Exergaming offers real-world workouts - Military Video Games, computer games, games, gaming - Navy Times

Exergaming offers real-world workouts

From iPhone push-up counters to virtual yoga instructors, video games are increasingly morphing into full-on workout tools designed to toughen, tone and train.

Although they still try to bring the fun, calling them video games just doesn’t seem right anymore. Enter the new realm of “exergames,” where virtual reality meets real-world workout.

“Anything that gets you up off the couch is a good thing,” said Mark Boyd, a personal trainer and Air Force veteran in San Antonio. “I don’t know if you can make exergaming your primary source of exercise, but it’s head and shoulders above doing nothing at all.”

And, he said, it’s a great supplement to more traditional workouts — for young and old.

Indeed, Boyd’s 4-year-old son got a “Wii Fit” last Christmas.

Workout sweet spot

If Nintendo’s Wii is the spark that ignited the exergame blaze, “Wii Fit” has become the gasoline, dominating as one of the most popular titles on the market with more than 13 million sold worldwide. Leveraging Wii’s off-the-couch ethos with the wireless Wii Balance Board that comes with the software, “Wii Fit” seems to have found the sweet spot between play and workout.

“The quality of instruction on ‘Wii Fit’ is surprisingly not bad,” Boyd said. “I’ve tried to teach my son how to do push-ups, and all he wants to do is goof around. But I’ll tell you what, it’s almost like he wants to impress the ‘Wii Fit’ instructor.”

Motivate Mii

“ ‘Wii Fit’ has some great aspects to it, especially in terms of building motivation and tracking goals,” said David Dzewaltowski, head of the kinesiology department at Kansas State University and director of the school’s Community Health Institute.

“Wii Fit” measures players’ body mass index, a health metric mash-up based on height and weight. Dzewaltowski said it’s a good screening tool for adults but known for inaccuracies among kids.

Regardless, most people don’t need a computer to tell them whether they need to lose a few pounds. “Wii Fit” can be one of many tools in the toolbox to help them shed that weight, he said, but it is not the whole toolbox.

And maybe not the most effective tool, either.

Heat spectrum

“There are quicker ways to get fit than ‘Wii Fit’ activities,” Dzewaltowski said. “If you started a personally designed weight-training program, you’re going to get a better response than on Wii.”

Even among exergames, there is a heat spectrum when it comes to bringing the burn.

“If ‘Wii Fit’ is getting someone to do more than what they’ve done before, they will get fitter,” Dzewaltowski said. “But there are more demanding games out there — the ‘Dance Dance Revolution’-style games — that really do require you to move and create some caloric expenditure.”

Family Fit

Scott Owen, professor of exercise science at the University of Mississippi and a former Air Force officer, is exploring how exergaming might improve family health.

He’s in the middle of a six-month study designed to track family fitness levels while using “Wii Fit.”

“Obesity has become an epidemic in the United States, and one of the reasons is that adults and children are getting less physical activity,” he said. The upswing in exergames, he said, might provide a way to help reverse that trend.

It’s hard to say how much a game like “Wii Fit” would help the average military person.

“For military families, like most families, there would probably be some benefit, but for active-duty people, it would depend a lot on what their actual job is and how much activity they get in general,” Owen said.