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Wii Fit on Wii is a unique and innovative way to help you and your family stay fit in the comfort of your home, through simple daily exercises. More than a gaming experience, Wii Fit is a health and lifestyle product with more than 40 exercises, across four categories: balance games, yoga, muscle workouts and aerobic exercises. Whether you're doing a yoga pose or snowboarding down a slalom course, there's an activity for everyone.
Wii Fit and the included motion sensitive Wii Balance Board, work together with the Wii console to allow you to get a detailed analysis of your physical condition by analysing your BMI (Body Mass Index), and centre of gravity. After you have checked your BMI, you can do a simple balance test, and be assigned your Wii Fit Age. Now you are ready to trial any of the four categories.
Put your strength to the test with the muscle workouts. Your on-screen instructor will guide you through muscle-toning exercises such as torso twists, arm and leg lifts rowing squats, or try one of the challenges such as the push-up challenge.
Get your heart pumping with aerobic exercises including super hula hoop, advanced step, rhythm boxing and basic run. Or work on your balance and flexibility with yoga poses like deep breathing, tree, sun salutation and half moon.
The balance games include soccer heading, ski jump, tightrope walk and bubble balance among others, and allow you to focus on your balance whilst having fun.
Wii Fit can help you to burn calories, work out your muscles, improve your balance or learn to stretch and relax with yoga poses. The Wii Balance Board gauges exactly where your balance and body mass are placed, so your on-screen instructor ensures you perform every exercise correctly. You can even pick and choose your exercises to ensure training remains fun! As you exercise, Wii Fit tracks your progress and unlocks additional exercises for you as you go.
You can also monitor your exercise regime, as up to eight people can store and compare their Wii Fit data. Your data is presented in a graph so you can easily track and compare how you are going. If you are not the competitive type, you can always lock this component and keep your statistics a secret! Wii Fit also comes with the Wii Fit Channel, which gives you quick access to your daily progress.
Product reviews...
Review by: kiwifi
Dated: 17th of November, 2009
Wii Fit from Nintendo is a fun way to keep tabs on your fitness.
To start, you enter a variety of personal details: height, age etc. From this the program can work out your ideal weight. Of course true 'ideal weight' covers a range that is normal, but the machine has limitations so it simply works out one precise figure (e.g. 56.3 kg or BMI 22). That being said, when you set your goals for target weight/BMI it does indicate a range of targets as still being ideal for you, so it's doing ok! (Then again, if you don't enter your height very accurately, that will also throw out your apparent 'ideal' weight/BMI.)
After you step on the board - the program calculates your actual weight & BMI etc. Then you can do a fitness 'test' and find out your 'Wii Fit age'. This part is quite humorous and I would caution anyone against taking it too seriously. So many factors can affect the outcome, like the difference between having the board on a hard floor or thick carpet for example (affects how well you can balance). You might end up being told your 'Wii Fit age is 20+ years younger or older than what you really are. I think I have ranged from about 30 to 64 (still working on getting down to 24, lol). Regardless of how specifically accurate it's various measures are - they are internally consistent and serve as a useful monitor. The main reason I like the Wii Fit is that you can quickly see a chart of your progress over time, in a fun way.
There are some very good exercises included, which do give a pretty decent work out (only if you do them though, heh!). Not all of the Yoga or muscle exercises require the balance board, but most do.
You can choose a male or female trainer and I do like that you can toggle front or rear view. Having used eye toy (Kinetic, and Kinetic Combat), and various exercise DVDs like Tai Chi etc where the trainer always faces you - I wondered how long before it occurred to producers to allow the user to toggle views so the trainer is working in the same orientation as you (Gold star for Wii Fit!).
I guess the hardest bit is maintaining inner discipline and time management to consistently keep with any exercise regimen for best value. I also do other kinds of exercise (cycling, cross-trainer etc) so I don't often spend a long time on a lot of Wii Fit exercises in any one session. I prefer to weigh in, do a fitness test, check my progress logs and then choose a few exercises (mostly yoga and muscle toning).
I have only one minor complaint. Surely they understood from the start that by nature these exercises would be repeated many times, so the trainer's 'post exercise' comments should be able to be instantly skipped or even set to 'no comments' at the user's discretion. It is really a very small gripe, but when you are on a busy schedule those extra few seconds at the end of every exercise seem to be wasting your time, as you have already heard this information many times...
Overall, Wii Fit (and accompanying balance board) has been a worthwhile and enjoyable purchase.
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