#oneaday Day 596: Back in the Saddle

(As an aside, I heard the song “Back in the Saddle Again” the other day for the first time and I thought it was incredibly dull. This means nothing to the following blog post, I just thought I’d share it.)

In the next few days/weeks/months I will be resuming some sort of fitness plan. I went out and investigated local gyms the other day — there are two nearby, one of which has a slightly inferior gym but also has a swimming pool, jacuzzi and sauna, while the other has a much larger, superior gym and a significantly more “hardcore” attitude, from the looks of things.

Hopefully after payday Andie and I will be joining one of the two (likely the former, as we both like swimming) and torturing ourselves into something resembling shape. Or at least slightly more fit. We shall see.

In the meantime, I found a cheap copy of EA Sports Active 2 for PS3 on Amazon, so I snapped it up while I had the chance. The original for Wii was very good (though I must confess to never having finished the “30 day challenge” mode) but slightly marred by a resistance band which offered very little in the way of resistance and a leg strap which repeatedly fell off. Having a Nunchuk and Wii Remote wired around your hands while faffing around with the resistance band was a bit of a pain, too. The PS3 version comes with its own arm and leg bands that can’t get tangled up in anything — apparently the leg strap is still a little prone to slipping off but I can live with that — and also doesn’t require any additional hardware, unlike the Xbox version, which requires Kinect.

I enjoy exercising with games and have done ever since EyeToy Kinetic brought the idea to my attention. EyeToy Kinetic wasn’t perfect by any means — though this was more down to the limitations of EyeToy than anything else — but it was proof that video games can get you up off the couch and moving around. That’s not to say (as some people assume) that all games must get you up off the couch and moving around. But if a few can, that’s good for everyone, surely.

Wii Fit was similarly good, though disappointingly lacking in structure and challenge — before I came across the first EA Sports Active title I took to doing the 30 minute stepping programme with my own music on (a combination of Space Channel 5 and Persona if I remember correctly) in order to up the challenge factor a bit. The muscle exercises were good but without the game forcing you to do specific ones it was easy to fall into the habit of avoiding the “painful” ones and doing the “easy” ones all the time. EA Sports Active, on the other hand, puts together a programme for you each day and you follow it. Sure, you can build your own to avoid the difficult ones again, but since the structure is there in the first place you feel more inclined to follow it.

I’m looking forward to trying it, anyway. It should be here in the next couple of days, and then I can support any work I do at the gym with EA Sports Active days. If the pre-made programmes work anything like the original, there’ll be “rest” days which I fully intend on using the gym on so the two things will hopefully complement each other nicely.

We’ll see. Good intentions and all that.

#oneaday, Day 80: Lift! And down. And lift! And down.

I started “playing” EA Sports Active again the other day, having got out of shape during my abortive attempt to return to classroom teaching. And yes, I blame the latter for the former. Partly because the 80-mile round trip daily commute I was doing meant I got back too late to go to the gym, and also that the stress caused tiredness and lack of motivation. Finding myself currently with relatively little to do (it’s the Easter holidays, so I’m going to have to wait for supply teaching work) I decided to start it up again.

Those who have known me a while know that I used to keep a blog here. I’m thinking I may start using that again, as it was an excellent self-motivation tool. Even if others weren’t particularly interested in reading about how many chest presses I’d managed that day, the act of writing that stuff down helped.

EASA takes a similar approach by constantly offering you feedback and achievable goals. God, I feel like an obnoxious management-type just saying those words, but it’s true. For once. Start on the app’s “30 Day Challenge” programme and you’re automatically set some goals – a number of calories to burn in your first week, a total number of hours to achieve in the month and a number of workouts to successfully complete in the first week. You can also create your own goals, which is nice – though I’m quite happy with the ones it’s set for me so far. There’s also an Achievement-like trophy system that rewards you for completing workouts, burning certain numbers of calories, completing certain exercises several times – it’s surprising how motivating adding these “game-like” elements is.

EASA also has the benefit of actually working. Unlike Wii Fit’s all-you-can-eat buffet of exercise with no structure whatsoever (though I understand the Plus edition fixes this), EASA gives you a decent structured workout to do that isn’t the same each day. Some days you’ll be concentrating on the lower body and doing things that will make your thighs hurt for days afterwards. Other days you’ll be using the included twangy red band to work on your arms. The band itself isn’t very strong, so I’ve taken to wearing wrist weights while undertaking the workouts. They’re not THAT heavy, but they add enough additional challenge to be able to feel the strain a little bit.

EASA will also get you breaking a sweat quite quickly. Again, unlike Wii Fit, whose only really challenging portion came in the bizarrely featureless monochrome world of the yoga and muscle exercises. Today I had a lot of jumping around, which looked ridiculous, but which was also genuinely hard work. This is good. If I come off a workout feeling tired, then I feel like I’ve achieved something. It may not be the most pleasant thing to be sitting there sweating, but hey.

Anyway, I shall be continuing with my 30 Day Challenge and seeing where it takes me. I’m also going to try and pick up my gym routine. Motivation!

Now, if only all this stuff I was doing was earning some money, I’d be sorted.

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?