Entries Tagged 'Fun' ↓

Big congrats to “Dancing Craze” inventor, Stacy Cho, the winner of HopeLab’s Ruckus Nation competition and recipient of $50,000 in prize money!

What is Dancing Craze? It’s not really like anything else on the market today, in fact, its more an expansion of real dancing and the sharing of that experience. Dancing Craze users will wear motion sensors which will replicate the user’s moves on screen, and then allow the dancer to share those moves with others all over the world. You can even try your hand at matching other’s moves that have already been submitted, or submit group dances.

Hopefully we see a strong community build up around this product and really do see more kids getting up and moving to use it!

Hopelab will now begin prototype development of Dancing Craze, and the second prize winner, iBlob. So its anyone’s guess how long these products will take to get to market. Hopefully not long.

Ruckus Nation’s competition to get kids moving…  moves on!

The semi finalists have been chosen and you can view the whole listing at http://www.ruckusnation.com/semifinalists.html. There’s some really wacky stuff there, but mainly a good solid group of products some of which you’ve probably even thought of yourself.

My favourite is “mile a minute” under the “other” catagory. The premise is that you earn points and other accolades which are tracked by a hybrid mobile phone/pedometer. The part I really like is the “getting free minutes” of talk time for your phone…

Having said that, I think we really need incentives which appeal to kids. So, I’m not sure how well this will apply… do kids need money these days? When I was that age I was glad to get a dollar to go and get mixed lollies at the local store. But then again there was no such thing as mobile phones back then either!

Congrats to the semi-finalists so far. I greatly look forward to seeing the finalists, and wish I had the time to make my way to San Franciso to see the whole shebang.

Tune in again soon for my secret dealings with… “The Colorado Experiment”.

I finished my Ruckus Nation Judging today. I can tell you it was a fascinating experience… but as to the details on what exactly I judged? Unfortunately I can’t go into that.

What I will say is that I got a lot of entries that used very popular current day technology and tweaked it to make it more enjoyable for kids, and to provide education at the same time. Some were much, much more successful at this than others, mind you. I really had a good chuckle at some of the entries, and some were quite mind blowing and wow worthy.

I can’t say I judged any entries which were cures to modern day obesity in kids… But who knows, I’m no Nostradamus.

Until next time, enjoy yourselves, and get active!

If you haven’t yet entered for my favorite competition in the world, “Ruckus Nation“, by HopeLab, you better hop to it! The deadline for entry is only 5 short days away as I write this… but that still gives you until the 20th of November to think up something amazing. Remember, if you come up with that one great idea… you might just make $75,000 in 5 days, and help a ton of kids lose a ton of weight. And that would make anyone feel great, right?

Put on your thinking caps- I’m sure you can come up with something great if you expend a little brain power. I can even help you out on that hard part (the thinking) with an article I wrote, here. It can give you a head start on coming up with an idea, or it might even give you the edge to win a prize! Check it out, and all the best.

Oh, and before I forget, you can help out HopeLab and the Ruckus Nation competition organizers by becoming a judge if you don’t have your own idea. Your input might just help select the greatest weight loss aid for our kids we’ve seen in our lifetimes… that’ll make you feel pretty good I imagine! Enter as a judge, right here. I already have!

Are you letting your ill-founded notions of progress get in your way at the gym? Have you started your exercise program or gym-going schedule only three or four months ago, but already becoming frustrated with your lack of progress? Cut yourself some slack, your frustration & apparent lack of progress might be the only thing getting in your way.

A quick lesson on fat. If you’re into exercise to lose fat & look good, hear this: The unsightly fat that hangs around beneath your skin (called subcutaneous fat) is not the only fat you’ll find (or lose via exercise) in your body. Did you know you have reserves of fat inside your body too? You also have intramuscular fat, and visceral fat. Intramuscular fat is the fat found in your muscles (think fat marbling in a cut of steak), and visceral fat is fat found around your organs.

Why the lesson on fat? Well, I just want you to realize that fat won’t just drop off your body from exactly where it’ll make you look best in your new dress, or make your gut look good in your new suit. In fact, fat can be very stubborn when it comes to coming off the “problem areas”, such as the stomach for men, and the hips and bum for the girls. Thanks very much, DNA!

So after all this bad news, what have I got for you? Just some very basic and I believe, effective advice. Forget about the scales, just keep learning about safe and effective ways to exercise and eat healthily, and above all, make your program fun and a long term lifestyle choice. Your fat will eventually come off. Its just a matter of persistence, and when your exercise is fun, that persistence will be all the more easy to maintain.

90% of success is persistence. The other 10% is learning how to use the exercise time your persistence brings you.

At the invaluable traineo forums I came across a fantastic post by a friendly fella by the name of Matt. He’s come up with the kind of workout I think is key to maintaining motivation, and helping you have fun while you workout.

The best thing about this routine is that you’re competing against yourself. When you fail, you work hard… Which motivates you to concentrate on your basketball shots and creates a bit of tension with yourself. Its also highly versatile and can be tweaked & altered to your hearts content. Over to Matt’s unaltered post from traineo!

“Hello all,

I, like many others, get very bored with regular workout routines. I came up with a fun cardio routine and I thought I’d share it with everyone. The nice thing about this routine is it can be done at my University’s free field house. (or any old basketball court! -J)

1. Jog 2 warmup laps.
2. Shoot hoops, mostly freethrows
3. The first time I miss 3 in a row, I do sprints down the court 4 times
4. The second time I miss 3 in a row, I run a lap
5. The third time I miss 3 in a row I do sprints again
6. The fourth time is another lap
7. The fifth time is a brisk walking lap (lower hr)
8. Repeat

Obviously if you are an ace at basketball, then this is not a good cardio session, but when you are pretty awful (like me), its a fun way to get your heart rate up and improve your free throw %! ”

Thanks Matt! Nice, simple and easy to remember. Here’s a variation on Matt’s routine.

1. Jog 2 warmup laps.
2. Do layups, from side to side, never letting the basketball touch the ground (you can jump every time you put the ball up for an extra workout)
3. The first time you miss 2 in a row, do as many push ups as you can
4. The second time you miss 2 in a row, run 3 laps
5. The third time you miss 2 in a row jump as high as you can, and bring your knees to your chest as you do so, 10 reps should do it
6. The fourth time is another 2 laps
7. The fifth time is 20 jump shots from the 3 point line. Jump high!
8. Repeat

Got any suggestions yourself? Let us know via comments below! Thanks again Matt!

Ever since I bought my Nintendo Wii to look into its exercise potential, I’ve been struck by how much it reminds me of pianos. Thats right, pianos. Do you remember as a kid gathering around the piano with your family to sing songs and have fun bonding with them? No? Me either… but I saw it in a movie once and thought it looked boring. Welcome society’s new and vastly improved piano, the Nintendo Wii.

When this thought struck me, that Wii’s are like pianos, I questioned myself. Are they really? Aren’t they just the same as television, where we all gather around and stare like zombies at the “tube”? Aren’t they just promoting the often referred demise of the family unit by encouraging more of this behavior? Firstly, I don’t have a degree in social anthropology, but I believe the perception of the so called demise of the family unit is just that, a perception. What!? Its not just a perception, its a fact! You cry. Without rambling on about it, we get that perception from the media- its more interesting to hear about dysfunctional families than functional ones. I mean, someone please tell me what the difference is between a large concert full of people watching the opera, and millions of people watching a soap opera behind their t.v.’s with their families? There is none, it is our perception of it that’s different.

What’s this got to to do with the Wii? Well, my whole social anthropology spiel above is to make a point that the family isn’t dead or fundamentally wrong these days, it’s just changed so quickly that people perceive it to be worse than before. But you know, its all apples & oranges. Today’s family is very different to the classic 1950’s image of happy families. And the new society it lives in includes a culture which loves gadgets, things and toys, and loves entertainment. That leaves our piano out in the cold and the Nintendo Wii at the 21st century “fire place” that is the television.

Why do I keep referring to the Wii as the new piano? Because it’s sorta similar to the fireplace or television… you all gather around and talk, but there’s a bit more that makes the Wii a piano, its that it gets us interacting and bonding over a new shared activity.

Have you noticed how you’ll speak to your family while you watch the t.v. about what you’ve just watched? You discuss it, remark about how good or bad a sitcom is or about starving people in Africa, but you rarely ever share an experience like you do sitting around the piano. Everyone used to get involved around the piano- one person woud play while the rest would gather around and sing. Do you notice any similarities yet? Every time the Wii comes out in my house, whether it be friends or family that are around, a similar pattern emerges. A couple of us play and the rest gather around and talk about it. We instruct each other, we compete against each other and we enjoy a brand new experience together much like singing songs on a piano.

Nintendo Wii: The New Piano… Only more space friendly… and more Fun!

Wiiano, anyone?

Now that our week long project is over and many a game ground up under my disdainful review-heel, I thought a “hardcore” guide might be just what the sweat doctor ordered- a guide that multiplies the effect of any Wii workout you want to do.

I think you want something… extra… out of your Wii workouts. I think you might be feeling like a bit of a weakling now that you’ve dropped a few days from your gym workouts because you’re playing so much Wii Tennis or Wii Boxing. Tut-tut. This guide will show you a way to workout with the Wii that you might never have considered, the Wii Hardcore way!

But first, I’ve come up with a list of gear that you can use to push your Wii workouts to the extreme:

• Wrist weights
• Ankle weights
• Weight vest
• Therabands
• Fitballs
• Heart rate monitor
• A thick sweat absorbent towel

And from the fun side of life…

• A pair of huge wall mounted wide screen televisions
• Dolby 5.1 Surround sound system
• Two or more Wiimotes and nun-chucks
• Plenty of friends
• Alcoho… I mean… nothing… forget I said that!

As an example of what you might try, fire up Wii Boxing, put on your weight vest, your wrist weights, and put your heart rate monitor on. You want to track this to see how hard your heart works now, and to compare yourself down the road.

Make sure you warm up and do all that good stuff like checking with personal trainers & doctors before you try this. If you don’t warm up you’ll regret it- this workout is for fit people only with exercise history!

Grab your theraband with your left hand, wrap it around your back and under your arm pits, and then grab it with your right arm. Each punch will now need to contend with both the theraband resistance and your wrist weights as you punch outwards. Buy the heaviest theraband you can punch with constantly and alter that resistance by gripping it so its prestretched, or preferably make up a theraband by tying two ready to use loops in each end.

Here’s what I want you to do:

• Fire up Wii Boxing, preferably with a pro level Mii, and just go nuts.
• We’re trying to simulate something close to high intensity interval training, so try and knock that other Mii out in record time.
• Be sure to add a boxer’s bounce, and lean side to side strongly and swiftly to avoid punches.
• Go for a combination of jabs, uppercuts, and roundhouse punches.
• Throw them hard and fast.
• If you’re knocked down by your opponent, get down and bust out push ups until you get back up.
• If you knock your opponent down crank out as many deep squats as you can before he gets back up.
• If all is going well by the time the bell goes you’ll really need some down time. Take as much as you need and walk around your room/house slowly to keep your blood circulating.
• Once you’re good to go, cue the game again and repeat.
• … if that’s not a hardcore exergaming workout, I don’t know what is!

Stay tuned for more hardcore ideas, or if you have some of your own, let me know.

Now… if anyone wants me to review their weight vest, wrist weights, or if I have to, large plasma screen t.v.’s, let me know! I’m kidding… sorta…

The first Wii Workout Week comes to an end with a review of the thoroughly enjoyable release title for the Wii: Red Steel. We should have all heard plenty about this game, a familiar feeling shooter that also has samurai sword fighting as an interesting aside to the normal shoot em up game play. You won’t be able to call this one an exergaming title unfortunately, but at least it’ll get you off the couch and upright for some good bad guy blasting fun.

Fitness:

Its a pity Red Steel doesn’t make greater use of its sword fighting sections, I mean… The fighting sections are great, but I think we’d all like to be making sweeping slashing movements with a samurai sword to dispatch the enemy rather than merely making small flicks of our wrist. If only it was more like Wii Sports baseball, where you make large powerful strikes. Or perhaps I’m just being overly critical of the game, because I’d like to see everyone working a little harder when they play games..!

There’s no scope in Red Steel to get creative with our exercise either unfortunately- the game is non-stop action, but that action only has you making very small precise movements with your Wiimote. I’d love to see a shooter take a page out of Call of Duty’s book and use both a novel aiming solution, and a reloading mechanic which has the player mimic shot gun reloads with the nunchuck, or mimicking pushing the bolt forward in machine guns. Perhaps we’ll have to wait for the next generation of motion sensitive console.

Fun:

Despite the lack of exercise here, the game is great fun and follows a tried and tested first person shoot em up formula that has you wielding a variety of classic weapons such as the pistol, uzi and shotgun. The game has a good sense of desperation to it as you’re given objectives through out the game to save your fiancé, sometimes including time based objectives that really make you panic as you chase after the yakuza.

All the environments in the game are presented authentically, the level design makes you feel like you’re really in a high rise building and the sounds and atmosphere make good use of the Wii’s hardware capabilities.

You could probably call Red Steel a tad on the toned down side for violence, which is probably a good point if you don’t like your kids splattering enemy blood all over the walls, but not so good if you’re an adult who likes to indulge in a realistic shoot em up experience… so to speak!

Motivation:

Red Steel is a solid story based title, and if like most gamers you like a good story line and unlocking new weapons, this game will definitely keep you coming back for more. However, if you’re after a Wii title to get your heart rate elevated & limbs flailing, Red Steel isn’t it.

If my review hasn’t convinced you otherwise, support placeintheground.com’s fun fitness focus and buy Red Steel from Amazon, here.

That concludes our first Wii Workout Week! The majority of the games reviewed this week have been release titles, which means you can probably buy them quite cheaply today, and still get a workout out of them… at least in the case of Mario Strikers if you get creative, and Rayman Raving Rabbids for some furious arm pumping fun.

Speaking of Rayman Raving Rabbids, it scores our first Wii Workout Week title as best fitness game, followed by Mario Strikers if you follow our workout suggestions. In fact, you can get a better workout from Mario if you throw in our suggestions, but the aim of this week was to test out a few well known games to determine how effective they are without doing any tweaking. Struggling to fit a program around a game won’t appeal to many people, but fun will. Congrats Rayman!

If you enjoyed this series please let me know, and feel free to let me know of a game that you’d like reviewed for future Wii Workout Weeks. Until then, enjoy your Wii’s and look out for other fun workout ideas on placeintheground.com.

I would genuinely love to be able to give Wii Play a great Wii Workout Week score. Its another Wii title that offers good clean fun, especially when the family or friends gather around… Unfortunately, much like Wario on the fitness front, you’ll get absolutely zero out of it exercise-wise. Never mind, you’ll have a ball!

Fitness:

The list of mini games in Wii Play are more similar to Rayman Raving Rabbids than to Wario Ware. But they’re unfortunately more like Wario Ware than Rayman when it comes to fitness, which is a shame, but to be honest the title really doesn’t even try to offer anything remotely related to sport or fitness. Its just good clean fun.

None of the titles will get your heart rate above what standing still will, and hence it earns 1 tick. The title doesn’t offer any creative ways to fit a workout into its gameplay, so I can’t drag this good title up another tick no matter what I do. However, the old get into a squat, or on your back for some abs like I described in Mario Strikers can still be applied here if you’re conscious of trying to lose a few pounds.

Fun:

Wii Play comes out of the box with the same good feel that Rayman does. Everything about it is clean, happy and out to amuse you. For example, click on your Mii after the selection screen, and he’ll react differently depending on where you “poke” him.

Each of the mini games are an absolute ball with a group of friends over, old favorites like “Laser ball” (air hockey) even feel different using the Wiimote, and will keep you amused for quite a few hours.

The list of mini games on Wii Play is as follows:

• Shooting Range- an old fashioned point & shoot game. Take out normal targets, ducks, skeets and aliens trying to pick up a group of your Mii’s! Hilarious!
• Find Mii- I struggled with this one. Its like a where’s Wally type game where you have to use your powers of perception to pick similar or different looking Mii’s in different situations. Good luck!
• Table Tennis- A bit tough if you’re playing friends, as the board keeps spinning to a different perspective each round, but still a bit of mindless fun.
• Pose Mii- An absolute hoot if you’re out for some competitive fun with friends or family. This game alone could almost be called exergaming because it got my friends and I so fired up trying to beat each other. You basically have 4 different poses which can be changed by clicking the A or B button, you then twist the Wiimote to match your floating Mii’s shape to the shape of falling bubbles… Top marks for this game.
• Laser hockey- As I’ve said, just a retake on the old air hockey, but plenty of fun nonetheless.
• Billiards- A well implemented billiards game, but nothing out of the ordinary or especially fun about it.
• Fishing- This is a good one. Use the angle of your Wiimote and its distance from the screen to place a fishing hook next to different fish. This mini game also generated heated competition when friends came over to have a go.
• Charge- Not my favorite mini game, you need to guide your bull down a long course, knocking over scarecrows for maximum points. Also not so bad in multiplayer mode… needs a bit of something extra here though me thinks.
• Tanks- Guide your mini tanks over the map to destroy each other and the AI tanks. Plenty of fun again when friends are around, and a good bit of clean fun alone too.

Motivation:

Again I’m penalizing points here because while the game is really good fun, there’s just not an iota of fitness to be extracted from it. On the other hand, if you’re playing a few hours of Wii Play, rather than crowding around the Xbox, at least you’ll be standing and not all hunched up.

You’ll definitely keep coming back when friends and family are around, just not to break a sweat. Sorry Wii Play!

Wii Play comes bundled with a second controller for your Wii, making it a good option to try and find the bundle deal. Like I’ve said a bunch of times, exercising and gaming with friends and family is just a different experience to using the Nintendo on your lonesome, so I recommend grabbing a second controller if you can afford one.

If you’re in the market, support my site and buy one from Amazon, wontcha?