Wii Fitter

I got Wii Fit for Father's Day which was a bit of a surprise as I didn't think they were available in this country.

Had a good bit of a play this evening and despite my initial thoughts that it was a bit 'soft' my calves and thighs are actually burning following some of the more gruelling muscle strengthening sessions.

You add your Mii to the mix and define your basic stats... height, age etc. It then weighs you and gives you your calculated BMI. It then asks you to do your daily Body Test which gives you a calculated Wii Fit age. The initial test is based solely on a balance test - wobble left and right on the surprisingly sensitive board to keep a pair of blue bars within a larger red bar.

You then get access to a set of four sections - Yoga, Muscle Building, Aerobic and Balance Building. Each section has a handful of unlocked exercises and a bunch more that you unlock through improved performance and time spent exercising.

Muscle building comprises repetitive exercises such as lunges, press-ups, waist twists and so on. As your weight shifts on the board so it displays to you how much power you are exerting into the board.

Yoga has your virtual trainer demonstrating some basic yoga positions and it nominally measures your position and posture using the board.

The Aerobic section has step exercises (although the board is far too low for effective aerobic step exercising it still has value improving your coordination in a DDR kind of way,) jogging (measured using the wiimote,) and hula hooping.

The balance section is where the board really shines as you slalom, tightrope walk, ski-jump and table-tilt your way to enhanced coordination and posture.

Throw this all in the mix with a Brain-Training-esque encouragement and measurement system, and charted competition against your fellow trainees and it's a pretty motivational and effective system. The board itself is pleasingly heavy and sits reassuringly still even on wood laminate even as I thump my XX stone body (see later) up and down in the step class (displayed with you on stage with ten or so Miis from the Mii channel and an audience comprised entirely of the other Miis.)

Sure, you could cheat at almost any of these exercises. But what's the point of that? It trusts you to do what it tells you and if you're not going to do it properly you might as well chuck the thing in a cupboard and watch Big Brother instead. Another objection I've heard raised about Wii Fit runs along the lines of "Why don't you just go out and do some real exercise?" The answer to that, for me, is motivation. I'm a gamer - I like to see a target and set out to achieve it. This turns exercise into a neat little game that I do believe could have positive effects, if used properly.

So... in the interests of science, let's track my success over the next few weeks. I've taken my vitals, logged them and set a target and a time within which to achieve it. Let's see how I do over the next few weeks and months.

I am 6 foot exactly, and weigh 15st 7lb. My calculated BMI is therefore 29.41 which puts me borderline obese and very overweight. My Wii Fit age on day one (15 June) is 48. I've undertaken to lose a stone in 2 months, but even this doesn't bring my BMI down into acceptable levels.

I know BMI isn't the most accurate of measurements, but I'm hardly an athlete so I imagine my bone-mass and muscle-mass is fairly average, so I'm assuming BMI is a pretty fair measurement for me to use.

So here's the chart, day 1...