Category: Move It Mama Monday!

The 30th day of my 30-day fitness challenge on EA Sports Active has come and gone, and I now feel ready to render final judgment on which is better: Wii Fit or EA Sports Active.

Drum roll, please…

Wii Fit, hands down, is the better program.

Why, you may ask? There are a number of reasons. The first, and most important in my book, is that I actually gained weight this past month, an extra three pounds that I’m now going to have to work on losing. Sports Active did not give me the workouts I needed to burn calories. Each workout in the 30-day challenge ran 25 minutes, on average, the longest workout running 28 minutes. Most of those workouts concentrated on strength building exercises, which are important, but don’t burn the calories like cardio exercises do. And except for the medium and long run exercises in EA Sports Active, there’s not really any cardio to speak of. The aerobic dance segments barely get my heart rate going (and honestly, I think they’re a joke, when compared to Wii Fit’s step routine). The boxing is nice, but doesn’t last nearly long enough to keep my heart rate up. The baseball, basketball, tennis and volley ball drills don’t last long either, and they don’t pop up nearly often enough in the workouts for the 30-day challenge to make a difference, in my opinion.

(And keep in mind, this is all in my opinion. You’ll see as we go today that I expect certain things from my workouts which may not appeal to everyone.)

Another big problem I had with EA Sports Active was its emphasis on lunges, squats, and jumping. I have bad knees. Wii Fit actually improved my knees dramatically. Prior to using Wii Fit, I had problems getting into and holding many positions in my karate classes because my knees couldn’t handle the stances. A few weeks on Wii Fit fixed that. I expect it’s the focus on balance and posture that did the trick, correcting problems with how I stand in general to the point that the muscles I needed to compensate for my knee problems finally got the workout they needed. EA Sports Active doesn’t have that focus. It’s all strength training, and while the repeated lunges, squats, and jumping did strengthen my outer thighs, they did damned little for those muscles that actually support my knees. As I type this review, I can feel my knees swelling from today’s workout. And the crunching noise they make when I go up and down the stairs is just as bad as it was six months ago, before I started on Wii Fit. It’s terrible, I tell ya.

My third issue with EA Sports Active is the exercise band. The one thing I looked forward to in EA Sports Active was the upper body workout. This is one area where Wii Fit falls flat. Aside from a few moves in the strength training section, Wii Fit focuses all its attention on core muscle building. My arms were starting to get flabby. EA Sports should have taken care of that, but the exercise band they packaged with the game is pretty much useless. It’s one of the lightest-weight bands you can find, and offered very little resistance for me during workouts. EA Sports Active advises that if you need more resistance, you can double up the band and stand on it. This shortened band will provide the resistance you need. Well, it sort of does that. The problem with that fix is that I sometimes had to stand almost on the handles to make the band short enough for some exercises. Also, it was too easy to get the band uneven in the folding, thus leading to uneven resistance between arms. Finally, I managed to tear a hole in my band by the fourth week of working out, and I think it happened because of how far I had to double up the band to get the resistance I needed.

Fortunately, I did have another band on hand, one that offers four times the resistance of the band that arrived with the game. I’m definitely getting that arm workout now. But I would have liked to have had this band from the start. Better yet, I would have liked to have had a variety of bands from the start, with handles to go with them. I’m thinking of ordering some extra bands and handles to solve that problem. I’ve looked online, but have yet to see a package of such bands offered by EA Sports Active. They seriously ought to consider putting one together and selling it as an accessory.

Now that I’ve bashed poor EA Sports Active, let me say what I liked about it. It does offer strength training beyond the core muscles. I especially like that I have the option to do more upper body exercises than just the push ups and plank poses offered by Wii Fit. And I like EA Sports Active’s journal feature. By filling it out each day, I have a regular reminder to eat more fruits and vegetables, drink more water, and stay away from sugary drinks and fast food. Those are probably my biggest downfalls when it comes to losing weight, and that gentle reminder is nice to have.

Wii Fit, on the other hand, doesn’t really look at nutrition, unless you suddenly gain 2 lbs, and then the snarky little bitch wants to know why you’re so fat all of a sudden. Unfortunately, Wii Fit will only accept a certain select list of excuses, many of which have nothing to do with why I gain weight suddenly (Wii Fit does not believe in water weight gain). And once you select your excuse, you have to listen to a lecture on the evils of what you did wrong. Annoying. As is Wii Fit’s comments when you miss a day or two or more. Guess what? I can’t help missing a week when I’m out of town! It’s not like I’m going to pack the whole Wii with Balance Board and Wii Fit disk and take it on the road with me! EA Sports Active, on the other hand, simply labels any days you take off as rest days. Maybe this is a cop out. Maybe I do need the nagging reminders and the lectures that Wii Fit hands out when I miss a few days or when my weight suddenly balloons, but you know what? I don’t like it!

My final analysis is this. I prefer Wii Fit, but EA Sports Active has something to offer, if I use it right. I think what I’ll probably end up doing is abandoning the 30-day challenge from here on out and make up my own workouts in EA Sports Active, to supplement what I do in Wii Fit. I’d like to try putting together a series of 15-minute routines that use those strength training exercises, but scaling back on the lunging and jumping so I don’t continue to kill my knees. I can use the long run to warm up, or even do a few minutes on our elliptical machine, then do strength training with EA Sports Active. After that, I can switch to Wii Fit, do my heavy duty cardio there (about 20-25 minutes straight), and then throw in 10-15 minutes of yoga, strength training, and balance games to workout those core muscles and strengthen my poor knees. I may even consider doing extra balance games later in the day as a pick-me-up in the afternoons. I have a tendency to get tired right before sitting down to work, and this might help me perk up. Or I could pull out the DDR mat and do some of that for a few minutes to get my blood pumping before I sit down at the computer.

One final thought before I sign off. The 30-day challenge might have worked for me and helped me lose, or at least maintain, weight if I had done two things. The first is attempting to complete all 20 workouts in 30 days. I actually missed the deadline by a week; I had five workouts left to go when day 30 rolled around. But I realize now there was no way I was going to complete 20 workouts in 30 days and still do karate and swimming during that time. What can I say? I like variety in my workouts, so I continued to space out EA Sports Active with those other activities, and thus blew my deadline. Second, I might have lost more weight if I had opted for the high intensity program rather than medium. That level of intensity might have made the difference. I might have seen more aerobic exercises mixed into the workouts, or I might have done longer, more intense workouts. However, I also fear that doing that level of workout for 30 days would have completely destroyed my knees, so perhaps it’s best I didn’t go that route..

I should finish up the last two workouts of my 30-day challenge by Wednesday, then I plan to finish up the week with Wii Fit only. On Monday, I’ll start doing custom workouts mixed with Wii Fit and we’ll see how that goes for a month.

Well, the utility guys have dug up all the utility posts in my neighborhood, so cable, internet, and phone have been sketchy all day. Thus you may be seeing this on Tuesday, rather than on the Monday it was written. Oh well!

Anyway, I’ve had a week to play with EA Sports Active, and thought I’d give an update. I have NOT lost any weight in last week, and in fact have actually put on a pound or two. This may be due to the fact that it’s ‘that time of the month.’ Or it may be due to the fact that I’ve very off schedule so I haven’t done my other fitness activities like swimming, karate, walking, or gardening the past week. Or maybe it’s due to the fact that someone in the family had a birthday recently, and someone else we know graduated recently, and thus there’s been a lot of cake and backyard grilling going on, neither of which is good for my waistline.

Regardless of the reason, the weight gain has made me aware of what I consider to be the big flaw so far in EA Sports Active – the lack of cardio activity in the workouts. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely getting a workout here, and I’m disgusting with sweat by the time I’m done. But each workout lasts on 35 minutes at most, and maybe only a third of that is dedicated to cardio – running on a track, boxing, dance, etc. The rest of the time I’m doing calisthenics – lunges, squats, bicep curls with the elastic band. There’s plenty of muscle building going on, and I was so sore a few times last week that I had a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. And that’s good. I need the muscle building. But I also need cardio. Lots and lots of cardio.

Wii Fit provides cardio in spades. There are nine different cardio activities to do, and many of those have 2-3 intensity levels. I can mix and match my cardio so that I do five minutes of a bunch of different activities or I can do 30 minutes of just one activity. I like that. And on some of these longer cardio activities, I can even slip in my ear buds and listen to some podcasts while I work out. That’s a big bonus for me! I can not do this with EA Sports Active.

The other problem I’m having with EA Sports Active is that all that lunging and squatting and jumping around is pretty rough on my knees. My knees sound like I’ve got a ton of gravel in them right now, lots of popping and cracking when I go up and down the stairs. Wii Fit had actually taken care of that problem for me. My knees improved significantly during the first two weeks of using Wii Fit. I think it was all the emphasis on balance and core strength that did it, and I miss that terribly.

So what to do? I like the strength building in EA Sports Active. I also like the ‘attitude’ behind it, constantly encouraging instead of occasionally snarky like Wii Fit tends to be. (That damned thing actually got rather snippy when it asked me why I’d gained weight and I responded “I don’t know.” Hey, is it my fault they don’t list water weight or illness as a reason for possible weight gain?) BUT, I prefer the cardio in Wii Fit and I need the yoga, strength and balance games to improve my knees.

I’ve started doing workouts that combine the two games. I start with EA Sports Active, getting all my strength building out of the way, and then switch to Wii Fit for cardio and a bit of yoga or strength or balance games. On Sunday I spent a walloping 60 minutes between the two. I was ready to drop when I was done. Didn’t seem to affect the needle on the scale any, but I’m hopeful that more workouts combining the two programs will give me the results I need. I have noticed that my legs look nicer and that it’s gotten easier for me to do lunges, so that’s a good sign. I’ll give another update in a few weeks to let you all know how this works out.

So I completely blew off Move It Mama Monday last week. I had expected to do the blog post a day late, due to the fact that I was at Balticon through the entire four-day weekend. I was completely unprepared though for how wiped out I was after the convention. Seriously, Balticon kicked my ass. I’m forty, a stay-at-home mom, and not used to partying like that anymore. What was I thinking, staying up until 2AM every morning?! Especially when I normally get up at 5AM?

It took me all last week to recover, and then catch up on work as well. I worked straight through the weekend and got a lot done (audio recording, 2 stories written, 2 book covers finished for a client, and I got to see Wicked! the musical), but to do that I had to let a few other things slide, like say… exercise. And house work.

Of course, we’re not here today to discuss the state of my house (it’s bad, really bad). Instead, we’re here to talk about exercise, and I do have something to discuss. Namely, EA Sports Active, the new game for the Wii! I ordered this game over a month ago as a wedding anniversary present for my husband and I. It showed up the day after I got back from Balticon and I let it sit until Friday, being too wiped out to even open the box. On Friday, when I finally did pull it out and get it set up, EA Sports Active proceeded to kick my ass just as badly as Balticon had, only using tortuous exercise in lieu of partying.

Since Friday, I’ve used the game three times. That’s long enough for me to give it my initial opinion, I think. And that opinion is…

I like it. It’s not as perky or game oriented as Wii Fit, but it does have a lot going for it. Active is based on a 30-day challenge by Bob Greene, he of the sacred circle of Oprah experts. Bob Greene is probably the only one in that circle I can tolerate, having read one of his books and decided for myself that his advice on fitness makes sense. You only get to see Mr. Greene in the little introductory video, which is probably good because he’s so damned healthy it’s scary.

After the intro video, Mr. Greene disappears and you have a choice of two smiling trainers to guide you through the workouts. These are real people as opposed to the digital trainers used in Wii Fit. The workouts in Active are the best part about the game. You can either go with the preset routines, of which there are several, or build a customized routine. There is also something called the “30-day challenge” that puts you through 30 days of workouts, pushing you a little harder each time. These workouts switch up between several exercises, mostly strength but with some cardio, and each day gets a different focus, so it looks like this won’t get boring any time soon. And from what I can see, if you decide not to do the 30-day challenge, you can still pick from PLENTY of preset routines to do, though if you want to build your own routine, you’re free to do so. It will probably be a while before I feel the need to customize a routine. I’m opting for the 30-day challenge right now, letting Active pick the routines for me. This means I can just workout on autopilot and not have to think about what I’m doing. This right here is one of the biggest differences between EA Sports Active and Wii Fit. With Wii Fit, there are no preset routines. You have to decide for yourself what you’re going to do each day. I find that I tend to avoid certain exercises on the Wii Fit because of that, and those are probably exactly the exercises I need to do. I could avoid certain exercises on the Active game as well, but I would actually have to go to the trouble of picking through the routine to decide what I don’t want to do. If I just shut off my brain and go with the routine, that doesn’t happen and I get those extra exercises in.

Another big difference between Wii Fit and EA Sports Active is on what aspect of fitness the two games focus on. Wii Fit places a lot of emphasis on balance and core muscle strength, tracking your center of balance through every strength and yoga exercise. Not so with Active. Active favors more traditional gym exercises like lunges, arm curls, etc.. With Wii Fit, I usually only do one set of a particular exercise per workout. With Active, I may visit the same exercise 2-3 times, depending on the preset routine. That’s not to say I don’t sweat when I do Wii Fit. Doing each exercise once usually lets me work up quite a sweat, so I have no preference of one over the other here.

Accessories is another category to look at. Due to its focus on balance and posture, Wii Fit utilizes the balance board heavily (in fact, I don’t think there was no balance board before there was Wii Fit, was there?). For Active, however, the Wii balance board is an optional accessory. You can use it for some exercises, but if you don’t have one, don’t sweat it. Those exercises that use it don’t actually require it, so that’s nice if you haven’t shelled out for the balance board yet. Instead, Active uses an elastic resistance band included in the game package to do a lot of the strength exercises. The band is pretty light weight, and after another week, I’ll probably pull out one of the bands I used to use for physical therapy to up the resistance. There’s also a leg band that you strap around your upper thigh. This has a pocket in it to hold the nunchuk through out exercises that only require the one remote.

One final big difference is the body test and goal setting. Wii Fit does this, Active doesn’t. In fact, Active doesn’t even check your weight. This is both good and bad. I can’t stand being scolded by Wii Fit, especially when I know my weight gains are due to water-weight or some other excuse not in it’s “why are you fat today?” list. But tracking my weight as well as my activity does make me more likely to eat better and drink more water in addition to exercising, and that’s what it takes for me to maintain a healthy weight. Active will track my workouts and ask about my eating habits if I choose to fill out my journal entries. But it doesn’t track my weight or test my balance.

So those are the main differences between the two games. Do I like Active better than Wii Fit? I’m going to say no. It’s different, but not better. I like having the preset workouts, but have to admit some of the exercises in those workouts, like lunges and side-to-side jumping, are a little rough on my knees. Still, I can get through that and I’m hopeful that my knees will improve as I continue to do these exercises. What I miss is the check on my balance. I swear, Wii Fit and the balance board did more to improve my knees than even several weeks of dedicated physical therapy. I need those balance-oriented exercises to maintain my knees’ health. I also miss the game aspect of Wii Fit. I like scoring points for stuff that I do. Active sort of does that, awarding trophies for workouts completed and such, but it’s not as much fun as Wii Fit. Graphics-wise, I definitely prefer the Wii Fit. I can’t help it, I like being a kitschy little cartoon character. Seeing my Mii run and box and do other stuff is just too fun. My avatar in Active looks like a real person, sort of, and that also serves to remind me this isn’t a game so much as a work out.

I’ll have to find some balance between the two games. I want to continue doing both, but having limited time, I’ll need to be careful how much time I spend on each. With the 30-day challenge, I’ve pretty much committed myself to using Active almost everyday for the next month. Juggling that with karate, swimming, Wii Fit, housework, and career might be… tricky.

We’ll see what I do. I haven’t had time yet to think about how I want to incorporate EA Sports Active into my workouts, but I’ll get it sorted in the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a good workout that provides plenty of variety, check it out. You’ll be sore like I was for a few days, probably, but I think it’s going to be worth it.