apparently we all can benefit from about just ten minutes of morning exercise. i believe this, so why is it so hard for me to motivate myself to do this in the morning? i bought the wii fit a week ago, and it's great fun. richard and i have both used the balance board daily since setting it up last weekend--going for the runs, doing the step classes, and working through the push ups, the crunches and the yoga poses--but always in the evening. i think from a metabolism perspective i would derive much more benefit if i got up a bit earlier and did this first thing, but i savour that extra thirty minutes of sleep.
if you're thinking of buying the wii fit, i would recommend it, with a couple of caveats. first of all, you have to think of it a bit like a game where you can get some exercise, not as a replacement for a true cardio workout. while we haven't unlocked all of the options, we do sometimes get frustrated by the hurdles you have to jump to get to longer, more difficult workouts. we'd sometimes like to go straight there.
it also isn't very structured--both richard and i want to be able to say that we'd like a 30 minute strength training routine and have it suggest a set of exercises. it doesn't work like that, instead, you select what you want to do piecemeal. the advantage of this is that there is a lot of variation and i don't get bored as i often do with video/dvd workouts or even classes, but it's trickier to pick what to do.
finally, i love the fact that you can weigh in each day and it tracks your bmi--i find that quite motivational. but i wish it did everything a bit quicker--in its game-like way, it talks you though everything at quite a slow pace and being the working mum that i am, i am sometimes finding myself hurrying it along and worrying i'm going to run out of time.
all in all, it's good fun and a genius extension of a gaming platform. if you are on the fence, i would say to go for it and perhaps it will provide the extra motivation you need to do those morning stretches.
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