EA Sports Active: The Failure is Mine
Posted on Mar 13, 2010 by Lori in Wii
Okay. So I’m not going to be completing the 30-day challenge—yet. But the fault lies with me.
It was a little bit of the fact that I had gotten a lot of client work coming in at odd hours in the past couple of weeks, and I was on-call to go into the agency where I’m freelancing (sometimes for sixteen hours at a stretch), which screwed with my schedule. Mostly, however, it all boils down to my being a thoroughly lazy sod.
All told, I really did enjoy the workouts and felt great afterwards though, after the first two days, it took me a very sad five minutes to get down the stairs in order to leave my house. I did, however, find that I was hitting myself in the face with the cord during the alternating shoulder presses (I have a Nyko cordless nunchuk adapter, but it doesn’t fit into the pocket of the leg strap).
Unlike some other Wii exercise titles that failed miserably to accurately gauge activity via the controller/balance board combo (I’m looking at you, Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2009), I found EA Sports Active to be rather responsive. I do agree with Jen (who commented as much on my previous post), however, that this was not a 100% success rate; while she found that her sit-ups weren’t being recognized, I had a similar issue with the curls and presses.
I also found that alternating equipment from one exercise to the next became kind of a pain in the ass. Considering the fact that each exercise only lasted a couple of minutes, I found that it took me more time to arrange myself with the resistance band or drag out the balance board than it did to complete the set for which I was setting up. One way that I got around this is by eliminating the balance board altogether—the exercises were just as challenging without it. I’m also not the most coordinated person at the best of times, and I often found myself forgetting to put the nunchuk in the leg strap and then wondering why my lunges weren’t being recognized.
Ultimately, I liked EA Sports Active. It made me sweat and feel the burn and all those other oogy things that come from physical activity—things with which I’m not terribly familiar. If I were the type of person who actually set goals and stuck to them, I would find this a challenging and rewarding experience. Then again, if I were said kind of person, I’d probably have a gym membership.
I think what I’ll do now is look through all of the exercises and create a customized two-person workout that doesn’t require the balance board, leg strap, and resistance band. That way, Dave and I can do the workouts together without investing in a separate leg strap/resistance band kit, which means that I’ll have the encouragement I need to wake up earlier in the morning and get it done. As well, for those of you who want to buy a stand-alone (read: used) copy, you’ll know what exercises you can do without the peripherals. I’ll post this list once I’ve completed it.
