Health Meter: The Balance Board: Wii Fit-less Fitness

12/1/2008 8:03 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

If all the one-trick-pony game controllers were placed end to end, you'd have a length of crappy plastic junk that stretched from New York to Singapore. Bongos, maracas, fishing rods, you name it. As a big fan of the Wii Balance Board, I feared that it, too, might end up in the closets and basements of gamers once the thrill of virtual hula-hooping wore off. While a lot of the mainstream reviews of Wii Fit weren't all that glowing, as a trainer, I love it. I use it all the time with clients at my Boston-area fitness studio. Back at E3, I tracked down developers that were planning to use the Balance Board in some new and innovative ways. Happily, the main three games that I wrote about are now on the shelves and all have made creative use of the Board. Even cooler is that all three will whack your body, brain and the wires that connect the two together in slightly different ways.

The Balance Board is an amazing piece of technology. My latest writing project had me down at the PGA Academy in Ponte Vedra, Florida writing about golf biomechanics. The Academy has some seriously cool, high-end, high-tech stuff that it uses to assess just about everything that can be assessed about the golf swing. One of the toys is a platform that you step on that can sense the shifting pattern of your weight distribution from left to right and from front to back. Sound familiar? I'm not sure how much the Academy plunked down for its version of the Balance Board, but I'm guessing it was many, many times more than what gamers dropped for their Wii Fit -- and the PGA apparatus doesn't even include software that'll let you turn yoga into a competitive drinking game!

The most creative -- and most challenging -- use of the Board in this next wave of Balance Board games is EA's Skate It. It's the Wii-ified version of last year's Tony Hawk-killer, Skate. Like its predecessor on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, this is no arcade romp. Just as before, the accent is more on realism than on ludicrous moves. That said, thanks to a stiff and slightly unbalanced learning curve, you'll probably be able to nail some funky maneuvers before you get the hang of some of the more mundane aspects of skating -- like going in a straight line. The game uses the Wii remote in addition to the Board. The Board is used for turning, getting into the air, balancing on grinds, and nailing certain moves. The Wii remote is used for getting speed, grabs, and modifying tricks. Put them together and you have a ton of stuff to get used to. You will want to pick up and smash the Board for about the first half-hour of play, but if you stick with it, you'll be rewarded with what's maybe the most exciting interaction between a console and a peripheral in recent memory.

In addition to having a very satisfying gaming experience, you'll also be doing right by your body. Your legs -- especially your lower legs -- will burn after a lengthy jag on the virtual deck. The tight (some may say too tight) controls demand subtle and specific movements -- most of which come from the calf muscles (in the back of your lower leg) and the anterior tibialis (in the front of your lower leg). Because of this need for fine motions, I also found I got a better workout and actually had better control of my Board when playing barefoot. I was able to use the muscles of the feet and toes more individually without shoes.