For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working on trying to get myself into shape. Or rather, some shape that wasn’t just ‘round’. Cutting out chocolate (except when thoughtless fucks come over to stay and bring us presents of giant bars of Dairy Milk). Cutting out fizzy drinks (except when we throw a party and the thoughtless fucks don’t drink the mixers). And generally just watching what I eat. And, as a bit of an experiment, I’ve been trying out EA Sports Active.

I’ve tried Wii Fit and found it to be a total misnomer. Wii Balance might have been a better name, since that seems to be all it’s concerned with. I still use it for its daily “Body Tests”, which measure your weight and BMI (and also still finds a way to work “balance” into the equation), but apart from that, _Wii Fit _was a non-starter in my house.

EA Sports Active, on the other hand, has been a huge hit. It actually gets your heart pumping and I’m loving the way it feels like a genuine training session. Or at least, like a more intense training DVD. I’m halfway through my first “30 Day Challenge”, and there hasn’t been one time where I’ve thought “I can’t be bothered with this”, so it can definitely be called a success.

That’s not to say it’s perfect.

  • Enough with the fucking lunges Christ on a bike. Every session has a minimum of three or four batches of lunges. Even last night, where the trainer says “Today we’re going to focus on your upper body!” had five sets of lunges. I’m sure they’re great for my fitness, but let’s mix it up a bit, please.

  • Why can’t it weigh me? I’ve got a Balance Board. It knows I have a Balance Board. Why the hell can’t it weigh me using the Balance Board? Right now, I do my body test using Wii Fit, get my weight from that and manually input it into EA Sports Active. This strikes me as just a silly oversight. Although it also seems like none of the Wii fitness games offer this, apart from Wii Fit. Maybe this is a Nintendo-mandated omission?

  • No abdominal exercises Weirdly for something that presents itself as a rounded fitness program, the game doesn’t even try to give any abdominal exercises. Apparently, these will be coming later in an add-on pack.

  • Crappy resistance band The resistance band they supply with the game is not only light as to be almost completely ineffectual, it also is made of a crappy material that will snap if you look at it wrong. My advice would be to buy yourself your own resistance band and use that instead.

Apart from these fairly minor complaints, I’m really happy with EA Sports Active. It’s not a complete workout package, but it’s not really meant to be. It’s intended to gently ease people into regular exercise and to compliment a broader, more comprehensive weight-loss and exercise regime.

Now I just need to stop people bringing me chocolate and I’ll be laughing.