Tom's Life Bits

Fitness programs prove popular with today's youngsters as well astheir grandmas and grandpas
By Joe Miller, Staff writer

Staff Photo by Juli Leonard - Sixteen-year-old Rick Cotton uses a small steering wheel to play a racing game at the Wii Station in The Streets of Southpoint Mall in Durham.

Hey, kids, don't get too excited if there's a Wii Fit under your tree Christmas morning: You may find yourself fighting mom and dad for a chance to play with it. Not to mention grandma. And great-grandpa.

In this age of childhood obesity – when one of four North Carolinians between 12 and 18 is considered overweight – anything that gets youngsters up and moving is considered a good thing. Even a video game. When the Nintendo Wii debuted in December 2006, it was touted as the “active” video game. With a wave of its magic wand, you could replicate any number of sports, from tennis and golf to bowling and baseball.

Now comes the Wii Fit: Stand on its Balance Board, which resembles a digital bathroom scale, and you can ski, skateboard, hula hoop or do any number of popular activities. Wii Fit also appeals to moms and dads with its strength training and yoga programs, and to older generations as well, with programs that focus on balance.

But is it a true workout?

“It's pretty realistic,” observed shopper Rich Addessco of Raleigh, after executing the downhill ski slalom course at the Wii Fit demonstration station at Durham's Streets at Southpoint mall. “I used to ski all the time.”

With the downhill ski program, you stand with your feet on the Balance Board and apply pressure to your left foot to make your on-screen video likeness veer left, and shift your weight to your right foot to make your skier go right. Lean forward, on the balls of your feet, to go faster. The objective is to navigate a series of gates that come at you as you speed downhill. Do it long enough and, supposedly, you'll develop the burning quads and aching calf muscles that you would have after spending a day on the expert runs at the Snowshoe Mountain ski resort in West Virginia. Did Addessco's quads burn after his run? He wouldn't go quite that far, raising an eyebrow and chuckling at the thought.

Nor would Debbe Geiger of Durham, who got a Wii Fit in September. One thing that pleased her: “I liked that it added up my 'fit minutes,' because then I felt like the time I was actually being physical was being counted.” She wasn't crazy about the function that calculates your age based on your fitness level (once it told her she was 63; she's 44) nor was she crazy about the down time between programs. And, she said, some Wii Fit activities don't come anywhere close to the real thing.

“The aerobics felt like a feather compared to any real workout,” she said.

That data collection – your time spent exercising, fitness age and body mass index, among other things – is popular with online Wii Fit.

The Wii Fit Group at The Daily Plate Counter (thedailyplate.com), which offers help on eating and exercise, has more than 160 members who log everything from calories burned to sodium intake. Member comments suggest that the popularity of the Wii Fit is high among sedentary types but wanes among people who are more active.

The Wii Fit has proven surprisingly popular with the least likely demographic for a video game: seniors.

In September, nursing students at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Ky., introduced the Wii Fit at a senior center where the students receive practical training. The game was an immediate hit, especially among the men.

“They live and breathe to come play the Wii,” says nursing supervisor Brandy Henderson, who oversees the program. She thinks there are two reasons:

Wii Fit lets the seniors do some of the things – golfing, bowling, skiing – that they no longer can do.

It provides an outlet for their competitiveness.

Henderson says one 92-year-old man visited the center infrequently before the Wii Fit but now is there “from the time it opens at 9 until closing.”

“Without a doubt, it's the competitiveness,” she says. “He's become very feisty. We were shocked to see this side of him.”

Henderson agrees the Wii Fit isn't the answer for someone looking to feel the burn.

“I do Body Pump [a weights-based fitness program] at the Y, and it doesn't come close to that.”

Like the Wii, Wii Fit is popular in physical rehabilitation.

Last year, WakeMed began using the Wii and programs such as bowling and tennis to help patients recovering from strokes, heart attacks, sports injuries, car crashes and more. Last month, WakeMed started using the Wii Fit as well.

“I like the fact that you can stand up and do something, that you can shift your weight back and forth,” recreation therapist Elizabeth Penny says. “We use the strength game, the yoga, the aerobics and balance games. It's especially good for patients with high-level balance issues.” Stroke patients, for instance, may tend to favor one side or the other.

Its attraction for adults may be the Wii Fit's biggest strength in getting children off the couch. Those on the front lines of the battle against childhood obesity say the biggest challenge isn't getting the children to become more active and eat better, it's getting the parents to buy in and take an active role.

“The one thing I've noticed in feedback from customers is that it really does get the whole family involved,” says Betty Shock, a regional vice president with GameStop, a nationwide retailer of new and used video games and equipment. “You can watch parents do things they normally wouldn't do.”

“My parents,” she says, “are really serious people. They would come over and watch my son watch television. Since we got the Wii, they'll go bowling with him, do Mario Kart [a car racing game].”

She thinks she knows why the Wii Fit may succeed at getting parents to play with their offspring again. For one, many of the games are easy. More important, she says, the parents aren't as worried about looking silly or inept as they might, say, tossing a Frisbee in the backyard or shooting hoops in the driveway.

“When they're doing the Wii Fit, no one is looking at them,” she says. “They're looking at the television, watching the character of them on the TV.”

joe.miller@newsobserver.com or 919-812-8450

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery. What you need

To operate the Wii Fit, you must first have a Wii system, which retails for about $250. The Wii Fit program, with Balance Board and several game programs, runs about $90. Additional games, including Jillian Michaels' Fitness Ultimatum 2009, Shaun White Snowboarding Road Trip and All-Star Cheer Squad are available, generally from $29.99 to $59.99 each.

For a sense of the yoga, balance games, strength training and aerobics programs available for the Wii Fit, go to nintendo.com/wiifit and watch the people in white underwear give demonstrations.