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Wii Can't Replace Actual Exercise
Next Generation notes the results of a study into the health benefits of playing the Nintendo Wii. According to the University of Liverpool research, Wii Tennis can't compare with the real thing. "The result showed that the youths burned 60 calories (in nutrition terms) more an hour playing Wii, a 2% increase in the amount of energy burned versus the Xbox 360 players. The study is quoted as saying that 'these increases were of insufficient intensity to contribute towards recommendations for children's daily exercise,' and that active gaming using the Wii is no replacement for actual sports."
No, it's not a replacement for real exercise, but as a replacement for sitting on your butt, eating cheetos, and pushing buttons, it's an improvement.
There are two ways to play the Wii, especially Wii sports: You can really get into it, swinging yours arms and making big motions and make it exercise (while having more fun in my opinion).
Or you can play it like a video game, and just twitch the controller around. Of course, as Tycho and Gabe put it so eloquently, that makes you a toolbox:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/11/13
In reaching the conclusion that Wii is only a 2% increase in calorie burning over 360 games, I'm sure the kids were only moving their wrists. Then, the difference breaks down to 360 = twitching thumbs, Wii = twitching wrists. I could believe that twitching wrists instead of just thumbs is a 2% increase in calories burnt over the 360.
I know that when playing Wii boxing and making real punching motions, my arms get physically tired and I can work up a sweat after long enough. I am sure if someone wanted to, they could run another study and grab another headline by stating something like Wii Burns As Many Calories as Real Workout.
... DDR!
Nothing... NOTHING beats a DDR workout. Wanna really test something against a sport/gym workout? 30 mins of DDR (actual play time) vs 30min Cardio workout. I'd be curious how close the ratio comes out to 1 on that.
~my $.02
AccountKiller
This is a hoax. The original research "appears" at http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7633/1282
It is worth noting that BMJ regularly provides joke studies on Christmas.
Further explanation from the Language Log: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005246.html
FYI: 2% still a big deal over time.
60 calories * 2 hours * 5 days a week * 48 weeks a year = 28800 calories.
28800 calories / (3000 calories / lb) = 9.6 pounds per year.
Note: Actual weight loss would be less as body fat does burn some calories over time.
So obviously that article is wrong. This less sensational and more accurate article states: Microsoft's Project Gotham Racing 3 for XBOX 360 can't hold a candle in fitness for teens to bowling, tennis, or boxing on Nintendo's Wii Sports, researchers found here.
But neither compared with fitness gains from playing live sports, reported Gareth Stratton, Ph.D., of Liverpool John Moores University, and colleagues in the Dec. 22 issue of BMJ. and - For Project Gotham Racing 3, the mean energy expenditure was 125.5
kJ/kg/min.
- For Wii Sports bowling, it was 190.6 kJ/kg/min.
- For Wii Sports boxing, it was 198.1 kJ/kg/min.
- For Wii Sports tennis, it was 202.5 kJ/kg/min. So the study actually states that playing Wii Sports burns 51-61% more energy per hour than Project Gotham 3 on the XBox 360. However, the difference in total overall energy consumption over an entire week (counting time doing other things) is only 2%. It isn't clear in the medpagetoday article how many hours of play resulted in that 2% increase. However, if someone burned 12,000 calories per week then 2% of that would be 240 calories, which equates to 4 hours per week (keeping in mind that their definition of an hour includes a 5 min break for every 15 min of play).
Of course, how you play will affect how quickly you burn the calories too... I know people who play Wii sports sitting still while only flicking their wrists and others who stand up and move their whole bodies pretending they're really boxing/batting/whatever.
You don't need much resistance to do aerobic exercise if you are using parts of your body other than your legs.
You can drive your heart rate well into the anaerobic range just by keeping your hands in constant motion. If you haven't tried something like shadow boxing, you'd be surprised. I think that the human body has evolved for efficient bipedal locomotion; it is extremely inefficient at keeping the arms in motion. Three minutes of continuous shadow boxing takes far more energy than jogging the same amount of time. If you don't believe me, try it; see if you can shadow box for three minutes, and throw during that time 120 minutes, a mere 1.5 seconds/punch.
Check out this video of a boxer hitting the focus mitts. Notice that his punching rate averaged over each 30 second period goes up and down -- from about 1 1/3 down to about 3/4 punch per second. He's throwing blindingly fast combinations, but he has to rest and the rest period between combinations goes up and down. If you took 100 people off the street, I'd bet maybe one or two could keep up this level of activity for three minutes without coming close fainting. Of course the bulk of the energy being provided is from the creatine phosphate pathway and glycolysis, but believe me you go into oxygen debt doing this. I've seen strong men reduced to the consistency of overcooked spaghetti by underestimating how hard this is. It's really amusing to see the reaction of a newbie macho man when after sixty seconds the 98 pound woman in the next group is hitting harder and faster than he is.
In Wii Tennis, you lose the main benefit of real tennis: running. Wii Boxing is far superior to Wii Tennis because you are encouraged to keep your upper body in constant motion, which as we've seen uses a lot of energy. It would be even better if there were a head tracking device, or something like a DDR mat that gave you more interesting tactical options like circling, advancing or retreating. One thing that newbies have trouble putting to use is that there are more directions in sparring than just forward and back. It adds a whole new um... dimension to the sport. Moving side to side is part of the answer to practically every kind of fighter. If you have a guy with a lot of reach, you throw of his sense of distance shifting to the side. If you have a powerful, aggressive puncher, you keep in circling so he can't plant his feet for a heavy punch. If you've got a southpaw, you move left to get out of range of that sneaky left hook, and so you can cross his lead with your own left hook.
It would be better exercise too, not because the lower body motions are huge in themselves, the key is that you'd have more of your body moving at one time. It is reasonably easy to throw 120 fast punches in three minutes if you are standing flat footed, but if you are shuffling forward and back, side to side, doing a little bobbing and weaving and its a serious workout, even though if you kept your hands perfectly still those motions would hardly amount to anything.
Of course, it still depends on the user. More experienced users are no doubt more efficient, just as more experienced sparring partners are more efficient. But the key is that it is to your advantage in the game then to throw more punches and blocks with your saved energy. In tennis, as you get more efficient, it is more advantageous to relax and wait for the next ball.
Of course I totally agree, Wii Sports -- even Wii Boxing aren't a substitute for working out. But I think the Wii points the way to games that are much more active. I'd like to see head foot and hand tracking incorporated into future games. Non-shooting combat games are ideal for getting the whole body into motion.
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