Archive for May, 2009

Exergaming and the Wii begin another beautiful relationship. Two days before the ‘official’ release in Australia, I got my mitts on the game and have just now finished two 25 min workouts. One a preselected workout and the other customised. So I’ll give a very brief overview of my findings:

In short, it does so many things right, that you can excuse most of what it doesn’t do, or what it does poorly. Comparison with Wii Fit is inevitable, and you can well understand the logic behind the comparison, but they are apples and oranges. Wii Fit is light-hearted, with its BMI heart in the right place and a fantastic, simplistic and joyous sense of humour. It’s a fitness game, but certainly more of a game than a fitness solution. EA Active is its polar opposite. For the very hard too please or those people needing exceptional motivation and incentive to train, a morphing of EA Active and Wii Fit would be near perfect, as both have ingredients which would work very well together.

However , there is no doubt about it, what ‘Active’ does well it does very well. It is instructional perhaps overly so, but it must err on the side of caution for a multitude of ‘safety and litigacious’ reasons.  The graphics suffice, they don’t offend but aren’t terribly inspiring either; best described as ‘functional’.
One thing Active does well, is with exercise choice. It has dozens of variations and months worths of combinations before boredom would settle in. It has four main areas from which you can choose your activities, one of which is a ‘sports’ catagory which I played volleyball and tennis. Both games were fast paced to keep the heart rate elevated, and for me, fun, but I’m easy pleased with sports sims and very forgiving. By blending combinations from all 4 zones you have a great selection of aerobic and anaerobic exercises.

This is definitely not a ‘game’. It is an instructional, interactive fitness program. That isn’t a complaint merely a fact. If you were expecting gameplay then look elsewhere.

Oh, you’ll need more room than you think as well, so give yourself a larger area to move round to avoid jumping on all the ‘bits n pieces’ you use during the program.

Standard comments over with, now let’s talk about re-engineering, adaption and a tad of innovation. In other words, let’s critique this baby from the Hardcore Exergaming perspective Quite simply, EA Sports Active has MASSIVE ‘Exergaming’ potential. How so? Well first of all, throw out the ‘elastic band’ that comes packaged with the game (it would suffice for few weeks for the very beginner, at best). Go out and buy more effective bands. Sure, that’s more money but it’s worth it. Exercise bands can be found at any Sports shop, just ask the staff as they often vary in resistance. My band of choice is the outstanding Finnish designed GymStick. This ups the intensity of all upper and lower body exercises dramatically, get one now!!
For the ‘track exercises’ (running, kick backs, knee raises etc), use a minitrampoline and your own treadmill for running if you have one. I have an adaptor which allows use of any Crosstrainer for running simulations, it works incredibly well. For Active, I’ll be making adaptors to fit standard dumbells, to which I can attach the Wii mote and nunchuck. This will allow a much superior workout and infinitely adjustable resistance and intensity as a result.  Put all these adaptions together and you will have a superb workout that would make the most hardened cynic weak at the knees, literally.

If you haven’t already, buy a wirelessly connected nunchuck and wiimote. That cable dangling between the two is just too short, especially when doing jump squats and full extension movements.

With some adaption and lateral thinking, Active has the potential to be a VERY serious fitness alternative even for the ‘serious’ trainer! As it is, it’s an excellent intervention, and will certainly get people off the couch and on a very well laid out fitness course (the 30 day challenge).

As I said at the outset, what it does well, it does very well. The worst I can say about Active is it’s ‘functional’. In the next few weeks I’ll be giving it a serious ‘Exergaming overhaul’. It will then rise from functional to fantastic…Let the  Games / Exergames begin!

Innovation, evolution and revolution are human imperatives, no doubt. In the realm of technology, these imperatives extend across the entire software/hardware process, from conception to manufacturing and roll-out. However, when you apply these mainstays to more ‘emotive’ areas of our lives, it becomes all too easy to ‘box’ or package arising trends and technologies, in an effort to understand what may initially seem odd, alien or even ridiculous. Exergaming certainly engenders a diversity of reactions, often resulting in bewilderment or confusion, depending on the listener’s background. Thus presenting Exergaming as an innovative, evolutionary if not revolutionary fitness alternative, can be quite a challenge. At the very least, you have to be mindful of your audience, and tailor your explanation accordingly.

So what, you say, content customization is standard fare for many products and services, that’s true of course, however Exergaming’s rubbery nature compounds the difficulty in characterizing it. Ironically, it’s a victim of it’s strengths in that respect. Exergaming’s inherent adaptability and ease in adopting technologies, create a chameleon like identity, which morphs to suit its environment readily and rapidly. This was exemplified recently when my business advisor asked me to choose a business plan based on two ‘fitness challenges’ and a commensurate solution and strategy for each. Since our business model can incorporate any ‘Exergaming product’ and we use a flexible method of service delivery, I found choosing just two challenges VERY difficult. One challenge seemed patently obvious – PE alternatives for primary school aged children. An Exergaming Hardware/Product based solution would be an effective strategy. However, with a little thought, and broadening the scope of the model, Exerlearning offers a cognitive, behavioural and fitness benefit that is hard to ignore. Thinking further, and an ‘Active Playground‘ solution, from companies such as Smart Us, in Finland, are an exciting alternative. Which to choose?

We are spoilt for choice and our choices are increasingly steadily, if not daily. How we apply the plethora of available options becomes more important than any one particular product or service, this wasn’t necessarily the case in the recent past. Exergaming must remain innovative and adaptable and not be labelled a niche fitness alternative. This is somewhat problematic in establishing a ‘standard’ or even a definition forExergaming. We currently have a number of serviceable definitions for Exergaming, but as the genre is in constant flux, creating a concrete definition becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible. So whether we define this new ‘chameleon’ fitness alternative as Active gaming, Exergaming or Interactive gaming is perhaps irrelevant. Identifying the ‘fitness problem’ or challenge, case by case, and applying the imperatives of innovation, evolution and revolution will see this new genre continue to expand and become an entrenched, accountable fitness alternative.

I welcome your feedback, and please remember, this is purely my opinion and I’m certainly not precious about being criticised or questioned, far from it. If nothing else, I wish to merely continue the debate on the what, who, where, why and how of Exergaming.

In Part 2, I’ll look at how Exergaming can be integrated into conventional fitness environment, thereby transforming the fitness experience creating a highly motivational and effective training session that is effective at any existing fitness level! Enough theorizing and speculation, it’s time to get down and dirty