Better than Wii Fit but ............... (Wii Fit Plus (Wii))

Member Name: laramax

Product:	Wii Fit Plus (Wii)
Date:	01/11/09 (81 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You can design your own programmes

Disadvantages: Still not great for cardio exercises

I bought Wii Fit last year and have now used it for over 400 hours so I guess you could say I have had my money's worth out of it. I do like it but it has its shortcomings not least of which is the fact that it takes a long time to work through a routine so I was pleased when I heard that Nintendo were bringing out a new versions and I wanted to see what that offered.

Wii Fit Plus is intended to overcome some of the shortcomings and to allow you to plan a whole routine rather than do it piecemeal and have to wait between exercises. I preordered mine via Amazon where you buy Wii Fit Plus for just £17.99 if you already have the Wii Balance Board or £79.99 with the Balance Board.

As this is a full product review I will outline everything that it does which does include everything on the original Wii Fit so if you already have Wii Fit and are wondering about an upgrade I suggest you skip the next few paragraphs and head for "What's new".

Basically what it comprises is software for the Wii and a 'Balance Board' - this is like a large set of weighing scales which you stand on for many of the exercises and games. It is solid enough when you stand on it the 'balance' element is that it can cleverly calculate your weight, how much weight you put on each foot and also where your centre of gravity is - you don't actually have to 'balance' on it as it doesn't move around.

Getting Started

It works virtually straight out of the box, you need to insert batteries (which are provided) and then press a button to make it communicate with your Wii console and you are ready to go.

The first thing to do is to input your details to go with the Mii you will have already created when you first got your Wii console or if you are new to Wii you can create a Mii which is simply a little screen persona. Once you have put in the details for your Mii you do a Body Test.

The Body Test

The Body Test is quite simple, firstly you stand still and straight on the Balance Board for a minute whilst it calculates your centre of gravity so that it can assess how far you are from putting your weight equally on each leg. So far the best I have managed is 49.9% and 50.1% but I live in hope that one day I will get it exactly right! After a few days of using Wii Fit it sometimes suggests you do this test with your eyes shut to see if you are as good at keeping your balance without any visual clues which is a bit of a challenge.

Next it will assess your BMI (Body Mass Index) and assign it a figure. A figure above 25 is classed as overweight and when I started a year ago I was just over 25 so I resolved to work on getting that down as a first target. Once it has assessed your BMI it asks if you would like to set a target for your weight - I decided to do that as it was clear I needed to slim down a little (I knew that already but had been putting of doing anything about it). I am pleased to report that over the last year I have got my weight down to a healthy BMI of 22 which is testimony to the fact that it does work if you persist!

Fear not, if you live in a household where there are prying eyes you can password protect your BMI and weight details so that only you can see them!

After it has calculated the BMI you can either end the body test there or move on to do some basic balance tests which it will use to assess your Wii Fit age. There are only a few options for the tests and you don't get to choose the ones it gives you but they are quite fun. The Stillness Test just requires you to stand as still as possible for one minute and when it finishes you can see a trace of just how much you moved about. The Walking Test asks you to walk on the spot so that it can assess how much weight you put on each foot as you move using 20 steps. Other options are balancing on one leg without swaying too much, adjusting your balance between each leg to hit a target on the scale which gets more challenging as the test proceeds and an 'Agility Test' which asks you to hit targets by changing your balance. To get a Wii Fit age you do two of these tests chosen at random by the Wii and then a huge number appears which is your Wii Fit age. To add to the suspense sometimes you get a figure which changes seconds later.

One thing that I really like about Wii Fit is that you can do more than one Body Test a day and then save the result you want to save. This is different from Brain Training where you can only do a single test each day. I found when I first did the Body Test my Wii Fit age was similar to my real age, now I am fairly consistently around 36 which I find quite flattering as my real age is 50+. It is really bizarre that I hate it when it rates me in my 40s (which it does if I do badly on the tests) and I am quite elated if I get 26 when really I should be grateful or anything less than my real age!

After doing your Body Test there are lots of exercise options to choose from. When you first get Wii Fit not all of the exercises are available but if you use it daily you should have them all unlocked within about a week. The exercises are split into sections with the first one being the Yoga which I was really keen to try out.

Yoga

At the start you need to select your own personal trainer, there are two choices, male and female, personally I like to work with the man because I like his voice but you can change over as often as you like and they do talk you through the exercises and offer encouragement when you do well as well as offering tips when things aren't working as well as they should.

In all there are fifteen different Yoga poses to work on, eleven of which you do using the balance board, the final four are floor exercises. It starts off with a simple breathing exercise to get you going and during this exercise, as with most of the others, you can see your centre of gravity plotted by a red dot which it asks you to try to keep in a yellow circle to show your balance is correct for the exercise.

The poses are challenging for a beginner like me and what I particularly like is that you are rated for all of the exercises on the balance board so that you can see how you are improving over time. When I first started I really struggled with the ones where you need to balance on one leg but after a month I am finding them much easier and I am much better at retaining my balance. One thing that Wii Fit tells you is that as you age the lower body gets weaker and that as the lower body is essential to support the upper body you need to work at keeping your fitness in this area. I am noticing a difference in my balance in my daily life and I am trying to make sure I practice balance when dressing and drying myself after a shower and I know I am improving.

I find the hardest pose by far is the 'Lord of the Dance' where you balance on one leg whilst holding the other foot behind you and pointing the other hand out in front. I am getting there but it is a struggle and it is made doubly difficult by the fact that my three cats take it in turns to rub round my ankle when I am standing on one leg which does challenge the pose somewhat. Mind you I think they generally find the whole thing amusing - when I get on the floor to do the 'crocodile twist' (head facing one way, knee facing the opposite way) Max delights in lying next to me just to prove that cats can do that exercise really easily!

Muscle Exercises

Next on the list there are muscle exercises which are aimed at strengthening and toning various parts of the body. Again you get a personal trainer to talk you through and again you get scores for each exercise. The bonus here is that as you progress you can increase the number of repetitions and can thus keep challenging yourself.
Some of the exercises are one legged again so that you can increase your strength and balance. I quite enjoy these and I am certainly getting much better with the practice. There are twelve exercises in this section and three 'challenges' where you can pit yourself against the trainer. I have to confess I am selective about the exercises I do from this section. I hate the press ups so avoid them but do quite enjoy the 'deep muscle' exercise where your support yourself for a time with your forearms on the balance board.

I quite like this section even though I don't do all of the exercises. It is steady exercise, not too strenuous, but if you stick at them then it does tone your body over time.

Aerobic Exercises

The previous two sections are good for overall body tone but don't really give you a cardio workout but this section is intended to fill that gap. There are nine sections although to be honest they are on just three themes with different levels of difficulty.

Hula Hoop

I loved this when I first started and I got quite good at it then suddenly found that I didn't seem to be able to do it any more! I am not sure why, I don't know if my technique suddenly changed or if it relates to a problem with the balance board but for some reason it doesn't work for me so I have stopped doing it and bought a real hula hoop instead!


Step

Oh how I struggled with this at the start, I have never been the world's best dancer and expecting me to step on and off the balance board in time with the music and follow the feet patterns on the screen was something of a challenge. However I persevered and I now enjoy them. They are tricky of course if you have a cat sitting behind the balance board where you want to step off but that really enhances the variety of the routine. Rather interestingly I once picked up the cat to carry it whilst doing an exercise and Wii Fit queried my sudden weight change!

Jogging

For this exercise you don't use the balance board at all but put your Wii remote in your pocket and jog on the spot to move along the track on the screen. If you don't have pockets you can just hold the Wii Remote to get the same effect but you don't need to be a genius to realise that you could get along the track by sitting in an armchair moving your hand up and down although the only person you would cheating would be yourself!

The Step and Jogging both have a ten minute exercise routine that you can do whilst watching the TV (rather than the Wii screen) if you want and sound, telling you how you are progressing, comes through the Wii Remote. This is quite handy as ten minutes is a long time and can get quite boring so the option to watch a TV programme is a welcome change.

In my view this is the weakest section on the Wii Fit - it is a token gesture to cardio fitness but to be honest it is difficult to see how they could have made it more challenging. However I suspect if like me you are enjoying the benefits you get from the other sections it will spur you on to finding other ways to improve cardio fitness apart from Wii Fit.

Balance Exercises

This is the 'fun' part of Wii Fit from my perspective. It contains nine exercises which test your ability to adjust your balance using some interesting 'games'. Options include Heading the Ball, Downhill Ski Slalom, Ski Jumping, Snowboarding, Tightrope Walking, Going up river in a bubble, Rolling Balls into holes at a series of levels, Feeding a penguin on an iceberg and Sitting Still. All are challenging in their way and I love doing them after I have worked through my exercise routine although I do suspect they are exercising muscles although it doesn't seem like it at the time.

Personally I am not keen on heading the ball, largely because I am no good at it and I feel the same about snowboarding for the same reason. I still haven't figured out how to make the snowboard go the way I want it to do so if anyone has any tips for that I would love to hear them!

I love the downhill skiing and the ski jumping - you don't actually jump on the balance board for any of the exercises but you bend you legs and stand to simulate a jump.

What's new?

There is quite a lot that is new on Wii Fit Plus, some of it is a novelty like the ability to add in either your pets or a baby - all that does is allow you to weigh them on a regular basis so that you can check their weight. Helpful if you have pets you are trying to slim down and useful perhaps if you want to check your baby's progress but don't worry they aren't allowed to exercise so Nintendo haven't 'lost the plot'.

There is the facility to plan a workout although the only sections you can choose from are the Yoga and the Muscle exercises. This is a handy little feature as it totals up the time so you can choose the right number of workouts to fill say a half hour slot and then use that on a regular basis. If I have a criticism of this feature it is that it only appears to let you have one custom workout stored at any one time - I would have preferred the ability to store half a dozen.

That said there are some preset routines which you can choose from to allow you to work on specific targets such as fitness, flexibility etc and this is very useful. If you prefer you can also ask the Wii Fit to design a routine for you.

I do love this flexibility because very often I want to do a half hour workout and I used to hate waiting for all the interval between exercises. The slight downside is that it doesn't score your performance for each exercise but in any event that used to get tedious to me so I am pleased that I can now avoid it.

Nintendo have also added a whole new section of fun 'games' called Training Plus which include things like skateboarding, snowball fights, flying like a bird, juggling - I could go on and on. I have tried them all and they are good fun, some more so than others from my perspective, but I think it is fair to say that there is something for everyone in that section and they would be hilarious at a party as some of them are especially tricky to master. If I have a criticism of this section it is that I would have liked some instructions on how to do them but to be honest once you have tried and got a rotten score you soon learn what you should be doing to do better!

I love the fact that Nintendo have also introduced a little brain work into the exercises as well. One of the features when it works out your brain age required me to balance whilst clicking on random numbers in ascending order - sounds simple but when you are trying to keep your centre of gravity in the centre and use you brain to select numbers you do need to concentrate. Similarly in one of the fun games you have to swing your hips to hit 'mushrooms' whose numbers add up to 10 which means doing quick mental arithmetic whilst exercising - great fun and a good way to smarten up your mental arithmetic.

Other new features includes the provision of a MET Value - A MET value is added to each exercise, in order to calculate calories burnt. MET stands for "metabolic equivalent" and is defined as "the ratio of the work metabolic rate to the resting metabolic rate". Sounds complicated but in practice it just gives you an idea of how many calories you have burnt during your workout which is useful.

Nintendo have provided some expanded training modes - Aerobic & Jogging both have additional courses, Step Rhythm Remix includes new songs. There are 3 new Yoga exercises and 3 new Muscle exercises. All this plus the option for Multiplayer mode to allow all the family to join in.

Would I recommend it?

Yes I would. If you like Wii Fit you will love this new version. If you were frustrated by the time wasted in Wii Fit you will find this a considerable improvement. I will still keep using the other Wii Fitness programmes that I think are better for aerobic exercise like My Fitness Trainer and EA Sports Active but I think Wii Fit is much better for the Yoga and sorting out posture and balance.

It is suitable for all ages as it goes at a steady pace and gradually builds up your abilities. The measuring of the different exercises and the scoring system used gives an incentive to do better and it has certainly kept me interested over the period I have had it.

It isn't directed I am sure at fitness fanatics who wouldn't find anything on there a challenge I am sure but it is great for people who want to make a start at getting fitter and it beats sitting in an armchair getting fatter and lazier in my book.

This would be great at Christmas when you have all the family round - fun for everyone over the holidays and the opportunity to get yourself fitter at the same time.

This review has also been published on Ciao by laramax

Summary: Good way for all the family to have fun and get fitter