Seven Pound Drop

Over a year ago, when I began the exergaming campaign, one of my primary interests was whether video games could be used to maintain or lose weight. But over the ensuing year, as weight did indeed drop, focus has shifted somewhat to endurance, strength and stamina building aspects of exercise, as well as wonderment at how far one can push one’s body before collapse.

For a long while, perhaps three months or more, my weight has remained relatively stable even as I’ve been adding additional miles on top of my base weekly mileage and exergaming. I haven’t been bothered by it, to be honest, since clothing has been fitting me better and my focus has been set on sheer distance. Over the last month or so, I’ve been fine tuning clothing and regimen in order to make distance runs longer, and added the goal of a half marathon in April.

So it came as somewhat of a surprise to me yesterday, when I stepped onto my garden variety scale for the first time in perhaps a month. Mind you, that month was also filled with yummy holiday events. The surprise was not only that I had dropped seven pounds seemingly overnight (at least since my last weigh in), but that I had been just thinking about fine tuning my eating and exercise even more in an attempt to lose weight, because I was sure I’d added some weight.

Obviously there are many things at play in one’s weight: daily, weekly, monthly fluctuations; muscle versus fat balance within the body; level, frequency and type of exercise; portions, types and balance of food; among other things.

We hear from doctors that a body can change dramatically for a short period of time; but that in its physical memory, it retains a “memory” of its former self before the change was implemented. So, following this theory, it’ll bounce back to its former “normal” state unless change is constant and indefinite. That makes sense. I’ve also wondered for a while that when the body realizes it’s being holistically changed (like shedding 70+ pounds), it’ll hold on at certain stages before allowing itself to move into the next state of transformation.

So, using my weight loss as an example, it was hard to lose the first 60 pounds. It took a lot of concentrated effort regarding exercise and food. Then, for about three months or so, my body seemed to stay the same weight wise, regardless of whether I worked out more or less, or ate more or less, or healthier or less healthy. The number on the scale remained the same. Then, one day, I had a seven pound loss without seemingly changing anything.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens going forward. With a half marathon coming up in 12 weeks 2 days, my training has to increase. It’d be nice to lose some more weight, but my focus is on the distance, not the clothing size. So we’ll see.

Have you found something like this happening with changes you’ve made in your life? If so, please email me and let me know!

One Central Log

Until recently, I used my Wii as a repository not only of my weight fluctuations, but also of all of my workouts. While it doesn’t allow for extreme differentiation, it does allow one to log workout length and relative exertion level. I’d been using it as my diary of sorts for my ongoing weight loss campaign. But as I’ve begun supplementing my video game workouts with outside runs, I’ve fallen off the Wii log. Now it’s willy nilly whether I catalogue workouts at all, and if so with varying levels of specificity.

Ultimately, the scales tell us where the weight is and the video games and distances tell us how the endurance is improving. But having a central log is good for ongoing mental check ins and being able to minutely decipher why something is working better or not at all and thus change the program.

Different people use different logs. One friend uses a floral spiral notebook that she sprays with perfume once a week. Another friend uses one of those black and white lined notebooks people used in school in the 60s. A number of people keep a religious log on their computers that they update daily. Whatever works for you works.

Not everyone keeps track on a daily basis. Some folks find time to log throughout the day. Others make sure they write things down the same time every day.  A number of people like to do weekly updates to keep lose track of their progress.

I’ve found that the Wii log generally works for me, but I’ve been considering moving the entire thing into a computer program so that I can log sleep (or lack thereof), eating and drinking, time of month (TOM) and dramatic events that I can look back on to know why my workout one day wasn’t as long or useful as another.  I’ll let you know how the new log is going as we move along.

Do you use a log? If so, what kind and in what format? How much information do you log? Have you found it useful? If so/if not, in what way(s)?

Related articles

• How To Manage And Track Your Running (fitnesstroop.com)

Gateway Effect

Image via Wikipedia

The first time I heard the term gateway effect was during the lead up to the Games for Health conference in Boston in June. Ben Sawyer, who runs the org and the conference, sent an email asking folks to think about health and games and examples of gateway effect.

I had absolutely no idea what the man was on about, so I looked up the term via Google. Ooookkkk….for those who Google it as well, you’ll notice that hundreds of thousands of links will come back for marijuana and how its gateway effect can lead one to becoming a hard core drug user. Ahem.  That was obviously not *exactly* what Ben was getting on about.

Yet his meaning quickly became clear.  At the conference, numerous side conversations led to many references at the podiums about the need to find and document examples of exergaming leading their users being active in other ways. The Robert Wood Johnson folks and Shellie Pfohl, Executive Director of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition, were particularly eloquent in discussing the phenomenon.

At the time, I didn’t have any examples, because ECA works with gamers, who are using exergames for their own sake. The other type of folks we deal with in ECA’s Gamers for Health initiative are folks who want to work out, and opt for exergames instead of other activities. So we rarely see or hear about folks whose use of exergames have opened them up to other types of exercise.  Yet that’s exactly what my exergaming experience seems to be doing for me.

Until two weeks ago, I solely worked out with exergames five or six days a week, as I’ve chronicled somewhat through this blog. So far it’s allowed me to shed about 22 pounds, and the scale number slowly, yet consistently keeps dropping.

But then a funny thing happened. I read “Born to Run” and recalled how much fun running had been in my youth (a really long time ago). I needed and bought a lovely new pair of all purpose shoes that happened to be of the barefoot running variety. Then, at lunch last Tuesday, which was a day that didn’t require a workout in my EA Sports Active 2 challenge, I literally figured “why not” and went for a run for the first time in seven years. On mountainous dirt roads. And I came trotting back 3.88 miles later. It was amazing.

Since then, I’ve run a few times. My longest run thus far has been 4.11 miles without getting winded nor achy. Each run day, I wake up excited to hit the road and see if I can make it as far and as fast as the time before. Each time, I run farther and faster - each time.

Yet none of this would be possible without the exergaming, which got me into shape and keeps pushing me into better shape. Both physically and psychologically, exergames have opened up a completely new world and perspective on life – that’s their gateway effect on me and it can be yours too. Try it. You’ll like it.

Related articles

• Roundup of current exergaming deals (arrowdynamicmom.wordpress.com)
• Turn Your Workout Into an Adventure With City of Epic (escapistmagazine.com)
• Prescribing Wii Fit? (physical-activity-pharmacy.com)

Vanity

I don’t remember how long it’s been since I bought my favorite pair of sneakers. It was definitely before getting married, as I got them directly after E3 one year in the early 2000s. So they may be nearly ten years old. Wow.

They’re cool. They’re black Eccos with white stripes, look like soccer shoes and generally look like cool sporty gym shoes, yet not workout sneakers, which was the look I was going for when I got them. And they’ve served me well. This is why it’s been such a long time before I’ve even thought about replacing them.

But of late, they’ve begun to look super scrungy. Wearing them went from feeling exciting to just plain blah, and I’d begun watching other mommy feet for new ideas in sporty yet not workout sneakers. Ecco has some cool shoes to choose from, especially their Vibration II Toggle in red, but I was looking for something pink this time. After many late nights of internet window shopping, I settled on a great pair of Merrell Barefoot Pace Gloves in Ash (pink). In many ways, they’re quite similar to my Black Ecco swish shoes, but in pink.

But before buying anything now-a-days, I read the reviews. This shoe purchase was no exception. So I looked on Amazon.com, Zappos.com and elsewhere to see what folks had to say. While the overwhelming review was outstanding, I also noticed something else interesting – about a third of the reviews mentioned a book, “Born to Run.”

I’m a voracious reader. As I happened to be in between books, I went online, added Born to Run to my library queue and promptly forgot about it. The next day, a librarian called to say it was in and awaiting pick up. Ok, well, that was fortuitous.

I began reading the book, but it was slow going. I’m not a runner, so it wasn’t pulling me in. A friend who’d read the book (three times), and is a runner told me to stick with it, that it would grab me soon. Ok.

In the interim, the shoes arrived. They’re super cool. They look great. They feel great – just like…wait for it…gloves for the feet. Socks fit in them, but they’re also comfortable barefoot. They’re breathable. They don’t make big footed people look like we have Bozo the clown feet (always a concern). Basically, these shoes are hot (in the cool sense of the word).

In the reviews and on the company website, new wearers are advised to wear them around the house for a while to build up foot strength; the presumption is generally that Americans wear shoes constantly. I generally don’t. Most of my day is spent in (fancy) flip flops or walking around only in socks, or completely barefoot. I like the way it feels, so if I can get away with it, I kick off heels and padded shoes.

During this year of exergaming, this has actually been a “thing” in that some folks have asked to work out together or for me to post videos of me working out. While there are other issues like looking ridiculous working out, my complete reticence has also been about not wanting folks to see me working out in socks without shoes. I never use shoes when exergaming. Now I’m so used to working out without shoes, that when I do try to exergame with shoes on, I feel extremely uncomfortable.

In any case, last night I hit the “trigger point” for myself in the book. About one hundred pages in, the book became compelling, and the only thing that got me to put it down was the knowledge that the slumbering toddler in the other room would wake up with tremendous amounts of energy in the early morning no matter how late one stayed up reading to oneself. Smart move mommy.

At lunch today, I thought about exergaming, but knew that today was one of my three weekly “off” days in EA Sports Active 2. Generally these "off" days have been filled with other exergame workouts. But today, upon looking at the weather channel online, seeing it was already 84 degrees, gazing outside at the trees swaying in the heat, I started to remember how I used to love to run when I was a kid. I was fast. It was never a distance thing for me, but the wind in my face was always as refreshing as jumping into a pool.

I figured, “what the heck, it’s lunch time, why not;” then walked downstairs and laced my feet barefoot into the Foot Gloves. I’d figured I’d slow down to a walk upon getting winded or stop for a bit upon arriving at a known landmark that seemed way too far off for me to reach. I mean, it HAD been 2004 since I’d last jogged at all.

Walking down the front steps, I broke into a leisurely run down the driveway to the mountainous dirt road….and didn’t stop until getting back home 3.88 miles later. Yes, you read that correctly.

It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t deadly either. The exergaming had conditioned me to be able to go farther than I’d thought possible. The shoes allowed me to recapture my childhood glee at tumbling along.

How many of you have moved outside this summer? What are your favorite outside workouts?

Feel free to post here or email me at jenn (at) jbmercurio (dot) com.

Related articles

• Advertising: Appealing to Runners, Even the Barefoot Brigade (nytimes.com)
• Campaign Takes On Barefoot Running Craze (adweek.com)
• The Minimalist Thing? - A Shoe Review (breathlessrunner.wordpress.com)
• The State of the Running Shoe Market: Minimalism on the Rise (runblogger.com)
• Merrell Barefoot 2012 Lineup: Preview of the Merrell Road Glove, Dash Glove and More from Jason Robillard (runblogger.com)

Week "Away"

Some of you have been asking me what’s been going on, because I haven’t posted since leaving for the Games for Health conference in Boston last Wednesday. Basically, my bad.

First, to catch you up on the conference: Games for Health was fantastic. There were loads of interesting people doing fascinating work and networking to collaborate on even more nifty projects in the future. I’m still wrapping my head around all the panels, talks, discussions and ideas that were incubated there, as well as all of the incredible folks I was able to connect with.

Second, I’ve been under other deadlines this last week - hard deadlines that crept closer as I procrastinated with other work. Then, upon returning from Games for Health, the deadlines were there waiting for me with big neon smiles. Monday morning was do, or due, day.  So I put everything else aside, including exergaming, so that all my productive time could be focused on my Monday deadline like a laser beam. Well, it worked and I got the project in on time.

That being said, I didn’t work out for a week. Last Wednesday was my last full body exergame workout. I’d originally thought I’d workout at the conference but I wanted to spend all waking time at the actual conference and I didn’t want to exergame in front of people, because I didn’t want to look goofy and/or sweat. I’m simply too shy professionally. Then, with the deadline looming, I didn’t want to divert any attention from the project.  And you know what? It was ok. Life and balance mean that sometimes one must shift focus, but that doesn’t mean that one’s overall “penumbra of foci” shifts.

My body seems to be happy with what I’ve been doing with it overall, and it’s still 20 pounds down from my starting weight. So my weight is the same as it was last week. I must say that I’m pretty happily shocked with that fact, as one would assume that the weight would start creeping back up as soon as the exergaming stopped if even for a short respite.  But such was not the case, at least for this short break.

I also started a new 9 week program on EA Sports Active 2 today and worked myself up in quite a sweat.  So I’m back at it and working toward goal #3, which is another 10 pounds by the third week in August.

So onward and downward!

Related articles

• My Anytime Fitness Date (krisgetshealthy.com)
• From Pitful to Powerful In 10 Minutes Flat (h3roich3alth.wordpress.com)

The Biggest Loser Challenge

When I began the Gamers for Health exergaming initiative, my driving force was to use The Biggest Loser (TBL) exergame. I had watched the show in awe, and would sometimes get quite emotional about the physical and emotional hurdles the contestants would conquer. When I was a jock, oh so many years (decades!) ago, I’d had many coaches like Gillian, but my most effective coach had been one whose quiet approach was quite similar to Bob. For those of you who have never watched the show, they are the two main trainers, and there are presently two more who seem to kick ass through kickboxing cross training.

 In the last couple of weeks, I’ve catalogued my nervousness and sense of loss as my months with EA Sports Active 2 (EASA2) came to a close. I really dug that video game. And it dragged me to the edge of my abilities to help me extend my limits. It was my uncomfortable comfort zone, and I loved it.

Last week, I began The Biggest Loser Challenge (TBLC) for Wii. Going into it, I made a couple of mistakes that impacted my workouts. First, I didn’t use my balance board – big mistake. Second, I programmed my profile to give me 40 minute workouts – also a mistake. Again, after EASA2, I was ready for a workout to meet or surpass my current fitness level, and that would pull me to new levels of sweat and pain. These two miscalculations cost me a week of weight loss, but gave me a week of new knowledge. If you’re used to running sprints, changing to a slow job is not gonna push you to further fitness levels.

Yesterday, in a sense of desperation before running screaming back to EASA2, I created a new profile and used the balance board to measure my weight. The simple addition of the balance board opened up a whole new level – a “secret level,” if you will - of the workouts. For some reason, doing pushups on the balance board had sweat dripping off me onto the board, whereas those same pushups on the floor only worked my muscles. The balance board did something to throw the regular pushup into hyper overdrive. It was a whole different animal.  Basically all of the exercises yesterday were like that.

Comparatively, last week I sweat a little bit, but got really concerned that I wasn’t getting a good enough burn. My weight also didn’t seem to be moving anywhere, and instead went up a couple pounds, which broke my one pound a week losing streak and had me a bit freaked out. I’ll discuss this more in another post this week. I was glum, disappointed and told those who asked that I really didn’t want to dismiss TBLC, so I needed to go all out on the workout this week to give it another chance.

Well, the addition of the balance board and the extra time in the workout did the trick. Last week, I’d programmed in 40 minute workouts, which took me about 48 minutes to complete. Yesterday, I programmed in a 50 minute program, which actually took me 1 hour and 9 minutes. It’s an understatement to say that I sweat and had shortness of breath. I SWEAT, was GASPING for breath at many points in the workout and my heart raced. It felt like I sweat out five pounds, which for me is a big compliment.

I look forward to seeing how the workout goes tomorrow, and whether I can complete as many sets with the precision of “a yoga master.” Hopefully there will be a lot of sweat involved. Buy it.

Full Disclosure: THQ gave me a copy of The Biggest Loser Challenge to try out and use.

Spring Springing

With temperatures reliably hitting the mid-sixties, and today even going up to the mid-eighties, one’s mind naturally turns to outside activities. Like our blooming daffodils, pictured above, I want to turn my face up to the sun.

But practicality prevails. Generally I can work out early in the morning, before shifting my attention to work. Right now, with early morning temperatures still in the 30s, my Wii is a much more realistic workout for me. Most other people around here seem to feel the same way, as we see runners jogging by in the weekend afternoons, but no one is on the road on foot as I work out in the workweek mornings.

Video game publishers seem to understand this will to go outside. Both EA Sports Active 2 and The Biggest Loser 2 set a good portion of their workouts outside. It’s as though nature is calling us to be healthy and simply stick with the program.  Unfortunately, the setting doesn’t make the workouts any easier.

In this season of renewal, with green things blossoming and baby animals frolicking, personal rebirth also comes into play. Lent, Passover and Easter all guide us renew ourselves spiritually. I’d argue that it’s also a good time to revitalize our contracts with ourselves to get fit and lose weight.

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.

Related articles

• Wii Fit Plus Review (fitnesstroop.com)

EA Sports Active 2 Wii Part II (3.14.11)

This is the second in a two part discussion of EA Sports Active 2 (EASA2), answering some of the questions I’ve been getting on this particular product. I want to reiterate that I love the product. It’s pretty hard, and the circuit is always full of loads of squats and strength training.

Now, to get back to answering direct questions…

People ask about time commitments. The challenges require you to work out 4 days a week, taking 3 rest days. The 21-day challenge workouts start out at around 20 minutes and scale up over the 21 days to 40 minutes in length. The 9-week challenge workouts start at around 35 minutes and scale up beyond 45 minutes in length. Presently I’m five weeks in and my workouts are averaging around 45 minutes. I generally do the regular challenge workout and add a second workout to get my time over an hour. So that can mean, for example, a 20 minute challenge workout plus a hard forty minute mountain gravity workout, or a 40 minute challenge workout plus a 30 minute step aerobics class.

Other than the challenges, there are a lot of other options. I’ve tried out a bunch of their other single session workouts that are pre-programmed into the disc and particularly like the mountain gravity and core upper body workouts. They also have one, whose name I forget, but it’s basically the “ya wanna try to kill yourself” workout - that one really makes you sweat. Additionally, you can ask the trainer(s) to create a new workout targeting the body area or type of exercise you want. And then there’s the ability for you to create your own workouts using all of the exercises they offer. I’ve used this to create multiple step aerobics classes for myself that I use routinely.

EASA2 also allows you to go online, workout with groups, find additional exercise options and there’s an online help component too. While I haven’t used any of the online resources, I hear from many people that they’re as great as everything on the disc.

As I mentioned above, weight training is integrated into all of their workouts. They give you a stretch band to use, along with handles, but for someone looking for instructions on everything related to video games, I was flummoxed on how to set the thing up. Probably from a company standpoint, it seems intuitive that someone would know, but I’m admitting here that this someone looked at the handles, looked at the band, looked for instructions and continuously went through that loop. It took me two weeks to realize that I simply needed to tie the ends of the cord around one loop of the offered hand holds. Let me simply say that the strength workouts are much easier once one has attached the handholds.

The program often tells you to lengthen your hold on the band to make the workout easier and to shorten it to make it more rigorous. I’d like to add that if you have them, you can also substitute free weights for the fitness band. While I have free weights, I haven’t gone there yet, as I get a nice burn from using the fitness band.

While I love EASA2 for Wii, and would suggest that it’s great for most people, I would caution folks with bad joints to use something a little less strenuous to start. The constant squats, mountainclimbers, running and jumping could be very intense for someone with bad joints. For such a person, I’d advise starting with, for example, a Gamercize stepper, Wii FIT or Just Dance 2 in order to build up the muscles around one’s joints before trying EASA2.

Buy It.

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

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.