Exercising Video Games.

 

I love gaming but I admittedly love fitness games, they have always appealed to me and I have tried a variety of them for the PlayStation and Wii. Over the years I have seen countless articles about gaming making today's youth lazy, I wouldn't say this is 100% true but gaming can restrict blood flow if you don't give yourself a break and move around a bit, I did a post a few weeks back about how to wind down after a gaming session which you can read HERE, but now we have moved on to the topic of how to use gaming to your advantage and help you lose weight or just stay fit, now bear in mind it's not an easy fix but it is something you can add to your daily life and not feel bad for playing a game whilst doing it, I want to talk about the 3 main fitness games I have tried out over the years.

This is the most popular one, Wii fit for the Wii and Wii U, when this was released back in 2007 and from the get-go it was immensely popular, people used it as a new way to work out and not fork out money to go to the gym and it really does work which I was always surprised about. When I first moved to Cornwall I put on weight and thanks to the Wii Fit I was able to shed the pounds quickly even with my chronic illness, I admittedly did stop playing it but I plan on using it again along with Just Dance which I will speak about more shortly. The Wii Fit allowed you to play certain games with and without the Wii board but you would technically need one in order to use most of the fitness regimes and to track your progress and weight. It's a shame that the Nintendo Switch hasn't come out with anything similar to the Wii Fit yet, I would happily purchase a game like this and would welcome a new style fitness board.

Zumba is the one game out of all of the fitness ones that pushed me to my limit, I can remember when Zumba first came out, it was one of the biggest fitness crazes I had ever come across and of course I wanted to try it out, little did I know how knackered I would be within 5 minutes of playing it. It comes with a belt that you can use to strap around you and place your controller inside but there is always the option of holding on to it. I got Zumba on the Wii but it was available on Xbox 360 and PS3 at the time, I'm a little sad that it's not been released for current gen consoles (you can get it on Xbox One) because I would happily play it, I'm actually thinking of getting it again but this time for my PS3 as I still use mine anyway, it's 9 years old now so give us another version of it please!!

This is the current fitness game I play, it's fun to play as a family or on your own and that game is Just Dance, it's been around a lot longer than Zuma fitness and came out in 2008, I only recently started to play it though but it's packed full of so much to do! I currently own 2014/15 and 17 version of the games and each of them is slightly different, I can't access the store on the 2014/15 discs anymore but I'm able to on the 2017 disc which opened the game up to me a lot more. The sweat option of the game allows me to play for as long as I want and I can choose from a number of options, usually do the 10 min workouts in bursts throughout the day so I don't make myself ill. the main thing I love is that you can use the camera, move controller or your mobile alongside the game to help record your movements.

There aren't the only 3 fitness games you can get, each fitness game I have played and looked into has different ways of working out and moving your body, here are just some of the others you can get:

• Yourself Fitness PS2
• Yoga Wii
• Xbox Fitness
• Eyetoy Kinetic 
• Fitness boxing Nintendo Switch
• Shape up Xbox One
• EA Active Sports, PS4, Xbox 360 & Wii
• Nike + Kinect Training Xbox 360

Do you play any fitness video games if so which ones?