I'm a Wii bit sore and a Wii bit tired as well.

[kandrathe]

The common joke about the Wii Fit is: you can pay ~$90 for something that you'll never use, and that beats paying ~$50 a month for a gym membership you'll never use.

Jokes aside though, the Wii Fit can give you good exercise if you follow a regimen with it. Do the strength training and the aerobics daily for considerable periods. I found some of its exercises amazing when it was clearly using muscles my WoW-addled body hadn't used in a LONG time...and I'd feel it afterward. Just like a gym membership though, you have to keep at it for it to be effective, and keep trying to beat your scores. It helps if you have a family member owning your face off at some of the games to give you motivation.

It has lower-impact exercises too that you can just do whenever. For example, Free Step, which you turn on and then switch over to watch TV. The Wii Fit board tracks your steps on the board (like a Stairmaster) and will give you a score after 10, 20, or 30 minutes of the activity. Since I almost never watch TV, I don't get much use out of that unless I'm watching sports.

Some of the games are more "fun" games than others, and naturally the ones that give you the best workouts aren't those. You're not going to get a workout from the Ski Jump, for example. The game tells you it develops balance, but....eh, I don't see it.

The ultimate benefit of the Wii Fit is that it tracks your weight change and makes you think about your daily activities. It still doesn't have a "play too much WoW" button as a potential answer to "why the (bleep) are you gaining so much weight, fatso?" This I need. :)

-Bolty

I concur. I at least log on once a day to do the Body Check, even if I don't "train". My wife and I have set a goal to lose 1 pound per week for 20 weeks. We are tied for weight loss so far, even though she has racked up twice the time on it that I have. The ski jump will burn your quads if you crouch in the ski jump stance. Same with the ski racing, where if you are in the crouched stance for the races you will get quite the quadriceps burn. If that doesn't work, there is the old stand by ski racing training I used to do, which was to put a pillow on the floor and repeatedly jump over it sideways (simulated deep powder jumps).