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.”