Study: Wii Fit is Not Making Your Family More Fit
The Wii has gamers moving in ways that other system's just can't match – at least until Microsoft's Natal and Sony's "Gem" is out in 2010.
Nintendo, knowing that it has the attention of the mainstream consumer, created Wii Fit with its own custom Balance Board accessory. As the name of the game suggests, Wii Fit aims to promote fitness through various balance and yoga-like activities. The only question is – does it work?
While there have been gamers who stick to a thorough Wii-based regimen of sports-related waggling activities, and have lost weight because of it, a new study conducted by Scott Owens out of the University of Mississippi suggests that Wii Fit makes no significant changes to a family's fitness levels overall.
Researchers tracked the fitness levels of eight families for three months, then introduced Wii Fit into the families and tracked for another three months.
Daily tracking revealed that families appear to slowly lose interest in playing with Wii Fit. Daily Wii Fit use per household declined by 82 percent, from 22 minute per day during the first six weeks to four minutes per day during the second six weeks, according to PC World.
Owens concluded that “modest amounts of daily Wii Fit use may have provided insufficient stimulus for fitness changes."
That doesn't mean that the Wii Fit was completely ineffectual. The study found that children displayed significant increases in aerobic fitness, but that wasn't enough for researchers to categorize as "significant changes in daily physical activity, muscular fitness, flexibility, balance or body composition for families as a whole."
Follow us on Twitter for more tech news and exclusive updates here.
Seems like it's their lack of motivation and attention span. It's also probably a lack of knowledge regarding fitness and a proper diet.
That's not to say the Wii Fit will make you look like Matthew McConaughey, however, even with daily use.
I could have told you that the Wii Fit isn't a great fitness tool and also that people have short attention spans. It would have taken me about ten seconds. Instead this guy spent six months researching this.
Also, this study breaks many of the rules to scientific experiments, like having a control while you test. This study assumed the people kept the same lifestyle before and after the Wii. In an 11 month time span you change your lifestyle drastically just to accommodate weather, let alone holidays based around eating and fasting.
To be a true study of the life changes any exercise device can bring to a household, you need to find households that are incredibly similar and introduce the device to a group and leave at least 1 household without the device and under observation. You will actually have comparable results, unlike this study of assumptions.
I'd like to see you do well in Wii Fit by just flicking your wrist.
The only possible conclusion is that people tend to use Wii Fit less over time, if allowed. If you don't mandate the use of the object being studied, then the study says nothing about the object.
If all it took to get fit was just a flick of the wrist then 95% of the internet could be classified under "health and fitness".
Cardio improvements? Of course not because the cardio games don't last long enough and when things start becoming actual work people will switch off. That being said, a lot of my friends (as it the trend it seems) work up more of a sweat playing boxing than Wii Fit.
Wii Fit Plus intrigues me - it's a lot more structured and geared up towards actual exercise than the gimmick "game health" the original was built on.