Last year we bought the Wii Fit board and program as soon as it was released. We used that program pretty regularly for a few months but interest waned and it went unused for several months. It’s a good program but there are some features that can be rather annoying. Of course, there’s also the boredom factor.

I think it was earlier this year that Electronic Arts released EA Active, which slightly uses the Wii fit board along with the Wii controllers. I liked this program in many ways but it didn’t work for me. And I really mean it didn’t work because when using it for certain exercises, it would say I was doing it wrong. So I would attempt to correct myself but it just wouldn’t recognise me any longer and I’d have to restart everything. I tried to put up with it but it became more frustration than anything. There were also exercises in some of the routines that were just a bit too rough on my knees which left just the custom routines. I would have worked it out if I could have overcome the more technical problem.

More recently, an update to the Wii Fit program was released, aptly called Wii Fit Plus. Essentially this is the Wii Fit program with some added features and activities. I tried these out once or twice before it sat for a few weeks. But then I got back into it and have at the least been doing the body check nearly every day. I manage to do the body training part once or twice a week most of the time. I’ve had a good run so far this month and seem to be getting better at some of the exercises. Even my balance improved although it’s been really poor the past two days. The new activities really add a bit of life to the program and provide motivation to keep exercising. The only problem with this set up is the Wii Fit board itself because it’s literally breaking on one side. We hopefully will get at least couple more months out of it before it needs to be replaced.

I’ve noticed a lot of fitness programs showing up at the shops lately so I thought it would be good to have some sort of alternative program to prevent boredom. One that had pretty good reviews was the Gold’s gym cardio workout. It’s essentially a boxing program. I found a used copy at EA games at a good price so I decided to try it out. So far it’s looking good.  The big positive on this program so far is that it assume you don’t know how to do any of the moves and has tutorials for all before you do the workout. I haven’t gotten through all the tutorials but the Scientist finished today and did the full workout and really likes it. It seems like something I will also like once I get used to the moves. So far the only criticism of this program is the lack of a metric units option. Both the Scientist and I had to convert our measurements to imperial units to set up our profiles.

So today the Scientist and I went out and got a new program called Your Shape. We haven’t found too many reviews as yet because it’s so new. The program has a camera which is intended to scan your body and work out a routine based on your body shape. I think it’s also supposed to allow you to watch yourself to help correct what you’re doing. When it loaded, the first thing we noted was the very American accent of the trainer. Aside from the Wii Fit, all the accents have been American…they are progressively getting more annoying with each title we try. But this particular one makes no sense at all. There seem to be two versions of this program in distribution from what I can work out. In the US, the program features Jenny McCarthy  and the boxes I’ve seen online clearly state that. Here, an animated trainer is featured but with an American accent. I don’t quite see why they have released a separate version but used another American instead of using a British accent (which is fairly usual). That aside, we can’t stand Jenny McCarthy and would never have bought this had she been in it. Too bad for us…

The next thing we discovered is that you’re supposed to have eight to ten feet between you and the camera. Our living room is quite small and there’s no way we’d manage that in any configuration of our furniture. It’s just not big enough. This information is not stated on the box anywhere, not even in small print. Had we known this, we’d never have bought it. We tried to make it work anyway. For the Scientist, the camera didn’t read him all that well due to his brown skin. He’s not all that dark but he seemed to blend into the background far more than I did. I can only imagine how a really dark-skinned person would manage with it.

The program jumps right into the exercises and seems to assume you know what to do. There are tutorials that can be watched but I found they were too fast and complicated for my clumsy body and mind. I did get a bit better with some practice but I always felt I was floundering around instead of doing the exercise correctly. Meanwhile that annoying voice was making increasingly condescending remarks…It wasn’t even so much what was being said as the way it was being said. It was like some adults talk to children…I remember the boys were both highly annoyed by the dentist talking to them as though they were preschoolers. Well, this was quite similar. I found the camera was reading me as doing some of the exercises correctly when I definitely wasn’t. And a couple of very simple exercises that I am pretty sure I was doing correctly were wrong…The whole thing just left me mentally exhausted for trying to figure out what to do next. This program is really suited for people who are already fit and know how to do these sort of exercises.

Needless to say I am not happy with the program. The Scientist is going to attempt to return it in the morning. If that doesn’t work I will just try to sell it online.