Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

US Navy Considering Wii Fit and DDR For Boot Camp

Posted by Soulskill on from the path-to-international-respect dept.

almehdaaol writes "New military recruits are coming in physically heavier and out of shape, so the US Navy has decided to take an interesting course of action by creating a new training regimen inspired by the fitness-centric Wii Fit and Dance Dance Revolution." This comes alongside a report confirming some of the BS we told our parents when we were growing up: "Bavelier said playing the kill-or-be-killed games can improve peripheral vision and the ability to see objects at dusk, and the games can even be used to treat amblyopia, or lazy eye, a disorder characterized by indistinct vision in one eye. She said she believes the games can improve math performance and other brain tasks."

4 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Might work by The+Snowman · · Score: 2, Informative

    Considering that so many young Americans are obese that it's affected our military's ability to recruit

    [Citation needed]

    Seriously, where are you hearing this? Furthermore, the ability to recruit might have a lot to do with being sent to Iraq the second you're out of basic.

    Citation here, at cnn.com.

    Also, it is highly unlikely that a recruit from any branch will see combat directly out of basic training. New members need technical or advanced training. This is the link for Air Force training, since that is the branch in which I served.

    --
    24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
  2. They're not the first! by WWWWolf · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here in Finland, an outside support organisation bought a bunch of Wii consoles and Wii Fit games for various army garrisons. This was met with some initial scepticism, of course, but apparently the thing has turned out to be a success.

    In recent years, the army has been forced to figure out how to give the new conscripts who are in really bad shape (blah blah blah, moral and physical decay in youth today, yadda yadda yadda) a bit softer landing so they don't completely break themselves apart during the basic training, and this has played toward that goal too. The worst couch potatoes get Nordic walking instead of morning sprints.

  3. Re:Seriously? by Voyager529 · · Score: 2, Informative

    *sigh* up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start.

    DDR *is* made by Konami, after all.

  4. Re:That BS by kumanopuusan · · Score: 2, Informative

    That's not quite the case.
    Legal U.S. residents (including citizens and foreign nationals with resident status) can enlist.
    Only citizens can be commissioned as officers.

    --
    Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.