That's Fit

Before I begin, I think it's only fair for me to admit that I'm not a big gamer. I don't mind some of the racing video games, but for the most part, they could all disappear and I would be happy as a clam. My husband, on the other hand is the exact opposite -- he could sit and play a game for hours.

Fortunately, he's in great health and good shape and still manages to come to the gym with me occasionally, so this habit doesn't really hurt him. But it drives me nuts to think about the people who surely miss workouts because they're so involved with their games -- has that ever happened to you, or a loved one?

Today's Fit Gadget provides a solution -- the PCGamerBike requires the player to pedal in order to make his character move. The character could be a person, an airplane, a car, or anything else, and pedaling forward acts as the up arrow while pedaling backward acts as the down arrow.

I finally had a chance to use a Wii. After getting over some initial embarrassment, I had an awful lot of fun! I tried the tennis game and, sadly enough, I'm as bad at virtual tennis as I am on an actual tennis court. While the Wii was certainly more active than playing any other video game system, it wasn't nearly the same type of exercise as a real sport.

Both Bev and Bethany have written about the exercise potential in the interactive gaming system before. And, compared to sitting like a lump playing regular video games, the Wii is a great thing. But it doesn't take the place of real exercise. The active games are a great alternative to regular video games. Also, many of the games aren't violence based -- as a parent, I know I appreciate that. They also offer hand-eye coordination benefits. And, for kids (or adults) who aren't active at all, the games may be a stepping stone for developing interest in real sports.

So the Wii isn't a bad thing at all. But don't count time spent playing interactive video games as exercise time. It's just not the same as the real thing. The CDC recommends that kids be physically active for at least an hour every day. So put away the video tennis, grab a racquet, and play a game of REAL tennis with your kids.

So much for video games being easy. Thanks to Nintendo's Wii Fit, you can turn your living room into a virtual gym.

Wii Fit can calculate your body mass index (BMI) and then provide you with a customized workout plan to help you achieve what it also calculates to be your ideal BMI. Using a pressure-sensitive balance board, Wii Fit allows you to enjoy over forty types of physical fitness based games. From ski jumping to yoga, the Wii Fit makes a home workout, dare I say, fun.

But, you'll at least have to wait until after this holiday season to find the Wii Fit, as it will not be hitting stores until 2008. Until then, maybe you can play some of the current Wii games that are available. Research from a UK study revealed that playing active games on the Wii for thirty minutes a day can improve cardiovascular health and help a person lose up to 27 pounds over the course of a year.

I've been hearing a fair bit about so-called healthy video games lately, but I have to wonder -- is there such a thing? If you're sat in front of the computer or TV, you're not burning calories or getting active no matter how many healthy things the game might teach you.

But here's a video game with a twist: The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective teaches kids about healthy eating a exercise, and here's the catcher: it turns off if you play it for more than 20 minutes, and it won't turn back on again for at least 60 minutes.

I think this is an awesome idea, and something that all kids' video games should do to get kids moving. Of course, it should be the parents' job to make sure their kids are getting active, but I think some parents might be slacking in this regard, so it's nice to see a video game take the initiative. What do you think?

If you're interested in taking a yoga class, there's no need to head to the studio anymore -- A Japanese video game maker has developed a digital yoga instructor, who can guide you through a series of postures and offer advice on stretching. If the Pilates is more your thing, they offer than too.

The digital Yoga instructor was showcased at Asia's biggest video game expo, which happened last weekend in Tokyo. And for those of us who are more comfortable doing yoga than slaying dragons and blowing up bad guys, the show featured many other lifestyle-oriented video games. Expect to see more and more at stores near you.

Physically interactive games are all the rage lately, with the most common examples belonging to the Nintendo Wii game system. But pretending to swing a golf club and play the guitar are one thing while arm wrestling in a Japanese arcade with the "Arm Spirit" game is something else altogether -- you could end up with a broken arm.

Game makers insist that the mechanical arm players "wrestle" with quote "isn't that strong," but they still can't explain how 3 different players ended up with broken arms. They're recalling the 150 "Arm Spirits" from arcades around Japan to check them for malfunctions, although a rep says "We think that maybe some players get overexcited and twist their arms in an unnatural way."

Yikes. Did they get their quarters back?

Because I grew up in the company of my older brother, who taught me to build tree forts and play "war" in the 10-acre woods behind our home, and because I am the mother of two girls, I was one of those women who got her nose bent when The Dangerous Book for Boys came out a few months ago. But as I read more about the book, I couldn't help but agree with the premise behind it: Kids today are spending far too much time inside with technology rather than outside being kids.

The danger of childhood, claim the authors, lies not in slingshots and the possibility of cuts and scrapes and the odd broken bone, but instead in a childhood spent indoors using solitary (and most likely violent) video games. The authors say they wrote the book to help boys rediscover what it means to be a boy, to reconnect fathers and sons, and to bring kids out of the house and back into discovery play again.

I can't argue with any of those notions, and I was gently reminded that just because it has "boys" on the cover doesn't mean I can't teach the same skills to my girls. I guess what saddens me the most is that my generation even needs a book in the first place to help us remember what it was like to be a kid. It's a reminder to me to keep the TV off and shoo my kids outside (and get out there with them) every chance I get. What do you think?

A gym in Vancouver is being credited as the first gym in North America to officially incorporate the Nintendo Wii into its physical fitness offerings. Set up as a workout station in a 400 sq ft room with a projection TV, club members are encouraged to use the game console for everything from warm-ups and cool-downs to entire workouts. One session of boxing, tennis, or bowling on the Wii is thought to be equal to a brisk walk and burns 75-125 calories, so depending on what you're looking for it can definitely be a fun part of an overall fitness plan. Sounds more interesting than the treadmill to me!

Via Wii fanboy

Are kids a demographic that need to get regular amounts of exercise? Busy social lives, homework and video games get in the way of all that, as do regular visits to fast-food joints and hanging with friends.

How about trying to combine one of those activities into a gym appointment? According to recent estimates, the number of gyms targeted at teens has been increasing, which I see as a great thing. Perhaps a major shift is underway. Who says you can't hang out at the gym with your buddies?

Combining a teen-age-focused gym with video games that require physical activity (a reason I love the Nintendo Wii) and this may be a definite winner. That is, if that all-important attention can be gleaned form that teen.

When I was a kid, everyone my age spent every minute possible in the freedom that the outdoors offered, playing games, riding bikes, chasing each other, hanging upside down from the monkey bars or engaging in some sort of activity that would make out mother's go gray in an instant. But these days, it seems like kids are constantly glued to the TV or computer, spending most of their time indoors. When I have kids, I hope they will be the kind of kid I was -- playing in the dirt, skateboarding down the driveway and swinging on the swings until my mother called me inside. Kids who enjoy being active in their early years grow up to be adults who like being active too.

Sometimes it seems like video games rival crack in terms of their addictive properties. Or if not crack, certainly smoking or alcohol. I know come people who will trade social interaction, even work, to stay home a play video games. So if sex and gambling and shopping are legitimate addictions, is excessive video gaming considered one too?

Experts say no -- it's not a true addiction. Extreme video game addiction only affects about 10% of the population, so it's not actually considered a mental illness -- yet. But whether or not video gaming is accepted by health officials as a serious problem, I think it already is one, as it is linked to a lack of physical activity in children and, in turn, to childhood obesity. Parents need to step in and limit the time their kids can spend sitting in the house, glued to the TV or computer. And in the case of adults who are seriously addicted to video games? You might just need to perform an intervention.

Now, I wonder if they've done any studies on Facebook addiction ... ?

On the streets of popular driving-style video games, you can drive up onto sidewalks and careen at top speeds down narrow streets crashing into buildings, all without anyone getting hurt. Obviously you know that when you get into your actual car, you can't behave that way, right? On a conscious level you may know that, but recent research in Germany suggests that when you play these kinds of video games, your risk-taking behavior on the real streets may increase.

Three different studies found that both men and women who played video games that allowed or required major traffic violations were more likely exhibit risky behavior in a driving simulator. While these results can't necessarily be transferred into real life, it does suggest that playing these types of video games may affect the judgment of drivers on the road. Not only that, when you consider that kids start playing these kinds of games as early as 10 years old, it makes you wonder what kind of drivers you may be sharing the road with in the future.

The effects of video games on teens and young adults has been a source of debate for some time now. Do violent games cause violent behavior? Do video games play a role in childhood obesity? Now we can add to that list -- Do video games make bad drivers? What do you think?

Although some video games are downright detestable, there are many good facets of the intense realism and specific feedback you get from some of the newer video game systems. In fact -- in addition to the physical exercise some newer video games provide -- would you believe surgeons can become more skilled by playing specific video games as well?

Video games have such incredible realism these days that a strong correlation between video game skills and a surgeon's capabilities was uncovered. Surgeons performing laparoscopic surgery -- in a recent study -- saw that nine doctors who had at some point played video games at least three hours per week made 37 percent fewer errors, performed 27 percent faster, and scored 42 percent better in the test of surgical skills when compared to the 15 surgeons who had never played video games before.

This really should be no huge surprise (maybe a little one). The dexterity and practice movements of some video games really can be a prep for surgery in many cases apparently. Let's break out the Nintendo in the OR, please!

In addition to helping mental acuity, can video games lead to increased and sharpened vision as well? Well, some action video games may sharpen vision -- by helping players learn to ignore visual distractions.

Some brain and cognitive science researchers concluded that they found novice video game players improved their ability to ignore visual clutter by about 15% to 20%.

That is an amazing figure if you think about it -- as these video game players played an action video game for 30 hours over four to six weeks and then were able to reduce visual clutter by such a large amount. One of the researchers did state that the improvements witnessed "very, very small because we're looking at people that already have very, very good vision."

Wii has gotten lots of good press as one of the few video game systems that requires physical activity. (If you've never played, the Wii has a wireless controller that can sense motion in three dimensions. Wii bowling requires a bowling motion, a sword-fight requires fencing-like motions, etc.) It's not for everyone, and it's not going to replace your cardio routine, but if you're already a Wii fan consider upping the intensity of your Wii "workout " by adding ankle and wrist weights to your games. Moving around those few extra pounds really will add to your total calories burned per hour, so if you're already playing the game you may as well get the maximum benefit from it, right?

Someone was so excited about this idea that they came up with a prototype for Wii branded weights. But unless you're obsessed with having workout gear that matches your video console (and please don't be), the plain ones you can find at your local sporting goods store will work just as well.