Okay, now at first I thought this would be way too dorky even for me. But now I'm in love with the thing.
There's this thing called Yourself!Fitness. It's for the Xbox, and it's not a game in the same sense that Halo 2 is an Xbox game. It's a workout...game...that's completely customizable and acts like a virtual personal trainer. Think Dance Dance Revolution with aerobics, without the mat, and without some tiny Asian kid showing you just how uncoordinated you really are.
I first heard of this at the last E3 when I saw a small lightbox advertizing it in front of the South Hall doors. I didn't think much of it -- it looked like a low budget Xbox product that I'd never hear about again.
But the other day in my usual IRC chat hangout I was whining about how I can't seem to keep my weight down to reasonable levels even though I do an hour of yoga every day (with 20 minutes of that being an ashtanga/vinyasa flow sequence, which makes me break out into a sweat). My body has always been pretty resistant to losing weight or even just maintaining a mostly reasonable weight without a huge portion of my life devoted to exercising. For instance, years ago when I was trying to get down to 170, which is two pounds more than what all the charts said I was supposed to be at, I could only get myself down to about 173. In order to get there and maintain it, I was working out 2 hours a day every day (30 minutes of weights, 30 minutes of running/jogging, and 1 hour of miscellaneous aerobic exercise like stairmasters and rowing machines) and eating a mostly vegetarian diet of about 1600 calories a day.
I was miserable. At that point, just trying to maintain a weight that my body clearly was struggling against was taking too much time out of my day, not to mention that each morning I could barely get out of bed because of the toll it was taking on my energy levels.
But enough of that. I need cardio! In the constant fight to wrangle my body into submission I'm realizing that I'm just not getting enough aerobic exercise, and even just some a few days a week would help keep my weight down. So on the recommendation of someone in the chat channel who's been using Yourself!Fitness for about a month, I picked it up.
I love this thing. I had no idea it would be this enjoyable. I used to take aerobics classes when they were in vogue back in the early 90s, and they were the only form of exercise (until I found yoga) that I could tolerate because it was varied and somewhat fun.
Yourself!Fitness features Maya, an animated female personal trainer. Maya starts off by giving you a basic fitness test that includes jumping jacks, squats, push ups, and heart rate timing. You can also enter in a target weight goal (if your goal is to lose weight). Maya will then construct a basic workout schedule that you can tweak according to your own needs.
Each day when you load up the game to do your workout, Maya will usually have a comment or two based on your progress. If you've been making it to the sessions she'll commend you on your progress. When you start your workout you'll get to choose from a few categories: weight loss, cardio, flexibility, upper body strength, lower body strength, or core body strength. Maya will make a recommendation for you on which one to do, but you can choose one yourself.
I stuck with the schedule that Maya recommended to me, which was a 30 minute workout five days a week. The first day I did the weight loss workout. The second day I went with the recommendation, which was core body strength. I then went back to weight loss the third day, then had a day off. The next day I did lower body strength, and then back to weight loss.
At the start of the workout you tell Maya how you feel. If you're feeling like someone dragged you there and put a gun to your head to make you work out, she'll tailor her in-workout pep talk accordingly. The workouts are varied so as to keep things interesting. At different parts Maya will ask how you felt during the last segment. Were you working really hard? Were you unable to keep up at all? Or was the workout too easy for you? Depending on your answer, she'll scale the workout up or down accordingly next time. If you have any workout gear like handweights, a balance ball, or others, you can include these in your workouts as well.
There's also the Meditation Garden, which is a workout option that doesn't factor into your regular workout commitments. In the Meditation Garden Maya will take you through a yoga workout. I'm no expert at yoga for sure, but this is the one area that the game doesn't rock for me. I didn't buy the game for its yoga features but I did consider them some cool bonuses. The yoga routine, though, is done really fast, and there's no preparation done at all before you start. There's also no mention of yogic breathing (ujayyi breath, or mindful breathing, a type of breathing done during yoga in which the throat constricts the breath slightly and lengthens it out as well as warming it). There's also a bug that causes Maya to stop talking through the routine, only to pick up again at the wrong place so that her talk-through doesn't match the poses she's working on.
Otherwise, though, this thing is a godsend. I considered looking for a local gym to join, but I hate the idea of paying for things I won't use, such as weight machines and classes I won't take. I paid $35 and now I have a personalized routine I can do on my own schedule. The routines are fun, and its first approximation for my workout level was pretty accurate: my first workout fell into the "I could barely keep up" description, but the second workout was ratcheted down accordingly and they've been challenging without being impossible. I have five more workouts to go before I get my next Physical Challenge, which will reevaluate my fitness level.
But none of this is the best part, however. The best part is that it uses the same tricks that actual video games use to get you to continue making progress: unlockables. Maya works out in a variety of settings like The Urban Oasis or The Empress' Dojo. By keeping your committments and sticking to your schedule, you unlock new workout areas, new music to workout to, and I think even some new exercises. Talk about playing to the strengths of the format. On my fourth workout Maya unlocked The Desert Oasis & Spa workout level. I'm really hoping soon that I'll be able to unlock that House music option I see listed but can't use yet.
So, I love it and I really recommend it if you've got an Xbox. I haven't given up yoga (there's no way I'm ever giving up yoga), but I've varied my routine a bit. Now when I get up at 6 am each day, my routine depends on what my workout will be that day. If I have a Yourself!Fitness workout, I do 30 minutes of yoga and a 30 minute workout. If I have an off day with no workout, I do 60 minutes of yoga. And on the weekends when I have a workout, I do both my usual 1 hour of yoga and the 30 minute workout since I have the time. Yoga is a great lead-in on the weekday mornings to the workout.
I'm hoping ResponDesign is working on another version, because if they are I'll be ready for it. What I thought was a silly idea that would never sell definitely changed my mind now that I've actually used it myself.