Okay, I've had some really awesome results with the WiiFit. Specifically, the Aerobics portion of WiiFit.
To give you a general idea of calories burned, I record all my WiiFit Aerobics sessions with my HRM (Polar 6 Heart Rate Monitor) and I currently seem to be burning about 4-7 calories per minute on average. I am getting better at burning more calories, too. I am adding bigger movements and more enthusiastic motion to each of the activities and I have seen an increase in my calories burned as the weeks have passed. I try to ignore the stares of my family as I wildly swing my hula-hooping hips or punch my imaginary punching bag.
As for which exercises are most effective, I definitely burn the most with the Hula Hooping and the Running. With the running, I actually run around a little and not stay in one place. I take a nice tour around my living room and sometimes travel into the dining room and kitchen, too.
The Advanced Step Aerobics gives me a moderate burn (but it's so much fun, so I do that one a lot.)
Boxing provides me with the lowest burn rate, so I save that one for last as sort of a cool-down activity. I'm working on ways to increasing the burn, but for now, it remains the least effective.
As a side note, I like the Free Step, too. I modify my step to include semi-lunges and that has been bringing my heart rate WAY up (about 75-80% of my maximum heart rate.)
Here are some examples of my burned calories for the past few weeks to give you an idea. I'm female, 33 years old and 127 pounds...so it will definitely be different depending on each person's stats. I have been exercising regularly for the past 6 months, so I am in decent shape, too.
These are all for aerobic-only activity sessions.
53 minutes = 202 calories burned
43 minutes = 223 calories
97 minutes = 390 calories
70 minutes = 356 calories
23 minutes = 171 calories
80 minutes = 489 calories
67 minutes = 407 calories
and...for a strength-only session...30 minutes = 70 calories.
All in all, I am very pleased with my WiiFit. I have continued to lose weight even after I substituted a few of my outdoor running days with my WiiFit workouts.
I really really wish they had a way, though, to string strength training and yoga exercises together instead of having to click through a bunch of menus to get to each one. That really breaks the entire flow of the workout. For that reason alone, I usually just stick with aerobics and just ignore the rest of the program.
I just found out that Wii Sports can give a pretty good workout, too. So, I think I'll have to try that on my next rainy day. After this, I have one more 'game' to buy - Yourself Fitness. It's for the PS2 or XBOX and it received pretty good ratings. I need all the variety I can get. I never want to get bored with exercise.
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2 comments:
Just wondering, is the minutes you're counting actual real-time minutes or the sum of the minutes that WiiFit gives you depending on how good your performance is. I'm hoping on being able to figure out appr. calories per minutes that the WiiFit game awards you.
To Jennifer W: The minutes calculated by WiiFit always seem to match my real-time count (ex: the 10 minute WiiFit run is the same as a real-time 10 minute run)...I've never seen WiiFit base time on performance quality, so I am confused by your question. Basically, when I calculated the times in my post, I started my HRM at the beginning of the very first aerobic activity and turned it off at the very end of the final activity. I kept moving and didn't waste time during menu selection.
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