Workout With Wii

Written by S Warley
Monday, 15 January 2007
My Wii Workout continues through Day 14. Creating the two Mii's one for each hand has worked out very well. I now start my workouts playing one best of 3 match right handed, then switch Mii's and play a match left handed, then switch back. Playing with the opposite hand (in my case left) causes some interesting game play, especially in tennis. Because I am not as coordinated with my left hand, I tend to hit some weird angle shots or they have nasty back spin, giving the CPU a tougher time. I also find that I hit more hyper-serves. For some reason my timing is better with the less dominant hand. The dieting has been a little rougher than the workout. I have been eating more carbohydrates than I planned. Hope to get back on track today. Jumped on the scale and I am at 223 lbs which is down 3 lbs from my original weigh-in. Lastly, I took the Wii Sports Fitness Test today. My score was 33.
Last Updated ( Monday, 15 January 2007 )

Wii Workout Tip: Playing with Opposite Hand

Written by S Warley

Friday, 12 January 2007

I have been continuing my workout, now on day 11. I realized the other night while continuing my workout with the Wii that I had not be working in exercise of my less dominant hand (in my case the left hand). I had mentioned in one of the early workout posts that I wanted to switch hands when playing Wii Sports such as Tennis and Baseball. The problem with switching is that you Mii is configured to play left or right handed and switch is a pain.

To make it easier, I created a copy of my original Mii, but spelled the name backwards (in my case yelraWS). I then set the Mii to be left handed in all of the sports. Now when I play tennis, I can play one game left and another game right handed. Or one day play baseball right-handed and the next left-handed. This also makes exercising and playing Wii Sports even funner and can inject new energy/life into your workout (instead of the same old thing). Playing left-handed tennis (and the other sport) is basically starting from scratch.

Nintendo Wii Remote Glove - Keep Your Remote Clean

Written by S Warley

Wednesday, 10 January 2007

Last night while doing my daily Wii workout, for some reason I started thinking about how dirty and sweaty my Wii remote must be after the 8th straight day of using the Wii for exercise. When you go to the gym, usually there is pre-moistened towels you use to wipe down the fitness equipment after you use it. From HGTV's Exercise Equipment page :

"Wipe down the equipment with a towel after each use. Occasionally clean the equipment with a damp cloth to combat dust. You can use a glass cleaner on the plastic parts . This will keep the equipment in working order."

On my Wii Remotes, I use the Nintendo Wii Remote Glove.

Not only does it help keep the remote from slipping, it also helps keep it clean. The only negative is that the glove makes it a little more difficult to change the batteries but that is a minor inconvenience compared to the benefits. So make sure to keep your Wii-motes clean.

Wii Workout Update - Day 9

Written by S Warley

Wednesday, 10 January 2007

My daily Wii Workout continues. I didn't have a chance to workout yesterday morning like I usually do, so I made up for it with a workout last night. This mornings workout included Donkey Kong Jungle Beat again which I find really fun.

The one thing I am finding is that I am stuck around Skill Level 800 in Wii Tennis. I can only manage to win one or two matches before my play seems to come crashing down and I will lose several matches. Then my opponent's skill level drop down to about 300 and I start winning again. This has been the pattern since Saturday. Have I reached the limits of my Wii Tennis ability?

The Follow On to Wii Sports - Wii Play

Written by S Warley

Tuesday, 09 January 2007

Here is a video showing some of the multiplayer functionality of Wii Play. The new Wii game is expected to cost $50 and will ship with a Wii Remote. Will this be the next game to mix in as part of a good Wii Workout? Maybe so. Laser Hockey looks very cool. Games include:

Table Tennis
Laser Hockey
Fishing
Find Mii
Pose Mii
Shooting
Billiards
Charge!
Tanks!

The current expected release date for Wii Play in the US is 02/12/07

Site Problems - We Were Dugg

Written by S Warley
Tuesday, 09 January 2007
As most of you probably found out, our site was down more than a day. A story linking to WorkoutWithWii.com made it to the front page of Digg.com causing a huge amount of traffic. Our hosting company disabled the site to make sure other sites hosted on the same server did not get taken down. We finally got it back up and running. So, welcome back.

Wii Workout Diet - 5 Day Summary - Early Results

Written by S Warley
Saturday, 06 January 2007
This is the 5th day of the Wii Weight Loss Program. So far, so good. I am already seeing results from my daily 30 minutes of Wii workout. The workouts on the Wii have been a lot of fun. Wii Sports Tennis and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat along with Wii Sports Boxing are rapidly becoming my favorites. I definite work up a good sweat during my sessions with the Wii. I jumped on the scale this morning and was mildly surprised to see a reading of 222 lbs. This means I have lost 4 lbs in 5 days! The results are better than I thought it would be in such a short amount of time, but not surprising. Most of the weight I dropped is probably Water Weight. I would expect to lose weight less rapidly going forward as water weight is easy to drop when you first start dieting. Remember that I coupled the Wii exercise with a slight modification to my diet. The aim was to cut back slightly on my carbohydrate in take and increase my water consumption. I have been drinking more water but I seem to be eating fairly normally. For instance, when I started I indicated I would try to pick a meal of salad over pasta but indeed I did have spaghetti and turkey meatballs for dinner one day this week. I also haven't consciously cut down on my portion sizes. The thing I have been doing consistently is skipping and type of desert (except for the birthday cake I had today). I estimated that each 30 minute Wii session burns about 200 calories. This coupled with not having any desert (lets say this removes 200 calories) probably gives me a net change of about 400 calories a day that I have cut out of my daily diet. It has been surprisingly easy and explains these early results. And most importantly, I feel better and more energized! I plan on updates at least once a week from here on in, but I am not going to keep (and post) as detailed logs of my workouts. You should have a good feel for what my workout routine with the Wii is. Any changes (new games I incorporate, techniques I discover, etc) I will be sure to post. And by all means, if you have any questions, ideas or techniques, please submit comments or post in our forums.
Last Updated ( Saturday, 06 January 2007 )

Wii Weight Loss Program - Day 3 - 5

Written by S Warley
Saturday, 06 January 2007
It's the weekend and the Wii Weight Loss program is in full swing. I will post a 5 day summary as well. Here is the information for my last 3 workouts: Thursday Today I work out with the pedometer again. This time I only tracked the steps through my whole session, not for each game. The total number of steps for the workout were actually down slightly to 2381. Which equates to 159 calories per for the workout. This does not include calories burning by the upper body portion so the actually burned calories is slightly higher. Wii Sports Wii Training Baseball - Home Run (5 mins) - Batted both righty and lefty although my Mii is right-handed Right Handed - 3 home runs Left Handed (batting left handed was odd) - 1 home run but it went out of the park Golf (5 mins) Right Handed - 3pts Left Handed - 3pts (swung backwards) Wii Tennis (12 mins) Always a great workout Game #1 - won 2-0 Game #2 - won 2-1 Mii is at level 560 Boxing (5 mins) Won decision Mii is level 556 Friday Wii Sports Wii Training Tennis - Serve return (10 mins) 6 points (1st try) Baseball - Batting directional 32 pts - Bronze medal Boxing - Working the bag Very fun 16 pts - Bronze medal Wii Tennis (13 mins) Harder as my opponents move up in skill Matches are getting longer to play Game #1 - won 2-1 Game #2 - won 2-1 Mii is now level 682 Wii Boxing (7 mins) Match #1 - Won - round 1 KO, finally beat the woman who has been my nemesis the last few days :-) Match #2 - Won - round 2 KO Mii is now Level 659 Saturday Donkey Kong Jungle Beat This GameCube game that I posted about last week is really fun. The bongos give a great upper body workout. I decided to include it in todays session Jungle Beat (10 mins) Played Level 1 and part of Level 2 Arms were burning :-) Wii Tennis (15 mins) After Jungle Beat, my tennis skills left something to be desired Game #1 - lost 0-2 Game #2 - lost 1-2 Game #3 - lost 0-2 Mii is now level 759 Wii Boxing (10 mins) Match #1 - Won - round 3 KO Mii is now Level 688
Last Updated ( Saturday, 06 January 2007 )