How Effective Is a Wii Workout?

Video games continue to be a favorite leisure activity, particularly among children and teenagers. Young adults also enjoy reliving their childhoods through video games. Many video games are sedentary. Fortunately, however, the Nintendo Wii features games that require players to move. Two of the most popular active games for the Wii console are Wii Sports and Wii Fit.

Wii Fitness Games

Wii Sports and Wii Fit provide many movement activities. Wii Sports provides five games that simulate sports including boxing, bowling, baseball, golf, and tennis. Wii Fit provides a great variety of games including ones that simulate sports such as boxing and Kung Fu. It tracks the weight, BMI (body mass index), time spent exercising, and approximate number of calories burned for numerous players. Wii Fit even claims to help players burn calories, improve balance, develop flexibility, and build strength.

Effectiveness of the Workouts

Do Wii Sports and Wii Fit provide effective workouts? Do players truly burn as many calories as they would doing similar exercises in a gym or playing the sports "in real life?" John Porcari, Ph.D., Karel Schmidt, (clinical exercise physiology graduate student), and Carl Foster, Ph.D., all of the University of Wisconsin, performed a study, sponsored by the American Council on Exercise, to test the benefits of using Wii Sports for fitness. Researchers led by Porcari and Alexa Carroll, M.S., tested the effectiveness of Wii Fit.

Wii Sports

For the Wii Sports study, Porcari and his team chose sixteen male and female volunteers ages twenty to twenty nine. After determining each subject's maximal heart rate and maximal oxygen uptake with a treadmill, the subjects played all five Wii Sports. Each game lasted ten minutes. The researchers measured the heart rate and oxygen uptake of each participant after each game. During the last minute of each game, researchers also interviewed the subjects to find out how much energy they thought they’d exerted. The researchers found that Wii Sports did increase heart rate, oxygen uptake, and perceived exertion. However, they found that boxing is the only game intense enough to improve cardiorespiratory endurance. None of the games has the same intensity as playing the sport in real life.

Wii Fit

For Wii Fit, Porcari and his researchers used a similar process. Sixteen volunteers, ages twenty to twenty-four, also exercised on a treadmill so the researchers could find their maximal heart rates and oxygen uptakes. The volunteers then played the six most intense aerobic games of Wii Fit: Free Step, Advanced Step, Rhythm Boxing, Super Hula Hoop, Island Run, and Free Run. After interviewing and recording each participant's heart rate and oxygen uptake, the researchers found that Island Run and Free Run used the most energy, but were not intense enough to improve cardiorespiratory endurance. The other activities were not intense enough either.

Useful, but Not as Effective

Although both Wii Sports and Wii Fit are better than nothing in terms of movement, they do not require the same amount of energy as doing the same activities in real life. Real sports and real workouts in a gym or other area are still more effective for health. Still, these activities are better than not exercising at all.

References

• John Porcari, Ph.D., Karel Schmidt, Carl Foster, Ph.D. Study on Fitness Benefits of Wii Sports. PDF.
• Alexa Carroll, M.S., John Porcari, Ph.D., Carl Foster, Ph.D. Study on Fitness Benefits of Wii Fit . PDF.

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