Wii Are Working Our Way to Fitness

I wrote about starting out on our new Wii Fit and how much fun it was, doing body tests and trying to see what levels my fiancee and I could reach, but Sunday was such a gorgeous day, the first really nice sunny day in ages at the weekend, that we decided to go out for a walk to get some exercise.

We both enjoy walking, and since we only live a mile from the River Itchen in Southampton (England), it's a great place to walk.

The previous night had been really frosty, so we wrapped up warm, but not too warm, since the area is quite hilly, and we knew that once we got warmed up, we would be pleased to just have a sweatshirt on instead of a thick coat.

The problem with where we live is that we are halfway up a hill, and to go anywhere we have to walk down the hill to the road at the bottom, then all the way up the hill again, and it's a long steep climb. However, we managed it without too much of a problem, despite not having been out walking for some weeks, and then headed down the other side to the river, which is a good mile from home.

There were still some frozen puddles around, so you can tell how cold it still was, but the sky was bright, and there was only a light breeze by the river itself.

We thought we were cold, but that was nothing compared to a group of rowers from the local university, who were running across the park while carrying their kayaks and skiffs on their shoulders. "Sooner them than us" we thought, but then they were a lot younger than us!

It was a nice walk along the river, a bit nippy when we had to walk into the breeze, and the walk ends as it begins, uphill, downhill and uphill again to the house.

I gave myself about half an hour to recover, had some water to drink, checked my email, AC etc, and then thought it would be good to get on the Wii again and do some more working out. Yes friends, once I get this old body moving, I enjoy pushing myself a bit further.

So onto the Wii I got, and practiced some more of the skills, including the Hula Hoop and then advanced Hula Hoop. It's quite hard rotating your hips for 90 seconds in one direction and then immediately after another 90 seconds in the other direction, while trying to catch more hoops, and spinning them all round as fast as you can. I was really working up a sweat, and it felt good. I know in the summer we might have to get a fan in the living room to try and generate some breeze.

I practiced heading soccer balls again, and still find this hard, changing the balance on your feet rather than leaning to the left and the right. I also tried the slalom skiing and ski jumping, which were fun.

The slalom skiing is really quite tricky, as you have to keep your body balanced, legs bent, and shift your balance to the left and the right to get through the gates. It takes quite a bit of practice to master, but I did quite well after about 10 attempts, and my score kept going up and up. Meantime I was becoming aware of my calf muscles stiffening as you need to use them a lot to shift your balance.

I then tried the next level of step aerobics, where you not only step up and down and sideways on the board, you also turn your body to the left and right. This I found to be really hard, and need to work on this tonight.

Being a sucker for ppunishment, I opted to go jogging again. I am not sure how long the course is, maybe half a mile, but it seems like an awfully long way to me. So off I set, running on the spot, which I find incredibly hard to do most of the time. I find myself getting nearer and nearer to the television, then have to run backwards up the room to give myself more space. I did a lot better than I managed on Saturday, and by the time I got 3/4 of the way around the course I was ready to up the pace a bit, which I did. I managed to speed up, and this really worked up a sweat, and I broke my previous record by a mile which felt good.

By this time my 30 minutes was up, and I took time to rest, but a few hours later in the evening I fancied another good workout before bed time, so I had another few attempts at the Advanced Hula Hoops, Slalom and Step Aerobics again.

I spend just under an hour on the Wii |Fit yesterday, plus our walk beforehand, so I went to bed feeling pretty good. The good thing about exercising in the evening is that even though you stop working out, your body still continues to burn calories for a few hours, so you are still losing weight by the time you get into bed, and you feel really energized.

The only problem I did have as you might expect was getting up off the couch to go to bed. The backs of my legs were so stiff! I hobbled up the stairs but I felt good. This morning when I got up - my poor old body wasn't much better - so I hobbled downstairs like an old man, and even now I can feel the muscles tenser than they were, so I know it's doing me good.

I can't wait for my next workout on the Wii Fit tonight...