still quite physically challenging, and move on to medium and hard for their subsequent challenges and workouts. The only difference I can tell between the levels is number of repetitions in each set, which also effects time – the easy workout level being shorter than the hard.

So, for example, an easy set of the dreaded mountainclimbers could be 40 reps, the medium 45 and the hard 55. On a side note, it’s extremely helpful for you to add the yoga pose called “child’s pose” directly after a set of these, as well sets of the straight arm plank, in my humble opinion and I do one every time.

People often ask what I’m doing and on what level. Both my 21-day and 9-week program have been on the hard level, my presumption being that my body will (hopefully) quickly tone up to handle it. During the first week I generally thought I was going to die, especially if I had multiple sets of mountainclimbers, pushups or straight arm planks in a given daily workout. Now eight weeks in, I can make it through three or more sets of the above exercises without collapsing, cheating or falling over. The child’s pose mentioned above really helps my ability to stand back up after a quick stretch.

There’s a lot to say about EASA2, most of it good. I’ll be talking about time commitments, strength training, the online components and more in my next blog post.

Again, we’d love to hear about how things are going with you. Feel free to drop me a line at jenn at theeca.com.

Full Disclosure:  EA gave me a free copy of EA Sports Active 2 to try out and use.