I’ve had an interesting couple of weeks, exercise-wise. After Ravencon at the beginning of the month, I was completely wiped out and had a lot of work to catch up on so I skipped my heavy workouts at the Y and the dojo. Then last week I suddenly found myself without a car for most of the time, which also prevented me from getting to the Y and the dojo. Which means I’ve been doing all my workouts at home, mostly on the Wii.
However, I’d once again hit a slump in my love for Wii workouts. I run into this problem every now and then. The two best games for Wii workouts, in my opinion, are Wii Fit Plus and EA Sports Active. These are my workhorse games. However, I’ve run into some problems with them lately.
For starters, I had gotten a little bored with Wii Fit Plus. Wii Fit Plus has plenty of games, but a limited number of yoga and strength exercises, thus the reason I bought EASA. I figured I’d do the bulk of my cardio in Wii Fit Plus and the bulk of my strength training in EASA. And this would have been ideal but I snapped my strength training band for EASA a couple of months back and hadn’t been able to find a good replacement in the local stores. The one replacement band I did find turned out to be way too short, causing the handles to dig painfully into my hands and making certain exercises impossible to do in EASA.
So what to do? Fortunately for me, one of my good friends, Mich, has worked with both games. She recommended I go online and order a package of Therabands to replace the band for EASA. This turned out to be ideal. The Therabands come in varying degrees of resistance, and each package holds about 6 yards of elastic band. So no problem getting a band to fit. I just cut one to the length I need. I also decided to buy a pair of weight lifting gloves to protect my hands from the resistance band handles. This has worked like a charm!
As for Wii Fit Plus, Mich mentioned how much she enjoyed the bike ride game. It is, after all, the only game that allows you to roam free all over WuHu Island, the setting for Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort. I had played the bike game a few times, but had abandoned it in favor of the running games because I thought the running games made me work up more of a sweat. But I liked the idea of being able to explore the game environment, so during my next workout, I decided to try the bike game again. If nothing else, being able to steer around on my own while hunting for flags would help stave off the boredom.
Well guess what I found? After successfully completing what I thought was the highest level of the biking game, I unlocked the “Free Ride” mode! I’m sure everybody else in the universe knows about this mode, but yours truly was completely in the dark about it. If you’ve been in the dark too, the Free Ride mode lets you roam the island for 30 minutes without having to hunt down any of those flags. There are 20 little striped balloons tucked away here and there that you can ride over and pop, but they aren’t the main point of the game. Instead, you can just roam wherever you like.
And I like that a lot!
So suddenly I’m biking on WuHu Island every chance I get. And now with my new elastic band and gloves, I can get back to strength training in EASA. I’m back to enjoying my Wii workouts, which is good, and I’m putting in more exercise time, which is even better. Yes, I’m sure I’ll hit another slump again, but I’m predicting by the time that happens, the new version of EASA will have come out, or I’ll find another workout game to add to my collection. In the meantime, I’ve been browsing around the Wii Fit Forum, finding out about all sorts of little Easter eggs hidden in Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort. Naturally, I am now tracking those items down in both games. Oh, and Wii Sports Resort can cause me to work up a sweat as well.
So I’m in love with my Wii again and enjoying every minute of it!
