102 out of 102 people found this review helpful.
Wii Fit - A Fun way to Add Exercise to Every Day!
Date of Review: Jun 28, 2008
The Bottom Line: This is a really good way to get back into exercising. It is fun and entertaining for adults and for children.
Every since we got our Wii over a year and a half ago, my husband has said it was a great way to get exercise. My kids really enjoy the Wii Sports and my husband as well. Getting Wii Fit was his idea, but I was also interested in it. I must say I have really stuck with doing it every day for the past 30 days, so it has been the best exercise item we have bought in many years. I've lost about 5 pounds and have more energy then I have had in a long time.
When you turn it on and load up the game, it starts with doing a body test. It recommends that you do one every day. This measures your weight and calculates your body mass index, based on the height you have entered in your profile. The hard part about doing this is that if you are overweight, which I know I am, it tells you this every single day! It will show a skinny Mii and then after the measurement it shows your Mii with a big belly. Not exactly flattering, but I am getting used to it. After all, I do have a good bit of weight to loose.
After the main weight test, you can end your body test or continue with two more tests that measure your body control. These test various things like how evenly you walk, how well you can shift your weight, how well you can stay still, how quickly you can move, how well you can balance on one foot, etc. After the additional two tests, you are presented with a Wii Fit Age. The nice thing has been seeing the general improvement in our Wii Fit age over the past 30 days. Every once in a while though, I don't do well on one of the tests and decide to retake the daily body test. I have been surprised that just taking the test over immediately, my weight can change by as much as a pound or more. This is not the most accurate of scales.
My kids like to play as well and one day, it actually said my daughter had lost 7.9 pounds! This was just a day or two before the Wii Board told us it needed new batteries. My daughter is only 5 and since all her limbs are still in tack, we were sure the scale was way off that day! We retook her test and thankfully it was a little more accurate 5 minutes later.
The one last complaint I have on the weight issue with Wii Fit is that if you are trying to loose weight and it shows your weight has gone up since your last test, it will ask you to enter the reason why it has gone up. Since it is not the most accurate scale, I do get a bit annoyed at having to answer this when I know I have actually been good and have not really gained the weight it thinks I have. Keep checking your weight on a regular scale, so that you do not get too mad at Wii Fit. Chances are you can retake your body test and the weight will go back down anyway.
The exercises are very good and I have enjoyed doing most of them. There are four areas: yoga, strength, aerobics and balance games. With Yoga and strength, you get to chose either a male or female trainer. The trainer will demonstrate the exercise the first time you do it, then it will be your turn to follow along with the trainer. After each exercise it will give you points and then show your ranking based on the other people you have set up under Wii Fit. It keeps track of the top ten rankings and will also keep track of your personal best score. Initially, only four or five items are available in a particular area, as you do more exercises, new yoga poses, aerobics, strength and balance games open up.
With the strength training, it will also open up higher repetitions for the particular exercise. It has an exercise called the jackknife. You will start with 10 reps. After you have chosen to do it 3 or 4 times, it will open up 20 reps. When you select the exercise the next time you can adjust the level of difficulty.
The trainer will comment on your performance and give you some tips as you are doing your exercises. Most of the exercises are done with the Wii balance board. Your center of balance is being measured while you do the exercise or the weight that your are placing on the board. Some are done be using just the Wii remote and the Wii Fit picks up the movements from the remote.
The graphics with the Aerobics and the Balance games are amazing. This is what my kids really enjoy. We tell them they have to do one of the Yoga and one of the Strength Training first before they get to play the other games. It works though and they are still interested in playing.
We have not gotten the hang of doing the Hula hoop, so that one is not our favorite aerobic exercise, but we have helped the kids to do the hula hoop and they enjoy it. New rings will be thrown to you and if you catch them around your body it can really increase the number of spins.
The basic step and advanced step are a lot of fun and I enjoy doing both of these. Basic step is best for the kids. Advanced step requires the player to step to the side sometimes, but it can only measure your step if you step within the two large rectangle areas on sides of the balance board. Needless to say, my five year old can't manage that, so it thinks she has not stepped on the board at all. She still likes to do it though and has done it at least 5 times already. Eventually free step open ups, but this is just stepping on and off the balance board, with no side or other directions required. This is mainly so you can watch TV while your exercise. This one is my favorites, so I can watch a show I have taped. Free step has a 10, 20 or 30 minute duration option. You can keep it on the Wii channel, but all you see is your Mii stepping on and off the balance board. You will get a reminder on the screen to change your lead foot every so often. You can keep the Wii remote with you and it can keep the pace for you. You can adjust the pace to go faster which will increase your number of steps. It will show you the number of steps at the end, but there is no ranking on this one.
My five year old's favorite Aerobic exercise is running. There is a one person and two people run. You start with the one person run, but the two people run and the free run open up later. The graphics are really nice. Your Mii runs around the Wii Fit Island. There are different running options, short, long and Island lap. You are generally suppose to run behind a prechosen Mii. This changes each time you chose the run. As you run along, you see other Mii's. You see the Mii's that are set up on Wii fit, but you also see the other Mii's on your system as well. My kids love seeing their Grandmother or their cousins as they are playing the game. There are several symbols from Mario as well and the kids love when they spot one of these. The free run is also designed for you to be able to watch TV while doing it. But my kids like to keep it on the Wii channel and watch where they are running. Just like free step, it has a 10, 20 and 30 minute duration. This does keep track of your total distance. It has the top ten distances run and will keep track of your personal best. Running is tracked with the Wii remote. Since it only detects the movement, it can't tell that my daughter is small, so she has the top 10 distances in the 10 minute free run. For the other runs, it measures your burn rate. Since she sometimes stops running and runs uneven, she doesn't always get the best numbers, but she just loves to do the running. She has done the one and two people run about 25 times already. What is interesting is there are different paths you can take with the runs. Sometimes a dog will run past the Mii you are following, if you run faster it will tell you to now follow the dog. This way you see different parts of the Wii Island.
The other Aerobic exercise is rhythm boxing. For this one, you need the numchuck. It took a little while to get the hang of this one, but I really like it now. It has a beginner level, advanced and expert. You do not start with all the levels, but once you play it a few times, the other levels open up. Keeping up with all the movements takes a lot of remembering, so this is difficult for my son, but it is a good workout. The expert level goes for 10 minutes and you really do feel it when you keep up with the boxing trainer.
The last section is the balance games. The graphics are really amazing in this area. Eventually you will have nine different balance games. My son enjoys these games the most. The first one is soccer heading. A whole team of Mii's will kick soccer balls to you. Again, the kids love seeing other people and friends on the team. You lean different directions so that your Mii will hit the soccer balls in the head. Look out though, you get an occasional shoe or a Panda ball coming at you. When you hit these you loose points. My daughter loves to watch us play and laughs when we get something we are not suppose to hit. It is very entertaining, challenging and fun. There is also skiing, ski jump and table tilt to start with.
Table tilt is also really neat with different tables that you need to clear. Your Mii gets turned into a ball and you have to shift your body to get the ball through the hole in the table. On the next level, it chooses one of the other Mii's to put into a ball. You just see the faces. My kids enjoy watching us play this one and seeing their balls. If you clear the beginner table levels, then all the Mii's pop out of their balls and jump up and down. This opens up advanced with different tables. None of us have cleared advanced yet, so I do not know if there is an expert level.
Other balance games include the tightrope walk, the balance bubble, penguin slide, snowboard and lotus focus. These games are all very interesting with neat graphics and plenty of things to interest the children. My kids enjoy watching us playing all the games and will sit while we have turns just to watch what happens. The balance games are very well designed and have been very entertaining.
Overall, I do recommend Wii Fit. I hope they make a few changes with it though. Please don't ask me to explain a weight gain unless it is more then 2lbs. Some of their tips are also not helpful when it comes to the children. Despite the fact that you enter the ages, it told my 9 year old son he was sleeping too much because we said he slept more then 8 hours a day. The Wii Fit age can be helpful, but I tell my kids it is just no accurate with kids, which it really is not. It has been a lot of fun and it is helping me to loose weight. Now, I just have to get my husband back into using it. He got away from it for a while when he went on a business trip and now I think he doesn't want to see what it will tell him for his weight.
