Tag: fitness

#oneaday, Day 99: One Away

This is not me.

Tomorrow marks my centennial on the #oneaday train. That's pretty good going. I know some people are ahead of me already, but we should all celebrate each others' milestones. And the way I choose for you all to celebrate my own milestone is to buy me cake. Particularly as it's my birthday soon.

Anyway, cake aside, what I wanted to talk about today is exercise. I've managed, through some serious mental reconditioning that may or may not have involved an electric cattle prod, to get back into a gym routine. I've been every day for the last few days. That may sound like a lot to some, but the last time I jumped in with this intensity it had a noticeably positive impact on my body. I felt better and I looked better. I mean sure, I was still a tubby bitch, to quote Mr Kevin Smith, but slightly less so than before. Then various things happened, I left my job which was conveniently five minutes' walk away from the gym, got depressed, ate too much, took on a job that was so far away from where I lived that by the time I got home of an evening I wasn't able to get to the gym before it closed and finally quit that job. Clear? No? Never mind.

Now that I'm in that weird sort of "uhhh… what now?" phase without having a full-time job, I have plenty of time to get to the gym. Even on days when I do have some work, I've managed to get home, have a quick rest, maybe a quick blast on WoW and then head out to the gym before dinner. This time around, I feel like I've made much quicker progress than before. The day before yesterday I managed a 10-minute non-stop run on the treadmill, which I can't normally do. I can't do it consistently yet, as I need to be full of energy to pull it off, but it's getting there. And I can do 5 minutes non-stop without too much difficulty now.

Experimented a little with some free weights today. Rhiarti has said she's going to give me some suggestions for a Geek Workout using weights rather than machines. The machines are all well and good, but apparently the free weights actually work more muscles because you have to support the big lump of metal you're lifting as well as, you know, lifting it. And certainly after I tried a few bits and pieces I'd looked up online today, my muscles felt like they'd had a much more solid workout than if I'd used machines for equivalent exercises. The side-effect of all this, too, is that I feel rather more positive about my body image. I know there's no way that my shape would have changed over the course of less than a week, but I feel better about myself. I think it's just taking the positive step to do something about it that makes me feel better. I have a lot of work to do, but I feel like I've got into a good rhythm now. Let's hope I can keep it up.

No idea whether I'll be working tomorrow yet. The irritating thing about supply teaching is that you have to get up super-early for no guarantee of work on most days. But even if there's no work, I have some articles to write and some potentially paid freelancing gigs to chase up, so it's not as if I'll be short of things to do. I also applied for three jobs today, so hopefully something will come of one of those. Though going on past experiences with my saying "hopefully something will come of one of those", I fear it will be unlikely I'll hear back from them ever, my application lost in the Netherstorm for all eternity.

It's time for bed. Before midnight! Good job, me.

Also, to the shouting drunken morons outside my front room window, kindly jump in the Solent.

TWANG! Waggle! Kick! Punch! It's all in the mind!

Those of you following me on Twitter may be familiar with my Jedi Health Kick blog. Perhaps you're reading it already, in which case you'll know I recently picked up a copy of EA Sports Active in my latest attempt to hammer and chisel my woeful body into a shape vaguely resembling human. It's good stuff, and for anyone doubting the value of Wii Fit as an exercise programme, you can rest assured that EA Sports Active gives you much more of a battering than Wii Fit ever did thanks to the fact it actually takes you through set programmes (although, of course, you can create your own also) rather than leaving you to your own devices and relying on your own self-discipline which – let's face it – your lack of is probably the reason you came to titles like Wii Fit in the first place!

The thing I like about it is how "videogamey" it makes the whole experience. Being a supergeek as I am, I like anything that rewards achievement in a noticeable way. I'm a sucker for slidey bars, percentage markers and trophies. Ironic, really, that I never got into sports, since sports are also filled with slidey bars, percentage markers and trophies. Anyway, the fact is that EASA is full of these things. You get trophies not only for successfully completing workouts, but for smaller things like doing a certain number of laps around the virtual track across all your workouts, doing a certain number of squats, burning a certain number of calories and the like. These are all goals that you would probably set yourself if you were one of those people who are "into fitness" and can motivate themselves, but for the gamers (or the lazy) amongst us, it helps to have something to remind us that even smaller achievements are worth celebrating.

Anyway, to cut to the tenuous link: there's been a lot of discussion surrounding motion control and full-body control recently, particularly after E3. Some seem to think that it's "the way that games are going", with the idea of us standing up to play games and running the risk of hurricane-kicking our TV a very real possibility. Others are very much a fan of the traditional controller, believing that it is something fundamentally "gamey". I'm inclined to fall into this latter camp, but the motion control thing has some obvious health benefits which are clearly demonstrated by titles like EASA.

The question is, of course, do you want something that is primarily an entertainment device to provide health benefits all the time? Look at other media. TV and books offer health benefits sometimes – you can watch a yoga DVD or read a lifestyle book – but for however many of these there are, there are an equal if not greater number of "junk" items to enjoy – pure, unadulterated enjoyment with no pretense of "doing it for your own good". In this sense, while motion controls are cool and groovy, I'd like to hope that the controller isn't dead just yet.

A key part of the experience is tactile feedback. While motion controls allow you to feel your own body moving, when it comes to actually touching or hitting something, you don't feel anything. This is also a problem with touchscreen controls – a joypad on a touchscreen will never match a real joypad until a technology is developed where you can "feel" it. I also question how some genres would work with motion controls – take an FPS, for example. How do you look up? If you REALLY look up, then you can't see the TV any more, so unless Halo Natal comes with some sort of 360-degree "vision ball" that you have to stand inside to play (which would be awesome, incidentally) then you're resorting to flailing your arms around in some arbitrary gesture or pointing something at the top of the screen.

I think there's work to do – and I just hope that people aren't going to embrace these new technologies too completely. I very much like them and think they're going to be a lot of interesting fun to play with – plus I think all of them provide plenty of scope for further titles like EASA and Wii Fit to improve gamer lifestyle, which can only be a good thing – but let's hope the controller isn't dead just yet, hmm?