Move It Mama Monday! EA Sports Active part 2

Well, the utility guys have dug up all the utility posts in my neighborhood, so cable, internet, and phone have been sketchy all day. Thus you may be seeing this on Tuesday, rather than on the Monday it was written. Oh well!

Anyway, I've had a week to play with EA Sports Active, and thought I'd give an update. I have NOT lost any weight in last week, and in fact have actually put on a pound or two. This may be due to the fact that it's 'that time of the month.' Or it may be due to the fact that I've very off schedule so I haven't done my other fitness activities like swimming, karate, walking, or gardening the past week. Or maybe it's due to the fact that someone in the family had a birthday recently, and someone else we know graduated recently, and thus there's been a lot of cake and backyard grilling going on, neither of which is good for my waistline.

Regardless of the reason, the weight gain has made me aware of what I consider to be the big flaw so far in EA Sports Active - the lack of cardio activity in the workouts. Now don't get me wrong, I'm definitely getting a workout here, and I'm disgusting with sweat by the time I'm done. But each workout lasts on 35 minutes at most, and maybe only a third of that is dedicated to cardio - running on a track, boxing, dance, etc. The rest of the time I'm doing calisthenics - lunges, squats, bicep curls with the elastic band. There's plenty of muscle building going on, and I was so sore a few times last week that I had a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. And that's good. I need the muscle building. But I also need cardio. Lots and lots of cardio.

Wii Fit provides cardio in spades. There are nine different cardio activities to do, and many of those have 2-3 intensity levels. I can mix and match my cardio so that I do five minutes of a bunch of different activities or I can do 30 minutes of just one activity. I like that. And on some of these longer cardio activities, I can even slip in my ear buds and listen to some podcasts while I work out. That's a big bonus for me! I can not do this with EA Sports Active.

The other problem I'm having with EA Sports Active is that all that lunging and squatting and jumping around is pretty rough on my knees. My knees sound like I've got a ton of gravel in them right now, lots of popping and cracking when I go up and down the stairs. Wii Fit had actually taken care of that problem for me. My knees improved significantly during the first two weeks of using Wii Fit. I think it was all the emphasis on balance and core strength that did it, and I miss that terribly.

So what to do? I like the strength building in EA Sports Active. I also like the 'attitude' behind it, constantly encouraging instead of occasionally snarky like Wii Fit tends to be. (That damned thing actually got rather snippy when it asked me why I'd gained weight and I responded "I don't know." Hey, is it my fault they don't list water weight or illness as a reason for possible weight gain?) BUT, I prefer the cardio in Wii Fit and I need the yoga, strength and balance games to improve my knees.

I've started doing workouts that combine the two games. I start with EA Sports Active, getting all my strength building out of the way, and then switch to Wii Fit for cardio and a bit of yoga or strength or balance games. On Sunday I spent a walloping 60 minutes between the two. I was ready to drop when I was done. Didn't seem to affect the needle on the scale any, but I'm hopeful that more workouts combining the two programs will give me the results I need. I have noticed that my legs look nicer and that it's gotten easier for me to do lunges, so that's a good sign. I'll give another update in a few weeks to let you all know how this works out.