The Daily Procrastinator

Readers, you will laugh at this: I just got my first video game system. Ever. How I find myself hanging with the crowd on this blog is a mystery to me. Nevertheless, I am the proud new owner of a Wii, and perhaps even more exciting, a Wii Fit.

Where are the sweaty users, collapsed in a heap on the floor?

The Wii Fit package features four happy people doing exercises. They’re dressed in white, smiling and generally having a good time. And I’ll admit, the first time I tried the Wii Fit at a relative’s house, I felt the same way. I had loads of fun as I stood there in my street clothes and bare feet, going through the motions without breaking a sweat.

And then I got one for my birthday.

Now, let’s set the stage for this. I work out between four and six days each week, depending on my schedule. I used to own a Pilates and yoga studio. My blood pressure is low, my cholesterol rocks, my BMI is awesome. I’ve done two half marathons in the last two years. I am the sort of person who takes their exercising seriously. Today, I tried the system out at home for the first time, wearing workout clothes and really doing the exercises.

The Wii Fit kicked my ass.

There’s no other way to explain it. I went through the poses one by one, Yoga section first. Breathing? Check. Half Moon? Check. Warrior? Bring it on. But then I got to the Strength exercises. Holy Christmas! The Push-Up and Plank? Brutal! Jackknife, done in pace with the whistle? Stunningly hard.

It wasn’t long before I was huffing and puffing and breaking a sweat. And don’t let the “fun stuff” fool you. The Aerobics and Balance Games may look easy, but it doesn’t take long before you’re pretty much wiped out. As I turned off the console and collapsed on the couch, I couldn’t believe how much of a workout I’d gotten from a video game. And I can’t wait until tomorrow to try again and hopefully beat my scores from today.

A few years back, I owned a Pilates and yoga studio. As the child of a mother who died young from heart disease, health and fitness have always been very important to me, and my goal with the studio was to make fitness fun.

To vary the offerings a bit, and to give cardio offerings to balance out the strength and flexibility focus of Pilates and yoga, the studio offered several dance classes: salsa dancing, belly dancing and a class called ballet body, which was a lower-impact, ballet-themed workout. All three were popular, but they weren’t the phenomenon that dance-based fitness has now become.

Now, six years later, you can’t leave the house without hearing someone talk about Zumba. It’s branded and trademarked, but the classes that I’ve seen at my gym appear to be fairly basic cha-cha and salsa-based Latin dance, with a touch of belly dancing thrown in. I never would have guessed that I was so far ahead of the popularity curve with those classes.