chubchub’s Wii Fit Experiement – Day 5

 
Day 5
BMI: 27.51
Weight: 149.5
Wii Fit age:  21
Ok. I know, I know…I am late recording a day. I did do all of the exercises yesterday, but I was also moving in to my new place, so I did not have the time to record it. Call me a hippie and send me to hell. Anyway, here are my thoughts about day 5.
Like everyday, I started with the strength exercises. They really took the wind out of me today. I didn’t get much sleep the night before, so I was struggling through almost all of them. I’ve unlocked all of the strength exercises by now. I am sticking to my plan of trying one new exercise a day. The ones I am looking most forward to getting good at: pushup challenge and sit-up challenge. In the challenges, you are competing against your trainer. Yeah, I can’t even do a full pushup yet. I wonder how well that’s going to go over. I am trying my absolute best on all of these exercises. As far as effectiveness goes, I really hope the torso twists really does tone your waistline. I like that exercise a lot. As you get better, or do the exercises multiple times, the game unlocks longer durations for strength exercises. Right now, I am most worried about the plank exercise. I know this exercise well. The trainer at my gym had me doing planks to tone my body up. It’s supposed to be great for your abs, arms and waist or something. While doing it at the gym, I could barely hold the position for more than 10 seconds. Already, with Wii Fit, I’m at 60 seconds. A week of training isn’t why. That can’t be why. It might be my sorry attempts at push-up, side planks. I’m still doing the minimum number of those, by the way. I really don’t feel comfortable increasing the number of repetitions until I can do just one set of reps comfortably.
After I was finished with the strength exercises, which took a full half hour, I felt like I simply couldn’t continue. I was working from home on Thursday, so I decided to get back to work and come back to my work out later. Because I knew you out there in internet land would probably want an update on my progress, sure as rain, I came back to my workout around six. I was exhausted, not from the work-out, but from lack of sleep. I will put in here, that since I’ve started, falling asleep has been much easier. As soon as I decided to fall asleep, I was out. However, I had work to do and I don’t like going to bed unless all of my tasks are complete.
Around five, I started up my work out again. This time I skipped basic hula-hoop, and went right to advanced hula hooping. So far, I’ve unlocked 6 minutes of advanced hula-ing.  Before, I didn’t really feel as though this was exercise. This time, I did. By the time those 6 minutes were up,  I felt like I had been running. To tell you the truth, I’ve never thought of hula-ing as real exercise. I mean come on. Now, I like it. First, running, which I do anyway, really only works your legs…and your arms if you move them…but hula-ing will also tone your core while you’re working out. It’s bloody brilliant. Thumbs up, Nintendo. Thumbs up.
I did the Island lap in the basic run again. From the yoga, I’ve learned to breathe through my nose. Nose breathing while running makes such a huge difference in how I feel during the run. I don’t feel out of breath when I am done. The strength training is really helping to support my lower body while I’m doing the running in place.  My legs do burn a little half way through, but I don’t have a stitch in my side as I normally would have. 13 minutes of running…That’s not too bad. I’m patting myself on the back for that one. Today I unlocked the free run and Free Step. Free step is ok, I guess. That’s really my final answer on that one. The Wiimote becomes a metronome. You can change your TV settings back to regular TV while the Wiimote gives you a rhythm and will tell you when to switch feet and updates on your time. I guess that is sort of a plus, if you’re getting sick of just looking at the Nintendo screen. I guess if the daily show was on while I was trying to work out, I’d consider this a good way to be productive and get my fix of fake news. I didn’t try the free run tonight. I’ll probably give this a shot on Day 6, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I really enjoy the regular old advanced step. It’s like ddr…but the elevation burns more calories, I’m guessing. I do wish they added more songs and foot patterns. Doing the same thing everyday after a while will get on my nerves, I’m sure.
There is only one word to describe advanced boxing. Awesome. I liked the short boxing game in Wii Sports. Nevertheless, I really like the advanced boxing in Wii Fit. Advanced boxing is a series of challenging patterns and helps tone your arms while burning calories and maybe getting out a little bit of frustration. It also makes me feel a bit like rocky. I’ve always wanted to take kickboxing at my gym, but I was never out of work in time to make it to the class. Occasionally, my personal trainer and I would work the bag a little, but he knew I really needed to shed a lot of weight fast. I was doing my cardio training without him, using the treadmill, elliptical machines, and spin classes. Right now, I totally love the cardio boxing, even if I suck at it for now.
I was anxious to get through the yoga quickly. I tried out one of the new yoga poses I unlocked earlier this week, downward facing dog. I can’t help it; I’m a prude. I totally hate the name of this pose. This isn’t the games fault, but this pose is the reason I almost never did yoga at my gym. It sounds ridiculous, but one wall of my gym was made of glass and I didn’t want stupid body builders looking in and seeing my ass sticking up in the air. I don’t mind doing this pose in the privacy of my own home, where my ass isn’t on display. Truthfully, aside from that uncomfortable "My head is upside-down" feeling, I really felt the stretch in my Achilles heel and in my inner thighs. According to the game, this pose is great if you also do the plank. Hurray for completing workouts! I was a little fatigued when I was doing these poses, so I was shaking more than normal. My ratings for almost all of the poses went down.
I thought I was done with my exercises…so I went to the graph on the main screen to grab the data, so I could note it down for this blog…The graph tells you your vital stats, BMI, weight, Wii fit age, etc… But it also tells you how much time you spent working out that day and is color coded to tell you in which exercise category you spent the most time. That’s when I noticed I had completely forgotten about the  balance games. Usually, I do the balance games between aerobics and yoga…as a break, to steady my breathing and relax a little. This must have been why my poses were so off kilter today. Yeah, that’s it…sure….
I sucked at the balance games today. I was exhausted from the yoga and aerobics, I was barely in the mood to do any of them, and it felt forced. All of my scores went down except for balance bubble, where you use your balance to move your Mii down a river, which I still haven’t completed yet. My bubble keeps popping around 1000ft down the river. Stupid River.  I tried the last balance game to be unlocked. It was sitting and staring at a digital candle. I’m not kidding. I’m not sure what exactly the point of it is, but I’ll master it. Oh yes, I will master it.
Final thoughts of the day
Today the workout was a real struggle because I was running on very little sleep, thanks to working ultra late and a painfully early conference call. I love my job, so I’m not complaining, but it sucks that my workout had to suffer because of it.
Most weight loss programs advise their clients and users to weigh themselves only once a week. But to be honest, the only times in my life where I ever really lost weight was when I was weighing myself everyday, the way Wii Fit asks you to. Weighing yourself everyday, forces you to think about why you gained weight and gives you a moment of joy or sorrow when your weight fluctuates. The Japanese version of this game, I’m told will say "Your FAT" if your BMI is over the optimum level…the American version just says, "That’s overweight.” Nintendo is very good at doing its cultural research. They know most Americans wouldn’t  like a stupid video game confirming their worst fears…but teenage and adult gamers, who are mostly men for the moment, I think would like that kind of candor. Gamers…we’re a strange bunch.  I think Nintendo was smart to make the small cultural changes.  The trainers in this game tell you to correct yourself and give you some nice encouragement…they may even tell you to slow down a little, or may tell you that you’re not ready for a particular exercise. What I like best about the game right now is that the activities are broken into shorter segments, so if you need to break up your workout, as I do, you can without too much trouble. Right now, I think it might be a good idea for Nintendo to set up some kind of channel or website to help users create custom workouts for their needs. Maybe that will be in Wii Fit 2.