Can Wii Games Replace Regular Exercise?

By Peter Liu
[Fitness]
Is exercising with your Wii a good enough workout?  Peter Liu examines the evidence.
Gamers have always had somewhat of a bad reputation for being notoriously unhealthy couch potatoes, but in light of recent video gaming advances, like the Nintendo Wii, gamers have gotten a bit of a reprieve.  Because the obesity issue is still raging in so many parts of the world, the makers of Nintendo have sought to bring exercising back into the living room with games like Wii Sports, Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus.  The obvious hope is that these “exer-games” will teach gamers that exercising can be fun and that staying active can happen anywhere, even in your living room.  At the very least, these games can seek to inform gamers and non-gamers alike that going outside to exercise can not only be fun, but ultimately rewarding.  But are these games effective as an exercising tool?  Is it efficient enough simply to loaf around the living room, move around a bit and call it exercise?

A Wii Little Study

A recent study on the Nintendo Wii’s exercising potential was done at the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Tokyo and presented at the annual scientific meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando.  Funded by Nintendo, study lead author Dr. Motohiko Miyachi sought to discover whether the Wii Sports and Wii Fit games were effective as a form of regular exercise.

To set up the study, researchers recruited 12 men and women between the ages of 25 and 44, and taught them how to play the Wii games before testing.  At the start of the study, tests were done on the volunteers with treadmills to measure their oxygen and heart rates, and their ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) through surveys.  Study subjects then played six minute bouts of each game in random order, selected for study purposes, including Free Run, Island Run, Free Step, Advanced Step, Super Hula Hoop and Rhythm Boxing.

Wii Bit of Exercise

To measure the energy expended playing the games, researchers used METs (metabolic equivalent of task) as a unit, with one as the normal resting rate and six and above considered as vigorous activity.  Of the list of Wii Sports and Wii Fit games tested for energy expenditure and exercise effectiveness, the majority of games were considered moderate intensity exercises with ratings between three and six METs.  The game with the highest MET rating was the Single Arm Stand, with a rating of almost six METs.  Island Run and Free Run also ranked among more moderate intensity exercises, burning an average of 5.5 kilocalories (kcal) per minute or 165 calories on average when played for 30 minutes. The other four games selected for testing typically burned about 3.3 to 3.8 kcal per minute or anywhere from 99 to 114 calories on average for a 30-minute session.  Other games that were tested included the ever-popular Wii Tennis, Boxing, Baseball, Golf and Bowling, the Wii sports that prompted the real questions of whether or not using a Nintendo Wii to exercise could be viable.  Nintendo Wii owners who believe Wii Boxing is the most physically intensive of the list are right.  It scored as a moderate intensity exercise at 4.5 METs, while Wii Tennis and Wii Baseball came in at around 3 METs and Wii Golf and Bowling had less than 2 METs.
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