EA Sports Active - Wii

The Game Room
1

I just got mine today as I’m collecting all of the fitness games for Wii it seems.

First off, opening the box, I got the game in its case, the leg strap and the resistance band.

The leg strap fits around my meaty upper leg (I’m 6’1 250) and there was plenty of room leftover. I found out that working out in my boxers with this attached doesn’t work too well. So either short shorts or tighty whiteys and drawing the shades. Also, don’t bother trying to run this game without the leg strap as it expects the nunchuks to be positioned in a very certain way. I tried it just by putting it in a shorts’ pocket and my squats didn’t register.

The resistance band is a bit of a joke. It’s a piece of stretchy rubber and two unattached straps that you can adjust for length and you hand tie the band to the grips. I’m already afraid I will be ripping this. For some reason, the rubber smells minty which is enjoyable. I have a regular band at home but found that with the normal handles, it was very difficult to hold on to with the wiimote and nunchuk. I also bought a second set of accessories for $20 so the kids can work in tandem with each other or me.

Now for the game, it has several components:
A journal where you can track your workouts, take a nutrtional survey and add the offline activities you do.

A fitness profile where you add in your stats and design your character (a shame you can’t use your Mii).

Preset and Custom workouts

And the main one: 30 Day Challenge. This challenge has 20 workouts in 30 days with days marked as “rest” days preassigned. It lets you choose between low/medium/high intensity and if you want to use the balance board or not. It then gives options of musical styles which is four dance stations, a guitar/rock station, or a mix. I guess I should expect that I’m the only one who works out to folk music. After that, it gives a list of the exercises you will be doing today. My list was (And you can tick off the ones you don’t want to do):
Walk & Run
Squats
Run
Boxing
Bicep Curls
Bent over Rows
Inline Skating
Side Lunges
Squats
Bicep Curls
Boxing
Bent over Rows
Side Lunges
Inline Skating
Front Shoulder Raises
Run & Walk

A calorie counter is present at the start and keeps track as you go along. At the end it shows how many calories were “actually” burned and for my first workout, I burned more than projected (yeah me!) There’s also a “total workout time” which includes watching the tutorial videos, so you know how long you’ll probably be working out. There are also a lot of trophies to unlock as you go through. It says next time “we will be focusing on unilateral exercises like lunges and curls. We’ll also work on our tennis drills.”

I’m pretty excited about this game already. Wii Fit was awesome until I had unlocked everything and got bored with it. I would like to say that this is a nice successor to Wii Fit so far since we haven’t seen a Wii Fit 2 yet.

2

My rubber wiimote covers smelled like gin the first few weeks, which I loved.

So how many calories did you burn?

3

189 on day one and 225 on day two. The exercises for the 30 day challenge were definitely changed up which was cool.

4

just got my Wii Fit last week (and only used it once due to having to go out of town for a family emergency) and picked this up today (ok, technically yesterday :slight_smile: ), and will be seeing how this works

5

I’ve been thinking of getting this game.

My original Wii Fit CD met an unfortunate end at the hands of my SO’s 6 year old daughter, and I’ve been sitting around with a useless balance board a cracked disc for the past 2 months.

I’ve seen no point in investing another $90 to get a balance board and another Wii Fit disc, would you say this is a good alternative?

Would you mind sharing how much it costs? Google’s showing $51-58 in the top links, but I didn’t dig any further.

6

If you call Nintendo, you can buy a replacement Wii Fit CD for $25 + shipping. Mine disappeared, and I went this route. Still a lot of cash, but better than $90.

7

Ooh, excellent. What I had a problem with on the Fit is that there weren’t any preset combos of workouts. I do a lot better with guidance.

8

Not to knock it, because if the alternative is doing nothing then it’s definitely a good thing, but what’s the fun factor? That’s what would attract me to it. Because burning ~200 calories a day will give you weight loss results at an absolutely glacial pace. That’s less than a pound every 2 weeks, and that’s assuming it doesn’t make you eat a little bit more, which, if your alternative is doing nothing, it will. I liked Wii Fit a lot as a party game but I think it would only actually get fit people who were way out on the desolate end of the bell curve, with very little company.

9

Really? Compare other types of exercises for 30 minute increments. 150-250 C is the average, even for the more gym-type exercises.

Everything I’ve seen about EA Active makes it look like a rather more effective version of Wii Fit, which was fun for awhile, but it turns out there wasn’t much of a way to really up the ante, especially on weights and reps, without just doing the same exercise over and over.

EA Active seems less like a game and more like a guided, interactive version of those exercise videos.

10

I mountain bike for 1 to 2 hours about 4 days a week. That’s 796 calories per hour * 1.5 for my average time = 1194 * 4 = 4776 per week. I also lift weights for about an hour 2 days a week. That’s 562 * 2 = 1124 + 4776 = 5900 extra calories per week burned through exercise. Compare to ~1200 I would burn playing this game the same number of days. That’s why it’d have to be fun, just like mountain biking is. I would never run 4 days a week. Blech :).

By the way, you weigh a lot less than me if you’re getting an average of 150-250 calories on that site, and I weigh a lot less than the OP, so you wouldn’t be burning anywhere near what he burned.

11

And by the way let me just reiterate that I think burning an extra 1200 calories a week is awesome if you would be burning less otherwise. I just don’t think it’s awesome enough to play a boring game. And maybe this game is really fun, I’m saying I don’t know; just thinking out loud. The way to go with these IMO is to make them really fun and challenging, and with replay value so they don’t get stagnant, and then the calories burned are just the icing on the cake of a really cool video game. Imagine a game as addictive as EverQuest or Halo or Guitar Hero that burned ~400 calories per hour :eek:.

12

Not quite it but on the way - I read online somewhere about a couple who played World of Warcraft and wanted to get exercise without giving up their playing time. They mounted the laptops on treadmills and would run on the treadmill any time their characters had to run/ride/fly somewhere. Apparently it worked wonders. (If I had room in my living room for a treadmill I’d seriously consider it.)

13

Well to bump this thread I just completed my 30 day challenge on Medium. I’m going to go through on hard now. I’d say my stamina and tone went up but it was useless for strength (upper body workouts were such a waste of time. I added wrist weights and they still didn’t feel like they were useful).

My main goal in buying this program was for weight loss. I recently have lost 30 lbs but my progress has slowed down to nearly nothing and I was hoping this program would boost it again. No luck though I don’t really think that it’s the programs fault. I certainly was dripping sweat for quite a few of those workouts. I’m still losing weight it’s just painfully slow and nothing I do seems to help.

The biggest seller for me is the structure. If I’m just going along on my own sooner or later I’ll take a break on a day I’m ‘supposed’ to work out and that’s the end of it for me. Having a program tell me when to workout and when to rest kept me on track. We’ll see if it sticks for another month.

Also whoever invented Jump Lunges needs to be punched in the kidneys.

14

My girlfriend has been playing it and digging it. The structure is much appreciated, according to the Ever Patient Tracy.