When my wife showed me the Wii Fit when it was announced my initial reaction was "Oh no yet another fitness fad..." mixed with a little anticipation, mainly because although we managed to get a Wii in time for Christmas we decided not to give it to the kids as they had too much already we figured ( I was looking forward to some more Wii Tennis since I played it at BaaCamp)
So I walked in to our local Sainsburys on the day of release to get some bread when I saw the display with the Wii Fit on, I asked and out of 16 units they had there were only 3 left at 10:00am so I decided what the heck and bought one. At this point I was still struggling to get fit after back surgery and was perhaps looking for some inspiration.
So we decided to get the Wii out which made the kids really happy (that includes me) and give it a go, setup was simple as you might expect (more batteries of course) and registering my Mii etc was kind of fun.
There are two main functions to the 'game' which are Body Test and Training, in Body Test you get weighed and perform some basic balance tests, you are then presented with BMI, Weight and the all important Wii Fit Age, more on that later.
Training comprises 4 main disciplines : Yoga, Aerobic, Muscle and Balance. The first time you start you get to pick a male or female trainer to work with you, I picked the girl, my wife went for the male and my daughter picked the girl, I found this slightly amusing but its possible to change whenever you want, in fact later on I had the male trainer take some sessions since my usual trainer was taking the day off !
I've never done Yoga despite being told that it could be good for my back/hip problems so was quite keen to give it a go, each module in training allows you to start with a few of the total available exercises, as you spend more time in each module you unlock the rest, this took me about 10 days of high usage and I now have all exercises in all modules unlocked, progress now seems to be in the number of reps I can do. Most of the exercise use the balance board but there are few that rely on you using the Wiimote in your hand either on or off the board (jogging and Tricep extension for example) and some require you to use your hands on the board rather than stand on it.
The most useful thing for me despite it's flaws is the feedback during each exercise, measuring your centre of gravity while balancing, displaying an expanding and contracting blue circle to help you time your deep breathing and ultimately these are all used to give you a score for each exercise which is put on a leader board, the motivation is there to get to and stay at the top, especially within my family! This got me to thinking that with the online capabilites of the Wii why didn't they make a social network based on this like Xbox Live, it would be fun to compete and compare with people other than those that are using your Wii. I would also love to be able to skip to an advanced mode where I don't get the same facile comments after every exercise.
During all your training you get a 'Fit piggy' (the Fat Piggy we've come to call it) which you put 'time' in to, you should aim for at least 30 mins a day, it tells you to take a break as you reach an hour though and to drink plenty of water, in fact the whole game is constantly reminding you to be safe, to balance on other people or items if required. In the early days this was quite useful; as I got used to it, however it is still doing the same and it's starting to get annoying!
On my first body test I was deemed as having an Obese BMI and a Fit Age of 50 ! (9 years over my age) and the bit that really made me laugh is that my skinny Mii suddenly expanded into a FAT Mii to match my score!!! This all motivated me to prove it wrong, and that's where my main problem with it starts since Wii Fit is just so damn NICE about everything, I found myself wanting it to say "Hey you fat bastard - you really need to lose some weight before you die" or at the very least stop being so polite about it, after a few sessions I wanted to have a Gunnery Sgt Major shouting at me to get some work done, I guess my old military school background came out of hiding. So over the weeks I've found myself very self motivated by the BMI graph, after 1 week I got down to Overweight and am working my way towards Ideal on a pretty much daily basis.
In summary I've recommended Wii Fit to many people including my Physiotherapist who is going to check it out, I find the best use for me is that it is a consistent record of what I've done and what I've become, if I do all the sessions (some I can't even try yet due to my back problems) then I find that by the end I've had a really good workout and feel better, I'm enjoying the Yoga a lot and will add seperate Yoga sessions from DVD soon, and I can add these external sessions to my activity log on Wii Fit too. As I get fitter I'll increase the number of reps in Muscle and try out the aerobic jogging too.
If you want a polite superset of weight scales that allows you to record all your data and present it in a fun way then get a Wii Fit and get training.
