As the summer heat continues, we know many folks are avoiding going outdoors. We get it; it can be downright dangerous. And we know people still want to reach their fitness goals.
We were looking at a list of safer forms of exercise people can do in warm weather, and one caught our eye. Exergaming is something we haven’t discussed before. We have spoken about taking exercise classes online and using YouTube as a fitness guide. But fitness video games are a topic we haven’t explored.
We have written about gamification of health before. But sports video games make it very literal.
“Games like bowling on the Wii or dance games on Xbox Kinect get seniors moving in creative ways while having fun,” said Sarah Isenberg, founder of Thrive Guide Health Coaching.
On one hand, it’s a great idea — it gets you moving inside your home. However, there are some drawbacks. The first is the investment cost. A game system like a Wii or Xbox Kinect costs money, and then you have to buy the games. They also have to be set up, and they come with directions that can be slightly overwhelming to folks who aren’t tech-savvy.
There is also the drawback of not being able to interact with humans. A man named Scott Cramer made a video wherein he played Wii Fit for 100 days. In Wii, you have an animated person representing you. While the game acknowledged that people’s weight fluctuates daily because of water and meals, his animated counterpart became chubbier when Mr. Cramer gained a couple of pounds in a day. When he took a couple of days off from the video game to go for a long hike, the video game reprimanded him for skipping his exercise routine. Having a fake personal trainer on a screen tell you off can be disheartening, even when you know it’s wrong. If you are the sort of person who likes to win a game, this one feels rigged against you. While it can help teach you things, trying to score against it doesn’t seem very effective from his in-depth video.
Other games can be more effective in burning calories, and they don’t tell you off for skipping a day! Wii Bowling burns almost as many calories as walking at a moderate pace, and Will baseball burns even more. Unsurprisingly, the number of calories they burn increases as the games become more intense. From least to most intense, the Wii games are Golf, Bowling, Baseball, Tennis, Dancing and finally, Boxing.
If you give it your all, you can burn 216 calories playing Wii Boxing for a half hour. You have to “really work it,” said Prof. Bryan Haddock of California State Univ. San Bernardino.
Experts agree that playing a video game version of a sport isn’t the same as actually playing the sport. But you still get a workout! Right now, it’s too hot to actually go out to golf. Instead, play in your living room.
If you do your best, “I can guarantee you you’ll be sore the next day,” said Dr. Ernie Medina Jr., a preventive care specialist.
