Wii Fit intensity?

[greenmedic88]

It totally depends upon the exercises you choose, the number of reps/length of training (some are measured by time) and just as importantly, the amount of time you condense your workout into. In other words, completing your workout as quickly as possible with as little rest between exercises as possible.

As it's already been mentioned, doing 30 minutes of balance games is not going to be the same as doing 30 minutes of boxing aerobics, push ups and lunges.

Wii Fit is very open ended in allowing the user to tailor his or her workout, from mild to extreme. It's almost too open because the only recommendations the program provides are exercises you can mix together to target certain aspects of conditioning.

At the extreme end of things, difficulty is increased by requiring more muscular endurance (higher reps, longer duration), rather than muscular strength, unless you are adding weights to the exercises.

20 reps of lunges (20 on each leg) is a good endurance builder for the quads since they are done without rest if you keep the bar in the red zone for the entire exercise. Not the same as doing lunges with dumb bells, but weighted lunges are for building power and mass. Technically, you could add weights to the lunge exercise and do fewer reps to orient the exercise towards power and muscle building rather than endurance.

It's very adjustable.

Doing the push up and side plank for 20 reps means 4 minutes of continuous effort without completely resting, which takes a decent amount of muscular endurance. Is it the same as doing 3 or 4 sets of bench presses with over 100% of your individual body weight? They are two different chest workouts, so no.

Step aerobics is a bit too light for my tastes and if that type of exercise were my thing, I think a crazy session of DDR would be a better workout with better music to boot.

Boxing aerobics is a good workout when done with intensity.

Running place is bizarre although I've been doing it every day for the sheer randomness of it. When you run in place, you are running on the balls of your feet, so it primarily works the calves. Do that for at least 20 minutes with enough steps to equal over 4 miles and you should be working up a good sweat by the time you finish. I measured roughly 12 steps per 1/100th of a "mile" which means about 1200 steps per "mile" as measured by the program. Clearly they're not real miles since few people can run over 4 miles in 20 minutes.

It's not the same as distance running or running on a treadmill, but 20 minutes or more of free running will still provide a good aerobic workout.

A lot of the activities definitely fall on the light end of exercise, but are there to provide a rounded workout. Balance seems to be the overall theme of Wii Fit, and not just from the standpoint of being able to keep the red dot in the yellow target area for those of us who are already using it.