I actually wish it was a little more intense than it is. Many of the stength and aerobics excercises are too mild IMO.

In terms of strength, the push ups, side stands, lunges, parrallel stretch and jacknife excercises are all effective, but the rest barely seem to raise a sweat. Sometimes it feels like I'm wasting my time.

Similarly, of the aerobics excercises, the boxing and hoola hooping are excellent and they can really work up a sweat, but the rest are quite weak, especially the step classes. The running excercise is OK, but it can never match actually running outside because you're not propelling your entire body weight forwards when you run on the spot.

Personally, I don't bother with yoga. I'm not concerned about flexibility and intensity wise, it does nothing for me.

I find that I'm just limiting myself to the few excercises that I find effective, which I mentioned above. It's a pity that Nintendo didn't include more strength and aerobics excercises than they did, just to vary things up for me.

It may seem that I'm whining, but I'm just playing devils advocate here. I really love the game. I've been putting in between 30 - 60 minutes every day and have noticed an improvement in my fitness and my posture. Excercises that seem difficult at first become noticably easier as you develop your strength.

Wii Fit IS regular exercise.

Thank you Xponent, that is the kind of response I was looking for. :)

Do lunges on Wiifit and touch your knee on the ground... try and do more than 40 of those... that is INTENSE.

I need this game(ish). I can't find it...

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.

I think if your looking for a tool to put REGULAR exercise in to your life it's just amazing. I do it for 20-40 each morning before breakfast. As a am in the UK I have been going for about 45 days now. It is making a difference, I did not need dto loose weight but I was hoping to just become a little fitter and I am.

The step really could do with another 2 or 3 faster more intense routines. The step boxing is awesome if you really go at it with your punching.

The key IMO to a really tough work out is to group the exerciser's into areas of the body I like to do a upper body work out every few days. Push ups ( Challenge or side type ) then the arm and leg raising one, Triceps bend ( I do add weight to this ), A few of the yoga exercises that you have to hold your arms out for 30 sec then step boxing. That make me feel the burn. Increase reps as you can.

I did Lunges on the 20 rep once, and that was damn hard.
I cut back to 10-15 after that, LOL.

press up challenge + jackknife challenge = a good work out

edit: reading through some other replies reminded me that i forgot about lunges.. i've only gone for the 20 reps once.. not happening again anytime soon

Like many people have pointed out, the intensity mostly depends on how you want to do it. You can cut yourself some slack and even cheat on the excercises, but you can also do them the hard way.

One thing I sort of disagree with some here is the yoga part. Sure, many of the poses are not taxing on the muscles, but I find that they require total body coordination much moreso than the aerobics or muscle excercises. It may not feel so much when you're doing them, apart from the chair pose, but you're constantly flexing your abs and back to stay in balance, and that's going to make a difference in your daily life just as much as those muscle workouts.