Reflection on Video Games and a 10K

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When I embarked on this exergaming campaign at the end of 2010, I had two goals

1)      To find out if a person (me) actually could lose weight by using video games; and

2)      To lose weight.

As I’ve discussed, I really did have quite a bit of skepticism that one could actually, really, honest to goodness lose weight using video games. It didn’t equate for me at all. I honestly thought it was a bunch of marketing phooey.  Since then, I’ve learned better.

I now know that video games make working out a lot of fun, and that one (me) can lose weight by using them. Thus far, I’ve lost 25+ pounds, with my next weight goal coming up in the next couple of weeks. As we hear through the ECA’s Gamers for Health initiative, video games help hundreds of thousands of you lose weight too. They’re that good of a catalyst.

As I’ve discussed, exergames also act as a gateway for many of us, getting us to try other activities, like running as I did. Each season offers a different set of challenges and opportunities for active play inside and outside one’s house.

As the year has progressed, and I’ve gotten thinner, lighter and more fit, the number and breadth of my goals has multiplied. Each week seems to bring a new goal, and each few weeks seem to open up more goals being achieved.

In the last seven days alone I ran a 6.2 mile race – yes, that’s how long a 10K is – and fit into a size smaller jeans. Earlier this year it would not have been possible. Simply *not* *possible*.  Before last week, 6.2 miles was for crazy-insane DISTANCE RUNNER people to run (in my lay person’s estimation); it was not a distance that a *normal* jogger would do (when I did jog, as I considered myself). Now I’m looking forward to running other 10K races THIS FALL and wondering how long it will take me to scale up to run a half marathon. Um, yes. I *did* just write that.

As I just mentioned, I also fit into a size smaller Leavis 501s. Now, for me, this particular size jeans is important, because it was the size I used to steal from boyfriends in college, my 20s, my 30s and now from my husband. They may be a bit snug, but I can fit into them and button them all the way up. A few weeks ago, I couldn’t pull them up one leg all the way. So Dear Husband better either buy more jeans or watch out, as they’re going to start migrating over to me. Perhaps I’ll simply buy a couple of pairs for myself. Hm. We’ll see.

So would any of this be possible without exergames, as a friend recently asked? My early August assessment is, probably not. I still get up off the bed, couch, chair or floor to Zumba and step, which make up the bulk of my weekly workouts.  All of the other fitness and goal achievement flows from it.

How is your workout routine going in this steamy month?

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Press & Release

Truth be told, my office took pity on me when I began the Gamers for Health campaign way back in 2010, when I was 25 pounds heavier than I am now. They know what a Luddite I am, and they figured they’d help me out by pre-programming my Wii and Wiimote accessories so that all I had to do was plug everything in to get it going. As I’ve chronicled here, even simply plugging the thing in was a *bit* overwhelming for me. In any case, I’ve been happily exergaming on my Wii ever since…

Until yesterday. Something happened. It may have been a power outage. It may have been that my Wii went on strike. Or perhaps the Wiimotes and other accessories wanted a bigger piece of the pie. The outcome, dear readers, was that my Wiimotes and other accessories, like my step, all of a sudden DID NOT SYNC with my Wii! Dum dum Dum. The HORROR!

After unplugging and re-plugging everything possible a few times last night I finally gave up in exasperation 45 minutes later. It was good that I’d run earlier in the day, as I was not to get in any decent exergame workout yesterday. The plug fiasco exhausted me and made me snappy to DH. Enough was enough.

Today was an off day for running and a full-on exergame day, so I knew that the problem needed to be fixed. I looked up nearby stores where I could go and purchase entire new systems this afternoon if the problem could not be fixed in the morning. Basically, I was spent, at the end of my rope, needed to get my workout in and desperate. I guess I'm kind of fried right now.

Then logic kicked in, along with my second cup of coffee. I walked over to my computer, powered it up and typed “wiimote sync issues” and low and behold, Nintendo’s customer service page popped up – who knew?!?! The truly logical thing would have been to look for that first, but the illogical not tech savvy overworked mind digresses. Great! :-D

I marched back in, thanking the Nintendo folks in my mind and feeling all warm and fuzzy about their wonderful patriarchal company, thinking again about what a wonderful community I work in...and tried to sync my Wiimotes…for 25 minutes. Finally it struck me that Nintendo would not have me standing there developing cramps in my thumbs and pointer fingers as I waited for the first stupid waste of an item Wiimote to sync. I trudged grumbling back into my office to look menacingly at my computer. What the HECK was going on?!?! Upon rereading the instructions, a wee bit of wording came forward in bold to my mind’s eye. “Quickly press and release.”

I felt like the Grinch upon hearing all of WhoVille singing on Christmas morning; my heart grew in my chest. Woops. Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy. So I wasn’t supposed to stand there like an idiot innocent holding the red buttons in for 15 minutes straight. Nintendo, as always, was a bit ahead of me.

I sheepishly skulked back into the other room and tried the quick press and release method. Ahem. It worked. In less than 10 seconds.

The moral of the story is (choose one or more):

·         We all make mistakes.

·         When we’re juggling lots of different things in our lives, we make more of mistakes.

·         There is always help online.

·         Stay calm and carry on.

Wii Fit Balance Board & CTA Digital Step Raiser

I’ve been using the Wii balance board (aka step) for the last three months. It was one of my Christmas presents, along with the Wii Fit program, so I started using the step and the program about a month into my Losing Gamer campaign. It was pretty easy to set up, even for me.

In a future post, I’ll discuss my initial thoughts on the Wii Fit program, but this post concentrates on the Wii balance board and CTA Digital’s Wii Fit Balance Board Multi Functional Aerobic Step System.

The balance board itself looks like a short aerobic step. It syncs up with the Wii system and helps track your balance, weight, and accuracy in doing different exercises with various exergames. One would think it’s pretty straight forward, but I’ve had a few issues with the balance board.

First, its weight calibration is off. I thought something was odd the first few times I used it to weigh myself. Then I had the brilliant idea of testing it with some known-weight objects, such as five and twenty-five pound bags of flour. Each time, the scale found the object two pounds heavier than the object’s stated weight. The Wii Fit program allows for clothing weights of two and four pounds, so weighing oneself naked and saying one was wearing two pounds of clothing was a relatively easy fix. A better fix could be for Nintendo to program a nob or other calibration in the program to allow for incorrect weights without a consumer having to use the clothing allowance for that.

Secondly, the center of gravity is off. Wii Fit and other exergaming programs have many uses for one’s gravity – it helps ascertain how fit you are, whether you’re holding yourself up straight, whether you’re doing different exercises correctly, and the list goes on. It seemed odd to me that I was listing a few degrees to the left every single time I was on the balance board – even when I actively leaned waaaaay over to the left, but I really didn’t think much of it other than I must be THAT off balance. You see, as a left-handed person, my left side is my dominant side. I assumed that over time I’d simply shifted my center of balance that far over to the left….but it did seem odd.

Then, one morning I got a call while I was about to stand on the balance board to measure my balance. I had to take the call, so I stood behind the board talking on the phone. To my amazement, the empty board registered my center of gravity as five percent over to the left.  After my call, I tried wiggling the four balance board feet, removing and reattaching them, placing things to one side or the other to see if I could fix the gravity issue. Basically, I couldn’t. To this day, my balance board registers a list to the left and I take that into account and compensate when necessary in order to get the job and workout done.

Finally, the balance board height is annoyingly low. I had assumed it would be the same height as a regular aerobic step, because it’s shaped the same as a step and looks like it’s modeled on a step. But, alas, it’s much shorter. Generally aerobic steps are about four inches higher than the Wii balance board. But certain innovative companies have found a fix for us.

CTA Digital has been around since 1992 and they’re an excellent example of a company that does well making accessories for video games. While they’re not a video game publisher, they “live” in the video game space and they employ many people, helping lift the economy. I’ve discussed companies like CTA Digital quite often with legislators, when violent video game bills come down the pike. Often legislators see video games as “games” and not industries of people employing people to create art as well as accessories for that art. But getting back to their step…

I love it!

It’s really easy to put together. I didn’t even need the instructions to try out the 4” and 6” levels.
It’s stable. The feet of the balance board rest in depressions in the riser so that it stays in place. I did balance exercises for the Wii Fit, EA Sports Active 2, and some self programmed step aerobics classes and it didn’t slide, topple or make me nervous.

It bulked up my work out! I could feel the extra burn of the taller step, and the EA Sports Active 2 heart rate monitor showed a 10-30 beat per minute lift in my heart rate from when I did the same exercises without the riser.

If you’re looking for a fix on the Wii balance board height, CTA Digital’s Wii Fit Balance Board Multi Functional Aerobic Step System is the way to go.

Buy It.


Full Disclosure: CTA Digital gave me their step system to try out and use.

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• Wii Fit Plus Review (fitnesstroop.com)