Wii have problems

By Leada Gore (Contact) | Clanton Advertiser

Published Wednesday, January 28, 2009

There are all sort of video games around my house, none of which have ever interested me. Greg and his son will sit and play the games — most of which involve all sorts of blowing things up — for hours. As I’m not interested in blowing things up, I’ve never paid any attention to any of them.

About a year ago, however, Greg bought a new type of game. It’s a Wii and it’s designed so that the controller mimics your actual moves. If you’re playing tennis, for example, you swing your controller like a racket. If you’re boxing, you throw actual punches.

This Christmas, Greg added something new, a board that’s designed to facilitate exercise, using the video game as a guide. 

You stand on a special Wii Fit board, which looks frighteningly like a scale, and it guides you through all sorts of exercises, such as Yoga and running.

Simple, right? Wrong.

I encountered my first Wii Fit problem when the computer program asked me to put in my height and weight and then it conjured up a mini-Leada for the screen. I didn’t like the looks of this mini-Leada and frankly, resented the machine for making me quite so, ahem, round.

Overcoming this problem and the fact the machine groaned when I stood on it, I moved on to Yoga. I like Yoga and figured how hard could it be? I went through the deep breathing exercises, something I managed to do well, only to fall quickly when confronted by the Standing Tree pose, not to mention some pose that I feel is physically impossible.

I moved on to some of the other exercises.

I tried the hula hoop one, only to find I couldn’t coordinate keeping my virtual hoops moving while trying to pick up other hoops as well.

I tried downhill skiing, but missed most of the flags and ended up just making the Mini Leada stay on the game’s equivalent of the bunny slope.

I tried the dancing program, a three-minute step class akin to aerobics.

This went better than the others, at least until I got off step and ended up almost breaking an ankle as I hopped up and down. 

Eventually, I laid down the remote control. 

“How’d the workout go?” Greg asked me as I headed downstairs.

“OK,” I guess. “But I think I will just go for a walk around the block. This virtual exercise thing is killing me.”

— Leada Gore is the publisher of The Hartselle Enquirer. Her column appears each Thursday.

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