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.
