EA Active Challenge Day One: Initial Impressions

22Jun09

Okay, so I totally caved and got EA Sports Active for my Wii. I’m always looking for new (funner) ways to work out, and this seemed like a good idea, especially during bikini season! Today was my very first workout, so I filled out my profile and got to it. First of all, I have to say that I think the calorie counter is complete BS, because it said that it took me 30 minutes to burn 141 calories, which is sorta wack. Come on, I was sweaty! But I digress, on to the workouts…

The Cardio: The cardio I did mainly consisted of running/walking (mostly running for me b/c I picked the high intensity workout) and running kick backs (running while literally kicking your own ass). There’s nothing really to the running part, just running in place, but the kick backs–maaaan. It’s not that they are hard, but they make you do them for like, three minutes at a time. Have you tried kicking your own ass for three full minutes? It’s a lot of quad work. These remind me of the one minute cardio intervals they have on some of my fitness DVDs…but this…is three minutes, hence the pain!

The Toning: Lunges and Squats: Self-explanatory, you do them holding the wiimote and the nunchuck in your leg. They usually make you do 20, which is pretty good–I think I ended up doing 2 sets each of squats and side lunges, maybe 3. 80+ butt toners in a video game? Not bad. My Luli Fama bikini thanks you, EA.

Lifting: Bicep curls, some shoulders, triceps…pretty standard stuff for the most part. The most annoying things about these exercises is you have to be sure to keep the wiimote facing where they say. Otherwise your trainer (mine is the dude, he’s sorta a douche) will tell you to focus, and I’m like GET OFF ME I’M DOING IT. But hey, at least to fix it, I had to do more reps. Nothing wrong with a little extra work. Also, everyone who keeps complaining about the lack of resistance with the band that came with the game, you can usually increase resistance by making the band shorter, ie tighter. So get on it and quit whining. Kthx. Also though, I really do wish the trainer didn’t hold the reps for as long as he did. I’m not really sure that I’m supposed to be holding a front row for like, 5 seconds before I can drop my shoulders back down. If I throw out my shoulder, EA is getting a letter. No joke.

Sport Games: Aight, now we’re getting into the nitty gritty! First of all, every time I play these freakin’ games I realize that I LOVE boxing. I just picture a bitch’s face I don’t like and I’m like, pa-dow, take that! I haven’t gotten to the speed bag yet, but I did the target boxing, which gives you regular punches and hooks. My left hook is mean, son! Watch out! The other sport I did was “inline skating,” which is HARD AS BALLS because it’s basically squatting in order to give your avatar speed, holding the squat until you get to the ramp, then JUMPING to complete your trick. Okay, my problem came because I had to jump up at the exact right time, which is hard to do once you get tired. After the first few squats/jumps, my avatar was definitely skatin’ mad slow because I wasn’t really tryin’ to keep holding that squat. I’m sure my quads are gonna kill tomorrow. But like always, anything in the name of fitness. )

I’m going to go back and try out some more games now. Hopefully being bored enough to play this game will get me ready for July 4th weekend. You might ask, “You lazy ho, why don’t you just go to the gym?” Don’t get it twisted, I’ll be in the gym too, but doing some kind of physical activity without it actually being “working out” is always a nice option. However, I don’t think I would exactly call this game fun. EA isn’t messin’ around. And I like that.

UPDATE: So I did another workout (I believe it was called the Athlete in You), and got to do basketball, tennis and volleyball. These were fun, although not very challenging. I made sure to incorporate my lower body into the workouts as well to keep it full body. Basketball included passing and shooting (I’m a beast), tennis was basically just hitting the ball (similar to Wii Tennis, but you had to do different arm movements for different kinds of shots), and volleyball was serving, bumping, setting and blocking. Man, do I suck at serving. I kept missing the ball like a loser. However, I’m the ish at bumping and setting. I think my shoulders are going to get buff. Additionally, I also added in a few workouts I wanted to try, like dancing. Dancing is easy–you just move your arms when it’s the right time in the correct direction. Make sure you jump around to get more cardio in. I found it hilarious when they told you to do moves like the shopping cart, lawmower and other silly moves. I bet you’d pay to watch me do those. It’s rather amusing!

And the day after…

Holy goodness, I am sore. I’m sure it is mostly from doing like, a billion squats and lunges and a ton of arm exercises, but man, my arms and butt are killing me! I also like how my abs are sore, and I didn’t even do any ab work! I’m thinking this is from the boxing part of the exercises. I work out consistently, so I’m constantly changing up my workout in order to trick my body into working harder. Overall, I’m liking the intensity of the exercises given. Alternating the sport exercises with cardio and toning gives you a lot of variety and I think really helps get your heart rate up. I was totally sweating (like, dripping sweat–the hardest part about doing the lifting exercises is that I didn’t want to move and get yelled at by my trainer, but there was sweat in my eye!) and I’m sore, so that’s two pluses for what I want out of a workout. I’m not going to sub these for my running intervals, but I’m def going to add them in.

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