Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Dance Dance Revolution Exercise Plan

I mentioned how I intend to take advantage of our new PS2 and DDR to lose weight and got a comment (imagine that! I have commenters! Eek!) about it.

I actually got the idea from a few places. Okay, the first is that DDR actually has a game play mode called "workout". But I'd heard of it being used before that. A good friend of mine lost over 100 pounds a couple years back. She used weightwatchers, Curves, and (oddly enough) DDR. Since she's a video game player like myself, it worked out well for her. It provides entertainment while you exercise (nothing is more boring to me than, say, running!) and it helps drive you to keep going, even when you're tired. I'm far more likely to keep playing a game when I'm tired than I am to keep plodding along on a treadmill. I might want to get to a new level, or beat a high score, or whatever.

But the first time it ever crossed my mind was about 5 years ago when I was at a conference for work. The hotel I stayed at was across the street from a very nifty arcade and a friend I was with suggested we try it out. Well, while I was there, I saw a teenager playing his DDR heart out for
about half an hour, and he was absolutely covered in sweat. I remember my mind briefly thinking, "wow... That looks like a good workout!"

Anyway, as I said, my version (and many other versions) of DDR actually has a workout mode. You can input your weight and set a few options in order to configure your workout. You can specify if you want to exercise for a certain amount of time, or a certain amount of calories, and the system will craft an exercise routine just for you! It starts out slow to warm up, builds in intensity, and then slows down at the end to cool. Somehow or another it even estimates the calories you've burned.

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