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Wednesday, May 20, 2009

WFMW - Wii My Fitness Coach Review

It's amazing how many great ideas I have for a Works for Me Wednesday post until Wednesday comes and I go blank. But what I'm sharing about today is My Fitness Coach for Wii.

I never seem to have time to workout. I tried a 3 month gym membership this winter and it worked for a while. Then my 2 y/o got sick, immediately followed by me being sick. That lasted for a month to 6 weeks. So we started back up, with one month left in our membership. And I went regularly. Maybe not every day but 3-4 days a week. And then for the last week of our membership, an ice storm hit and that was that.

My husband had been suggesting that with some tax refund funds, we purchase the Wii Fit. So I looked into and in the process saw the My Fitness Coach. I compared the two and really liked My Fitness Coach better. Several reasons... 1) lower cost 2) per review comparisons, has a warm up and cool down, better than Wii Fit 3) seemed to have more no- and low-impact exercise and 4) I liked that it regularly evaluates your fitness and helps you set goals. So we ordered it and I anxiously awaited it's arrival - to only get sick again for a few weeks.

Once I tried it, I immediately loved it! Here's what I love...
1) I can set my workout time for as low as 15 minutes and still feel like I've worked out. So even on my very busy days, I can usually get some kind of workout in.
2) "Maya" is encouraging and never mean (a friend who has Wii Fit says it can be quite rude to you).
3) I earn new environments to work out in as well as new music as I work out per my commitment calendar.
4) Every time I workout it's different. The exercises change as well as how long you do each one. The recommended type of workout varies each day (I always choose what "Maya" recommends for the day but I could pick differently if I wanted to). As I progress in my abilities, new exercises are added and existing exercises become more challenging.
5) Periodic evaluations of an individual workout. After each segment of a workout, "Maya" asks how I felt during the segment to make adjustments for next time. So when the "corkscrew" exercise was too much, the next day's workout was a little less intense.
6) There is a 3 minute warm up for each workout and some cool down.
7) It asks what equipment I have that I want to use for workouts. You can change this daily if you need to.
8) If I could convince my husband to workout with me, there is a group workout option that looks at his profile and mine to give us both a decent workout together.

What I don't like or wish they'd improve...
1) There's isn't an option to make a workout low impact. Fortunately, I'm comfortable in knowing how to convert a higher impact move to low impact. I have bad feet (manufacturer's defect) so I don't jump or run (except if my child is in danger).
2) I wish the cool down was longer with more stretching.
3) You create your profile, generally your name. As a great feature, it would be nice if "Maya" used your name in her motivating comments. (Wish list but not a necessity)
4) At the beginning of a workout, I wish it told me whether or not it was going to use my available equipment. It's a pain to get out my exercise ball and then it's not used.
5) I would like to add resistance bands to the list of equipment and use in the exercises.

Overall, I LOVE this exercise program! It was affordable. Because of the constant change, I'm never bored so I want to do it every day. It allows me to choose how long I want to work out for. Although 15 minutes may not be much, it's something and something is ALWAYS better than nothing. I highly recommend this program!

And if you want to see something really fun, have a group of kindergarteners do the workout with you :)

For more Works for Me Wednesday posts, go to We are THAT Family and enjoy!

2 comments:

John and Lisa said...

I've wondered about this, and I've noticed other reviews that have similar opinions to yours. We just bought a gym membership and I have been fairly faithful to go 3-4 x per week, but like you mentioned it would be nice to have something to do in between or when someone gets sick, etc. Thanks for a thorough review- I liked your suggestions too!

Sandwiched said...

Glad to hear you like it! Just got it today for my birthday. Maybe I'll get to pop it in tomorrow!