I wrote a while back about the Wii Fit coming out and then again later about how incredibly popular Wii Fit seems to be. Well I heard a rumor last night about the local supermarket getting Wii Fits to put on sale this morning and I was third in line and had my New Wii Fit hooked up by 7:30 this morning.
Wii Fit First Impressions
Well I put the batteries (included) into the Wii Board and started the initial sign-in. I chose my Mii that I have been using on the Wii and it sucked in my birthdate, weighed me, asked me how tall I am and what year I was born and then after a couple quick balance tests gave me some results.
I was not too happy with the results. I am in real life 41 and at 6 feet tall I weigh 193 so the Wii Fit told me that I was over by BMI standards and had a Wii Fit age of 52….a bit of a kick to my ego.
After the Wii Fit has figured out your health level it gets you to set your own target, short or long term for what you want to do with your BMI. I wanted to drop 10 pounds, my eight year old daughter of course is not on any kind of gain or loss regimen and my wife? Well I am not sure what my wife set her goal for.
One more thing that is nice about the Wii Fit is that each person can set a password for their Mii. My wife, even after 10 years of marriage has never told me how much she weighs, so she did her setup when we were not around and set a password, I set a password too but this was so that the kids don’t accidently overwrite my settings and info.
Gameplay or Exercises on the Wii Fit
After you have setup your Mii, which takes about 5 to 10 minutes you are ready to start your exercises. There are Five categories of exercise; Yoga, Aerobics, Strength, Cardio, and Balance Games. In each of the categories you have four of five activities that you can do with each being between one and five minutes each and your time working out is constantly added to a little piggy bank that gives you new activity options as you workout more minutes.
I have been through a bunch of the exercises and it is funny how we have preconcieved ideas of our fitness level. I expected that my balance would be great and it seems not to be so. Also I thought that I may suck aerobically but I did better then I expected.
One of the problems of course is that all of the cardio is some variation of running in place or stepping in place but of course this is taking place on a TV so there are not a lot of options until people come up with addons to the Wii fit.
Do I like Wii Fit on day one?
I really do like the Wii Fit. I am a bit torn as to how well the cardio will be on it and I may just skip this altogether but the balance and agility on the Wii Board are really good and very challenging. One of the problems that many people have with exercise is that it can be monotonous, you only have so many exercises that you regularly do. In the case of the Wii Fit there will be about 50 exercises in the end that you can do so thare is a ton of variety. Every person is our family is going to have fun with this and I am sure there are lots of ways that the Wii Fit is going to help us get healthier.
I am niot sure if people are really going to buy a Wii so that they can play around with the Wii Fit, but if you already have a Wii and are not using it as much as you though you woould then i think that getting the Wii Fit will really be a lot of fun and having a fun way to get exercise and improve your health in my view is the best way to go.