To Wii or not to Wii

As if I didn't have enough crap to do to serve as a front for not having a life (blogging, netsurfing, watching TV, watching classic movies, reading), now there's a Wii in the house. I'm not much of a video or computer game player--I was well out of college when the first wave of games hit it big, and I've never gotten very interested in catching up. I got hooked on Super Mario Brothers, Lode Runner, and various versions of Mah Jong and solitaire in grad school; they were good ways to come home and just veg.

Since then, we haven't had much interest in such gaming until my niece and nephew introduced us to the Nintendo DS last fall. My horizons never expanded much past Brain Age 2 and Tetris, but it was becoming a part of my nightly ritual to spend an hour or so with my cramping hands clutching the DS; so much so that I developed a form of tendinitis known as "Nintendo arm" and had to scale back significantly. Last spring, Don bought a Wii on a whim and we had fun playing some basic Wii sports (my faves are billiards, ping pong, and bowling). Then he got the Wii Fit, sincerely thinking it would help get us in better shape--for men of 52 (me) and 44 (him), we're not in bad shape, and I do exercise regularly (walking, hiking, light weights), but we both eat too much--so I decided to play along for a while and see what happened.

Most of the Wii Fit exercises must be done on a balance board which registers your weight and your center of balance. The basic exercises are broken into a handful of categories: yoga, aerobics, strength training, and balance. The yoga poses and stretches and the strength training exercises are of the most interest to me, but the problem is that, because the board can't really tell if you are doing jackknifes or stretches very well, it relies overmuch on balance, something it can calibrate quite well, and something at which I've discovered I'm not very good (that's my Mii at left).

When I'm doing, for example, a side stretch, I find myself not actually stretching very much at all because I'm too busy trying to keep my balance within certain boundaries so my Wii Fit trainer will give me positive feedback ("You have really good posture!"; "Wow! You're strong!"). I accumulate points based on how well the Wii thinks I'm doing, but in order to get high points, I sometimes wind up "cheating" by, for example, not really standing on one leg so the Balance Board thinks I'm balancing. I can stand on one leg, but I can't do it without shaking a bit. So I think I'm actually getting less of a workout on the Wii than I would get alone in the basement with my hand weights and Billy Blanks aerobic tape.

We've named our trainer Paolo (pictured at right); he looks fairly Nordic, but he makes Italianish hand gestures when he talks. He's soft spoken, but enthusiastic. I like our "Mii" avatars, and I like that they get excited and jump up and down when they do well (and pout when they don't). Don made "guest" avatars that look like Stephen Colbert, Whoopi Goldberg, and Catwoman, and the last time my nephew was up, we copied his avatar over on our Wii, so it's fun when I jog and see all those familiar faces running with me. I'm still really a beginner at it--I've only used the Wii Fit a few times so far--so maybe my balance actually will get better, but I'm pretty sure I won't lose the 6 or 7 pounds it wants me to lose, even though my BMI (body mass index) is in the normal range. So I'll play with it for fun, and some of the aerobic and strength exercises might actually do me good, but I won't stop using my weights or taking walks out in the real world, where the chances of coming upon Stephen Colbert (let alone Catwoman) are fairly slim.