Cheap, fun, convenient video game exercise

The problem: find an at home exercise alternative that is (1) fun – as in you actually want to exercise without forcing yourself to, and (2) cheap – under $50.

First of all, I decided to concentrate on video games to solve this problem; the other at home exercise alternatives are just not fun for me. Running on a treadmill or exercising to an aerobics tape gets pretty dull. I could watch TV while running on the treadmill, but since running on the treadmill is not mandatory for watching TV, my laziness would eventually win out and I would watch TV without the treadmill. You can read my entire article about
why I chose video games for exercising.

So let’s see what video games are available for us to exercise with at home. Oh, and I’m assuming that everyone has a PC.

Dance Pad – For those that don’t know what a dance pad is: a dance pad is a mat type 3x3 foldable pad that you lay on the ground. It has buttons that you press with your feet. Here is a link to a Wikipedia description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_pad. The following two games are for the dance pad:

StepMania – This is pretty much the equivalent of DDR, only it’s for the PC. The basic premise is that you have to hit dance pad arrows at the right times. While the music is playing, arrows are scrolling up the screen, when the arrows are in the right place you have to press the correct arrow button. From an exercise perspective this games is excellent, I played it for 20 minutes and I was exhausted. The only thing that I had a problem with is the difficulty level. I was playing the easy songs and I still failed every single time. I think this game might be harder for older people to pick up.

To play StepMania you would download the game from http://www.stepmania.com and you would download and install some songs, also from their website.

Egg Snatch – An arcade style video game that also uses the dance pad. In this game there are 8 windows that are directly mapped to the 8 buttons on the dance pad. Each window has a weasel that tries to grab an egg from a basket and a chicken that pulls the basket away when a button is pressed. You control the chickens with the dance pad, you try to move the basket away before the weasel can grab an egg. Unlike StepMania this game is the more traditional type of video game, with levels, lives, and scoring. Egg Snatch is simple and very easy to learn. It is also a very good source of exercise; I get exhausted after 20 minutes of jumping around.

To play Egg Snatch you would download the trial version of the game from http://www.evstep.com/egg_snatch/. This is a shareware game that only goes up to level 5, after that you would have to register it for $7.99.

Cost for StepMania/Egg Snatch:

Dance pad ~ $15 - $1000. The price really ranges, but you could get a pretty decent one for $40-50.

USB Adapter – If the dance pad you buy has a PS/XBOX adapter you would have to convert it. If the dance pad has a USB connector you don’t have to buy an adapter, but a USB dance pad costs more than a PS2 dance pad because there are less of them around. A PSX/PS2 to USB adapter costs around $10. An XBOX adapter costs a little more.

Yourself! Fitness

Not so much a video game as an interactive exercise program. The program has a personal instructor that runs you through exercises such as yoga, cardio, and pilates. There are also exercises that use an exercise ball and hand weights. You see the on screen instructor exercising and you are supposed to do what she is doing. Based on the schedule that you set up and your ongoing input, it dynamically figures out how you are doing and what kind of exercises you should do.

From a few accounts that I read, people are actually using this game to exercise and lose weight, and they are saying that it provides very good exercise. Although, I'm not totally sure of the fun factor involved.

Cost: $28

Others:

There are other things like virtual boxing, virtual ping pong, and tennis. All of them use some sort of remote that plugs into the TV. I haven’t read any accounts of people using them for exercise, but they are interactive video games that involve something other than pressing a button and they are pretty cheap. I bumped into http://www.exerciseinabox.com, a site that sells some of these products.

I haven’t mentioned any of the console games, like Wii Sports or DDR for PS2, because they require a console. If you have a console they are cheap, but if you don’t then they come with the expense of the entire console system.

Why exercise video games?

Well let’s see, what are the different alternatives available today for exercising?

I could join a gym, but a gym has too many minuses for me. First of all, it costs $250-$300 a year; I think some memberships are even more. Second of all, it’s not at home, meaning that I have to invest some time getting there and back. So instead of spending 20 mins to do some exercises, I have to plan on 40+ minutes; to go there, exercise, and come back. Another down side of it being somewhere else is that I would eventually break my routine because of laziness. For example, I come home after a long day at work and I have a choice of vegging out in front of the TV or going back out into the cold to go for 40 minutes of exercise, there is a good chance that I will just skip it that day. The same could be said about exercising at home, but it is still easier for me to force myself to do 20 minutes of exercise and go back to watching TV.

There is another aspect of the gym that I don’t particularly like, and that’s the social aspect. After a whole day at work I don’t really feel like going back out and mingling with more people, I just want to retreat and relax.

Which brings me to my next alternative, an exercise machine at home. This is kind of like the gym but without all of the annoyances that I listed above. The problem with an exercise machine at home is also one of having to force yourself. Running on a treadmill is pretty boring. You can watch TV while you run on the treadmill, but you can also watch TV without running on the treadmill. Which means that you have to force yourself to run on the treadmill while you watch TV. And again, when I come home from work it’s very hard for me to force myself to use the treadmill.

The problem of forcing myself into an exercise routine is that I can’t maintain it. I can decide that from now on I will run on the treadmill every other day. And I can probably keep that up for 1-2 weeks. But on the 3^rd week I’ll come home and I’ll be really tired, or sick, or grumpy, or I had a bad day…. and I will skip the exercise. And then it just all falls apart. It takes an enormous power of will to force yourself to do something consistently. And that’s the main problem that I see with having an exercise machine at home.

Another alternative is to go exercise outside. I tried this alternative for a while, I rode my bicycle to the park 3 times a week. It also has the “need to force myself aspect” of course, it’s fun for the first few times, but eventually it also becomes just exercise. Also there is the problem of weather and time of day ( hard to ride your bike in the dark ). Some people like to jog before going to work, but I have a hard enough time waking up as it is.

Team Sports - that’s a really good alternative if you can hook that up. I play tennis and I actually really like this alternative. Unlike the other alternatives above, I don’t have to force myself to play tennis, I like the competitive game aspect of it a lot. But it is kind of hard to set up. You need to have a group of people that are close to your level and you have to be able to organize a routine schedule with all of them. So if you don’t have a group of people to play a sport with, you would have to go through the hassle of trying to find a group. And you might find that the time that they get together is not the most convenient time for you, or that you aren’t as good as them, or the other way around…. Basically it involves coordination, because it’s not just you exercising by yourself anymore, it’s you exercising in a group.

Finally, the entire point of the article comes down to this, video game exercise. The way I see it (1) I like video games (2) I need to exercise (3) if there is a good combination then I wouldn’t have to force myself to exercise and would eliminate all of the problems above. I think that’s where exercise is going, something like the treadmill but more interactive. And it would have to be something that forces you to exercise. Dance Dance Revolution is a great example of a game like that, it forces you to really exercise and it’s also really fun, now if we could only see more games like that.