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Scientific research supports physical activity as an effective approach to minimize mounting health concerns and Physical Education teachers are using this research and exciting new methods to re-define “what is PE”. PE teachers are the doing their part by rasing awareness that fitness can be fun, in a way that kids today understand – technology.

The technology skilled PE teachers of today are learning to use “exergames” in classes – exergames are video-games combined with fitness. Nothing engages today’s school children more than technology, so it is no surprise exergames dramatically raise interest in PE class by making the class fun, challenging and rewarding. Exergaming is advocated throughout the U.S. by The Exergame Network (TEN). TEN’s mission is to share information, success stories and act as a portal resource for exergaming via it’s education wiki and blog.

Pioneering PE teachers encountered early challenges, sometimes experimenting with games consoles, like the Nintendo Wii, as a format to drive a PE class. Leading PE teachers now eagerly share the formula for success by using a wide range of exergame implementations. Successfully trialed exergames meet recommended exercise guidelines and can be integrated into structured PE lessons to the enjoyment and benefit of all students. Many PE teachers have developed the skills to use exergaming in a developmentally appropriate way, according to guidelines from PE centers of excellence, as a tool which can motivate and energize today’s youth.

A Florida PE teacher spoke confidently in support of exergaming, “This is the first time in 11 years of teaching PE that I’ve had to kick kids out of class who don’t want to stop exercising.” One student summarizes the feelings of those involved in structured exergaming PE class “If the whole United States had a room like this, then this world would be a better place.” This evidence, supported by peer reviewed research, comes directly from the University of South Florida’s, Active Gaming Research Lab’s web archives and represents just two of the many success stories of research into all ages and different implementations of exergaming.

The support for exergaming has reached global proportions, demonstrated by quotes from the BBC News posted in the Gamercize web archives. A PE student talks about the immersive nature of exergaming “Sometimes when you’re playing netball or basketball you get a bit tired and then you say ‘Oh I don’t want to do this anymore’ but this is really fun and I think I could do it all day.” Her teacher is aware of how exergaming increases student involvement in PE, “Its certainly not physical education as we know it, but thats not what we’re looking for. Some kids want to take part in this who wouldn’t want to play football or other conventional sports.”

Educators, researchers and editors alike are encouraged to use exergaming technology in their classes by first visiting the TEN resource sites to participate, ask questions to the worlds foremost experts, share news and ideas on exergaming in PE and PA. Resource information from TEN includes the five major categories of exergaming implementations, from dance pads to dedicated “workout” games, at http://exergamenetwork.blogspot.com/p/types-of-exergaming.html. TEN has also listed exergaming products available in the US with a collection of nearly 40 different exergaming choices covering aspects of PE with many different modes of physical activity at http://exergamenetwork.blogspot.com/p/exergame-products.html.

The Exergame Network can be joined or contacted via LinkedIn, Facebook, Wiki, Twitter or by email at info@exergamenetwork.org.

The video below shows pioneering P.E. Teachers in the UK, why should it be any different in the USA or Australia? Feel free to leave a comment or contact Exergaming Australia directly.

Group fitness has been around for decades with it being popularized in commercial gyms around 1989 with the introduction of Step Aerobics. Today we can see simple varieties of Group Fitness ranging from traditional step classes to Les Mills “Body” sessions, Fitness Boxing, Pilates, Spin or RPM, to Zumba and outdoor and indoor boot-camps. Group Fitness can utilize a multitude of equipment from bikes, to body-building plates and bars, weighted bags, resistance bands or simply just lots of floor space. Most group activities include music and an instructor or some rhythmic component or cueing.

A large percentage of Group Fitness classes are based on some variation of dancing. Perhaps the most popular incarnation currently is Zumba, although it originated in the 90′s. Zumba is a mix of Latin and international music using interval training methods of fast and slow rhythms to create music driven fat burning sessions.

There is no doubting the popularity of music/dance oriented fitness training. It popularized Aerobics and it continues to this day to get people interested and attending Group Fitness sessions. What is also common to these group activities is the lack of true innovation, in fact there is a multitude of group activities that are regurgitating old practices and equipment i.e. Kettle bells, ropes, calisthenics etc. Now of course there is nothing wrong with these proven methods other than the fact that they unoriginal and lack imagination, but for the cautious fitness devotee they are certainly ‘tried and tested’. The old methods are effective, and let’s face it, retro everything seems to be ‘in’, again, but I do wonder if these conventional methods are truly capable of attracting a NEW audience to group fitness, in fact, in many ways the existing methods are a little ‘tired and tested’

Gym managers understand that ‘membership retention’ is key to a successful business operation. Programs like Zumba will certainly improve retention and may go some way to attracting a new demographic but in essence these group fitness formats are already ‘preaching to the converted’. So why aren’t fitness devotees coming out with original, 21st century solutions, why is retro the new black and what happens when they begin running out of eras to replicate? Well perhaps part of the answer lays with the fitness industry itself. Models take years to develop and license or franchise so the industry is not able to adapt to innovations as quickly as other industries. Two industries which are lightning fast to innovate are the technology and gaming sectors.

Now what if we could apply the amazingly innovative entertainment and technology industries to the fitness industry! Well wouldn’t you know it, it’s a done deal and it’s called iDANCE2 by Positive Gaming of Sweden.

Positive Gaming is the premiere producers of technology rhythm dance solutions worldwide. They are key sponsor in the extremely competitive and fast developing sport of Machine Dance and will host the 6th International Positive Gaming Machine Dance World Championship in July this year. Now you may not of heard of this sport, but you will, as the sport and the fitness activity have become available across the globe and now in Australasia.

iDANCE2 is the Group Fitness incarnation of Machine Dance. It was created from the ground up as a professional solution for public and private enterprises. What separates iDANCE2 from every other form of Group Fitness is that it’s based on entertainment technologies, in that regard, it puts FUN first and builds a comprehensive fitness system around that premise.

An iDANCE2 Group Fitness experience is like no other available anywhere! Up to 32 people can experience this fitness phenomenon at the same time. The fitness experience is all encompassing, and utterly accessible to all ages and abilities demonstrated by being able to host three difficulty levels (beginners, intermediate and expert) at the same time, effortlessly. Not only that, but the members in each level can compete (social or self competitiveness is in intrinsic with iDANCE2) equally due to ‘scoring and feedback features’ such as stepping accuracy.

To make the Group Fitness experience unforgettable iDANCE2 uses cutting-edge visual / graphics effects that allow all the class attendees to quickly see their realtime results on a massive large screen easily visible to everyone in the room. The Positive Gaming commissioned, original music is held by a worldwide license (For Australian readers, iDANCE2 is free of PPAC fees!) couple the international mixed genre song list with the compelling visual experience and you have a truly unique and engaging Group Fitness event.

Group Fitness professionals have already found iDANCE2  to be an easily accessible fitness-technology solution that is wonderfully entertaining and, quite simply, a lot of fun! (Please view the video for comments from the fitness experts). What existing professionals notice immediately is how this solution inherits the critical components of Group Fitness class synchronicity, cueing AND improvisation. As iDANCE2 is ‘game led’, this frees the instructor to critique individual members while also controlling the tempo, songs, graphic effects etc of the fitness experience with a huge array of instruction tools all available from a light weight wireless controller. Outstanding control and customization, which is only available due to its intrinsic entertainment-gaming abilities, nice!

By fusing entertainment and fitness technologies Postive Gaming have created a modern and motivating Group Fitness solution that will bring an entirely new sector of the population to the gym, community and fitness centres. It will value add to existing gyms and for the early adopters it will differentiate them from the norm.

The gaming component of iDANCE2 makes the solution extremely motivating as people will return again and again to improve their scores and performances in an equally motivating social environment. iDANCE2 was created for instructors and has a comprehensive teaching, recording and reporting system built in with following updates allowing data to be stored and retrieved online by the instructors and players.

iDANCE2 is an incredibly exciting Group Fitness solution that offers tremendous benefits to all the population. Gym owners will be suitably impressed with iDANCE2 as it offers a view into future fitness revenue streams. This is the future of group fitness because its fun, it works and it encourages all age groups and abilities. Give Exergaming Australia a call if you’d like a demonstration of the future in fitness in your centre today.

The G4H 2010 Boston conference is over and has already been hailed a tremendous success. This is the 6th G4H conference,  with this year’s event being split across two main venue areas.

The outside area encompassed the specialised “Exergaming Zone” created by our US partner Exegame Fitness USA. The Exergame Zone was incredibly popular plus being integral to demonstrating the physical ‘real world’ incarnations of Exergaming.

A contest, ‘One Million Steps’ was instituted to raise money for charity and to energize participants at the conference. The entire event was a showcase for the wonderful potential of Games for Health and Exergaming. Kudos to the organisers and attendees for their professionalism, enthusiasm and passion. G4H opitmises our Exergaming Australia motto of,  Serious Fun.

Original post by gamercize  on 25 May TEN website

In Boston this week, the annual Games for Health conference takes place. This is perhaps the premiere event fortheGames4Health fraternity and a time to highlight the solutions offered by Exergaming in the health, fitness, educationand rehabilitation sectors.

If you are a member of The Exergame Network’s (TEN) Website, Skype calls, Wiki, LinkedIn or Facebook collaboration groups then here’s a chance to meet outside the virtual world!

So, in the context of play we ‘exercise’. Adults go the gym and ‘lift’ weights, ‘do’ aerobics classes, ‘have’ a fitness boxing sessions or ‘get’ yelled at in boot camp or personal training sessions. But wait you say, adults do ‘play sport’, they ‘play cards’ they ‘play with their kids’ and yes you’re right, in the context of an associated activity we play, as that makes playing legitimate and gives the activity credence and acceptability…but,  I would argue that adults do not simply play. Or do we? There is one obvious activity where adults are allowed to play and that’s with PC, video or board games so we do ‘play games’. FYI: The average age of a gamer in Australia is 30! Not 3, 12 or 18 but 30…well and truly adult status. So adults can play games, interesting.

Well now, a breakthrough. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could re-engineer those games to maintain the fun and entertainment aspects AND make them as energetic as real play. Wouldn’t it be great if there were adult technology games that we play, that make us fitter and healthier? Well, we do and would you believe that this genre has been developing since 1982! It began with an Amiga game that used a peripheral amazingly similar to the Nintendo Wii Fit Balance Board. This new entertainment fitness game genre was called Exergaming, and boy has it come on leaps and strides since 1982.

It’s perhaps only over the last decade that the technology for exergaming has become truly feasible. Many of the technological advances in miniaturization, reduction in manufacturing costs, lightweight materials etc, has made domestic exergaming products affordable and family friendly. I suppose this is most readily demonstrated by the wireless motion-sensing platform of the Nintendo Wii. So exergaming has truly come of age, and this is just the beginning!

To borrow a line from Ironman 2, “..technology will make anything possible..”, that is certainly debatable, but it is true that it has made exergaming possible and lately, highly effective. PLAY on the other hand costs nothing, requires nothing except imagination, perhaps a stick, and a rock. PLAY is the polar opposite of technology, so you would think mixing the two would produce nothing but a malfunctioning malady, in reality it has produced a past time that makes it okay for adults to play, it makes play credible and still fun. At Exergaming Australia, we use the essence of this morphing of technology and play in our motto – ‘Serious Fun’.

So, what’s wrong with fitness today. Well for a start, it certainly isn’t play. It’s a ‘serious’ minded activity. Fitness and exercise have become billion dollar industries where ‘fun’ and ‘Play’ have no role to play, so to speak. Fitness has become very serious business, very complicated and very expensive with a lot of companies and individuals becoming celebrities simply because they yell louder and have considerably larger biceps than we mere mortals have. But I wonder how many people think this kind of combative fitness is actually fun?  We’ve become accustomed to militant combat or mixed martial arts classes or fitness boxing, and there is certainly no doubting the effectiveness of these methods, they work very well, but they are not for everyone, around 85% of us in fact! Perhaps we should all join the armed forces and be forced to get fit, at least then we could get paid to improve our fitness, as it stands now WE are paying the armed forces to get us fit!

My point is, fitness and exercise, constructed around activities that supposably motivate us due to yelling and screaming ex-military personnel, is not play it’s not entertainment and it’s certainly not fun. It is effective however, no denying that, but it is NOT fun!

Think about when we were kids, when we simply played because it was fun. We never thought about the fitness benefits as we bounded about playgrounds or slogged cricket balls over the back fence. We had boundless energy because we were kids, we were having fun and we did it day after day as a result. Our parents would have been grateful to see us playing as we were entertaining ourselves and out from under their feet, but I bet they never thought, “great, Brett is really improving his aerobic fitness with those short burst between the wickets in cricket”. Nevertheless, play is just for children isn’t it? Adults must do adult things like workout and workup a sweat and just work. Well, I beg to differ!

Again, Exergaming turns modern concepts of exercise on its head. We return to the notion of Play and Fun. If we are truly enjoying what we are doing, we’ll keep doing it willingly, will-power won’t enter into it, we will no longer have to gee ourselves up, torment ourselves with guilt so as to motivate ourselves back to the gym. Exergaming is intrinsically self-motivating as it is entertaining, fun AND physically beneficial – win, win and win. So what is it about exergaming that separates it from normal fitness and exercise activites?

1. I know I’ve mentioned it ‘several’ times already, but I must emphasize the fun factor. Exergaming takes the best entertainment technologies available (in games, movies, music and software) and then makes those activities physically challenging. It also requires that the best exergames are fun first and fitness second. That certainly doesn’t mean fitness is ‘secondary’, quite the opposite, it actually means fitness can be inherently fun, thus sustainable like when we played as kids, day after day, year after year.

2. Exergaming is born from computer & console gaming it therefore inherits some of the most powerful and engaging aspects of gaming, namely:

a. Mutliplayer – you can play cooperatively or competitively with your friends, family and mates.
b. Online Multiplayer – as above but you can do so against or with people all round the world 24/7.

3. Results ‘NOW’ – Fitness activities, especially those requiring us to lose weight or simply get fitter can make progress seem excruciatingly slow and tedious, which makes it extremely difficult to stay motivated. Exergaming often has very detailed feedback data, which is tremendously valuable in tracking your progress instantly. Exergaming can tell you your game score, the accuracy of your movements, the power of your blows, the timing of your steps, the speed of your punches, the quality of your cognition and much much more. This gives you direct and immediate feedback on your progress and is tremendously motivating. You use that recorded data as a motivation to improve your previous scores, or to beat a family members score or perhaps even someone who has left their score on a social network site that you visit. Trying to improve your results requires you to be fitter, stronger, more agile more focused more rhythmical and be better at playing the game.

4. Exergaming is geared up for Social Networking. Exergaming is a natural fit for sharing your results, swapping stories and sharing strategies online and in group forums and chat applications like Facebook. Gamers have been sharing statistics online since the internet began and have created vast online communities who support their past times actively and vigorously.

Thanks to Gamercize for the use of the playful picture

5. Exergaming is incredibly accessible – The best Exergames allow people of any physical ability and age to participate together, in the same class at the same time and even compete against each other equally! This flexibility is intrinsic in Exergaming and allows people of any generation to share an activity in synchronicity.

This makes Exergaming wonderfully accessible to everyone, everywhere and again enhances the socializing affects of adult playtime, what normal fitness methods would call a ‘workout’, kinda’ dull in comparison.

Take your pick, would you prefer to have fun first and get a fantastic fitness benefit from your playtime or make that concerted effort to motivate yourself to the gym and the cardio machine factory that waits in steely silence? My choice is clear: Playtime – GAME ON!

Controlled burning is a method of reducing the impact of fires and their devastation. Reducing the fuel which fires need to spread just makes sense, essentially, fighting fire with fire. At first glance and to anyone unfamiliar with the practice, it would seem lunacy to willingly burn away areas of the countryside, but these ‘controlled’ burn-offs work to reduce the risk of damage when faced with an ‘uncontrolled’ forest fire.

The strategy is certainly effective but requires skill, the right tools and continued maintenance to work effectively. So fighting fire with fire does work, quite literally. Not surprisingly, this old adage and has been applied to a countless number of endeavours as a means to solve a problem head on.

In that regard, we’ve employed its use, at least in kind, as one of our key strategies. Our Fighting Fire with Fire strategy fights an even more destruction condition that is having a terrible effect on our nation’s health – Childhood and Adult obesity. We are not alone in that respect, a woeful number of first world countries are in similarly dire health conditions which has given rise to a phrase used more commonly everyday – ‘Globesity’.

This catastrophe, and I don’t use the word lightly, is fuelled by many factors: overindulgence in fast foods,  little to no food education in our homes or schools, inadequate and inconsistent schools PE curriculum, poor  meal and food selections, gigantic meal portion sizes, misleading food product labelling (low fat often equals high sugar), an  increase in sedentary screen time in front of the TV, PC and games console and disenchantment with existing traditional exercise and sports habits and options – there are many more contributors. That is a depressing list but it serves to highlight some of the reasons behind this epidemic.

I truly wish I was exaggerating, I certainly don’t wish  to sensationalise the situation anymore than countless media reports have already done so. Let’s be brutally honest, we’ve all heard and read these statistics ourselves, we know the situation is critical yet people seem powerless to do anything about it. As a result I believe many of us have become desensitised to the problem, it just seems too overwhelming. Fortunately, we don’t feel that way, far from being overwhelmed, we’ve decided to act and do something about the situation now! The contents of this website and the people that make up Exergaming Australia, our partners and our networks, will explain exactly how we plan to go about becoming part of the solution.

A key component in that solution is in applying our own version of Fighting Fire with Fire. Our strategy is applied directly toward the physical activity and exercise casualties in the obesity crisis, and we are not alone in doing so. A global network of researchers, clinicians, innovators, developers from the private and public sectors are equally passionate about finding solutions which utilize some of the ingredients that fuel this fire, and we applaud them for being so bold. We will continue to work with them daily to become more relevant and to bring these bold solutions to the wider public asap.

So how does our strategy work? Part 2 will explain all

“The government expects these investments will catalyse the nation’s Serious Games sector growth to reach a market value of $400 million by 2012.”

The South Korean government and associated partners are to be applauded for the foresight. The market in Serious Gaming, Gaming for Health and Exergaming seems patently obvious, I hope the Australian government is being approached by lobby groups and can take some inspiration to what is happening elsewhere in Australasia.

With Rudds emphasis on bringing our region in from the Broadband abyss, the time seems ripe to develop parallel offline and online technology driven businesses. Australia could be very well placed to deliver worlds best practices in the brave new world of gaming, both for pleasure and enterprise.

Should any Australian ‘games’ practitioners/developers/innovators etc, be reading this, please lend your weight to our fledgling Exergaming google groups at http://groups.google.com/group/exergames-australia?hl=en