Because I’m sick of feeling like a decrepit old man and I can’t quite muster up the mental wellbeing to head to the gym right now, I dusted off my copy of Fitness Boxing 2 for Nintendo Switch and have been giving it a go for the last couple of days. I considered grabbing the new Hatsune Miku version of the game, but it’s £50 and I haven’t yet established a good routine with the two previous entries in the series I have on my shelf. So I thought I’d do something about it.
The trouble with exercise is that it always feels like it’s going to be a bloody nightmare to get started, particularly after a long period of inactivity, but then once you actually do it it’s rather satisfying. My two sessions of Fitness Boxing 2 over the past couple of days have been hard work for someone as out of shape as I am — though my rhythm game skills have netted me a “Fitness Age” of 24 on both occasions, thereby proving once and for all that such a metric is, as everyone suspected, complete bollocks — but I’ve come out of both of them feeling like I’ve done something worthwhile, and something that, in the long run, will be good for me.
For those unfamiliar with Fitness Boxing, it’s a game that somewhat follows the mould of Nintendo’s classic Wii-era fitness games, only with a bit more of a specific focus rather than providing lots of minigames. At its core, it’s a rhythm game, tasking you with using the Joy-Cons to punch in various ways and, in the more advanced workouts, ducking, weaving and suchlike, too — though pleasingly, given how dodgy the motion detection can be on movements other than punching, you can turn any troublesome exercises off, or set the game to automatically score you “Perfect” on them, regardless of what the Joy-Cons tell the Switch you were doing.
A full daily workout consists of several stages, beginning and ending with some simple stretches. In between, you’ll have a series of specific workouts of varying degrees of intensity and difficulty, typically following your opening stretches and preceding your closing stretches with something relatively gentle and putting one or more fairly high-intensity (and longer) ones in the middle.
Each individual stage tends to unfold in the same way. You’ll start in “orthodox” stance (left foot forward, right foot back) and gradually be introduced to a complete combo, usually one move at a time but sometimes a bit quicker in the shorter, lower-intensity stages. You’ll gradually build up to performing the full combo, and in a special “Zone” sequence where you get more points, you perform the full combo multiple times in rapid succession — typically four, six or eight times in a row without a gap in between, depending on the length of the combo.
After that, you switch to “southpaw” stance (right foot forward, left foot back) and then do the exact same thing, but the other way around. In the higher intensity, longer workouts, you’ll then do another combo, again both in orthodox and southpaw stances, and then you’re done.
Typically a short stage lasts about 5-6 minutes, and longer stages are about 11-12 minutes apiece. The “Normal” intensity workout for a day consists of stretches, two short stages and two long stages, totalling about 35-40 minutes of activity altogether; you also have the choice of doing a slightly shorter or longer workout, which equates to about 25-30 or 45-50 minutes of activity respectively by varying the number of stages in the complete workout.
As someone who is desperately unfit, the pacing of the exercises seem OK to me at the moment. The longer stages definitely feel like an effort to endure, but that’s good — they’re not so difficult that I can’t make it through them, but I do feel like I’m doing some actual work that will be beneficial.
I could be doing them better, of course; the game suggests that when you’re not punching, you bob back and forth in time with the music and I can’t quite manage to keep that up constantly along with all the other stuff, but I’m sure I can get there over the long term. The important thing is, after all, getting started.
The trainer voices throughout are rather repetitive, but helpful in giving you cues and encouragement, and the visual demonstration of what you’re supposed to be doing (“mirrored” so you can follow along more easily) is very helpful. The game-like feel to the whole thing makes it feel more “fun” than some other forms of exercise, and there’s a wide range of musical accompaniments to go along with your workouts — including both instrumental versions of “real” songs and some original stuff composed specifically for the game. The original stuff is actually quite a bit better than some of the Kidz Bop-tier arrangements, but honestly part of the fun of the game is the absurdity inherent in aggressively throwing punches to something like Hot and Cold by Katy Perry or the frigging YMCA.
I have a long drive tomorrow afternoon after work, and then a long drive back home after work the day after, so I’ll likely take a rest for at least tomorrow and possibly the day after also, depending on how I feel when I get back, but I intend to get back to this as soon as I can. It feels pitched at about the level I can deal with right now, and I think it’ll just be helpful to get moving a bit in any way. Because I’m sick of waking up aching all over like someone twice my age, and I suspect a significant part of the reason that is happening is because I haven’t been exercising.
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