EA Sports Active Review

Well I said I’d give a review of the EA Sports Active for Wii…. So I guess I will. I’ve been using it for a few days now, and I love it! I’ve been doing the 30-day challenge, which has 20 workouts you spread over 30 days. You can choose one of three intensities. I’ve been choosing mostly high, but I’ve thrown in a medium here and there. High will kick your butt. It measures the time you spend exercising more accurately than the wii fit does. It also measures the calories you burn…. Not sure how accurate that can be though. It mixes some sports and games with strength exercises.

Pros:
-It sure beats going to gym when the temp is negative anything. It’s very easy to do at home, and I save a lot of time by not driving to the gym. I don’t have to fight anybody for machines, and nobody stares (I don’t have an issue with that, but some people don’t like going to the gym because they think people look at them. So this solves that problem).
-You have to do the exercises at a certain tempo with the game, and it will hold me down in a lunge much longer than I would if I were doing the exercise on my own. You can’t speed through the exercises, which helps you benefit more from them.
-Choosing different intensity levels makes me more likely to put the game on at the end of a long day.
-You can switch out resistance bands for a harder workout. It doesn’t come with extra bands, but those are pretty cheap and easy to get at any box store.
-The trainers and other figures on it wear Tshirts and pants, not skimpy clothes. That’s a plus for me.
-I feel like I get a good strength workout from it.

Cons:
-The cord between the nunchcuk and remote get in the way, and sometimes the way you have to hold them is awkward. Hand positions are very important because that’s how the game reads what position your body is in, and you can get “stuck” in the game. All these are minor though, and it just takes doing an exercise a time or two to work out the kinks in it.
-Not enough cardio, stretching, or abs. I don’t know about the cardio, but I know that the new version of this game, EA Sports Active More Workouts has improved on the stretches and ab workouts. I want to get the next one when I finish the 30 day challenge.
-It mixes up the exercises a little, but it’s a lot of the same. It almost feels like eating at the DFAC three meals a day for a year…. The food was decent, but it got REALLY old after a while. Hopefully I can find ways to mix it up, maybe switching between this one and another game will help that.

So it’s got some good and bad points. But overall, I like it, and I’ll definitely continue to use it, hopefully every day.