evilbeefchan

I'm lucky to have a girlfriend who's more of a wii freak than I am, and she managed to get one within the first week it came out.

I am in no way out of shape, but then again I'm not fit either. If you've played Wii sports, you probably know what to expect. It starts out with exercises in different categories; strength training, yoga, aerobics and balance activities. The "strength training" focuses on the basic exercises that you can do without weights (pushups, crunches, lunges). The aerobics include a step aerobics activity, a boxing activity (kinda like tae boe but no kicks), and a "running" activity that just makes you jog in place (or around the room) with the wiimote acting like a pedometer. Oh yea, there's a hula hoop activity (that's right, hula hoop) that always seems to kick my ass. The balance games are pure fun, and your thighs get pretty tired eventually.

The board is very sensitive, as it forces you to do balance tests to check your overall fitness. Balancing on one leg, standing completely still, it measures how much pressure you're placing on each leg. Each day you're tested to see how much you've progressed, taking your weight as well as some random activities. My only problem is that it measures your progress by measuring BMI, which isn't exactly the best for everyone (but I guess it's a good start).

Once you start progressing through the game and unlocking more activities as well as different modes, you can get a decent home workout from it. The strength activities force you to go slow and focus on your form. All the activities continue to measure your balance to make sure you're not putting too much weight on one leg or possibly straining your back. Nothing gets too strenuous, so it may be possible to plateau if you don't vary your workouts.

I'm not completely sold on it, as I'm one of the people who eventually got tired of wii sports. Wii sports was fun while trying to unlock everything possible and rank up high scores, but then you find ways to manipulate the wiimote and you get bored. With the balance board, the only activity that you can possibly cheat are the crunches (it's the kind where you do a crunch and tuck your legs in, and your feet are the only way to indicate when you've completed a crunch). For myself, I can imagine using the yoga and strength activities in the long run, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. You can unlock a "freestyle" level for step aerobics so you can do it while you're watching something else (the wiimote acts like a metronome so you can still go to a beat), though I'd rather go out and run. It's nice having a "virtual trainer" in the background to make sure you're doing exercises correctly. I'm guilty of dipping too low on pushups, or using momentum on my lunge to bounce up. If you're disciplined enough to do these exercises on your own, well, you probably wouldn't be considering buying one of these.