Fitness Gadgets On Today Show

This morning on Today we looked at some of the gadgets around that will help you keep fit and well this year.

Gadgets in the area of video games get a bad wrap, often because video games are seen as the cause of kids getting less exercise than nutritionists say they need. But who can blame them? Playing video games is fun, challenging, and you can play games on your own or play with a friend. You can play video games when you wake up, you can play them when people come around for pizza. You can no doubt tell that I am an avid gamer, but yes, I too need to ‘manage’ the time I spend playing video games to ensure a correct balance between gaming and exercising.

The first product that I think Aussies will love is Wii Fit. The first thing to know is this is NOT an exercise video replacement. As the player, you jump on the Wii Fit balance board and get the game used to who you are. It measures your balance, you type in your weight, age, height and a few other details so it can measure your Body Mass Index, how many calories you will burn and other interesting facts about your Wii Fit work out.

Once you are loaded, you can play balance games, do some Yoga or work on your body strength by conducting exercises. The balance games are a lot of fun especially for the kids, and will be great at parties too. You need to balance on the board and use your balancing skills to accomplish goals like head butting a soccer ball or slalom skiing through gates.

The Wii Fit will be on sale from May 8th, and will retail for about $150. Remember you will need to have a Nintendo Wii to plug the Wii Fit into!

Next up was the Gamercize Video Game Stepper machine. I love this thing, you step and the video game machine let’s you play the game, as soon as you stop – it pauses the game. Brilliant! Karl mentioned that for us blokes doing two things at once is tough: I kind of agree. However why not have your mate work the stepper while you play and then swap? We all learned about co-operation from Sesame street and this is another great example. Check out Childs Play Fitness for more details and where to get it, it retails for about $300.