I found this article earlier in the week, discussing the newest version of EA Sports Active coming out this fall. It looks like the new version will incorporate a new leg strap as well as an arm strap and heart rate monitor. No more remotes required to do the workouts, and if that’s the case I’m hoping it may possible to use hand weights instead of resistance bands for the workouts. I’ve broken two resistance bands using EASA and have had a bit of a time finding replacement bands that are long enough and sturdy enough to use with the game.
Supposedly, the new EASA will also be able to download new content for the PSP version. No work yet on whether the Wii version will also be able to do so. I’m hoping so, otherwise Wii owners who play EASA will be up in arms.
Other improvements I’d like to see, but that weren’t mentioned in the article…
- More stretching exercises. A lot more stretching exercises, in fact.
- More warm up and cool down routines. The EASA More Workouts only has one routine for warm up and one for cool down, and doing those for six weeks straight got old real fast.
- Yoga routines. With the new wireless leg and arm remotes, I think this would be the ideal time for EASA to incorporate yoga into it’s workout options.
- Bring back some of the old games from the original version of EASA, including the baseball, basketball, tennis and volley ball games. I put together entire workouts that were nothing but those sports games and they gave me a real workout. I’d love to see them brought back.
- An option to pre-program EASA for a certain number of workouts a week based on what the user wants. The 6-week challenge demands you do 4 workouts a week for six weeks straight, which can be a little tough to work in if you do other forms of exercise during the week. I would rather have done 2 regularly scheduled workouts in addition to my water aerobics classes, karate classes, and other Wii workouts. Granted, I can still do that by picking the 6-week challenge workouts on my own from the menu and going through them in order, but the pre-programmed function would have been nice to have.
Keeping that last comment above in mind, I’m thinking of working EASA back into my morning workouts, maybe twice a week, interspersed between Gold’s Gym Cardio, Wii Fit Plus and DDR or the new Just Dance game that I’ve ordered. I don’t like to get bored, obviously, and mixing things up like this will give me plenty of ways to keep active.
If anybody has comments on working out with any of the above games, or with any games I haven’t mentioned, post them below. I’m interested in hearing what others have to say about working out with the Wii.
