It is continuing to snow outside, and we're not in the middle of winter advisory thanks to a polar vortex. Chris has done the vast majority of the shoveling since too much of the repetitive movement irritates my wrist and elbow. 
But because it's been so cold, I haven't been able to get out and do my normal walking around exercise. So I've bee playing with the Xbox Fitness app instead (yes, they call it an app on the Xbox One). For a year several workouts are free with an Xbox Live gold membership (which Chris convinced me to try). Basically they've taken existing workouts and overlaid some Xbox-specific features.

In addition to the normal video, you now have sidebar with various pieces of information.

The upper right box tracks movement. It will tell you if you're in the right position, moving too fast/slow, and highlight muscle groups that are being used. It will also give you your heart rate. I have no idea how accurate that is since I don't wear anything when exercising to track it. As you can see above, I'm taking a photo instead of whirling my arms around like a crazy person.

in the middle is a circle that tells you how accurately you're matching the instructor on the video. The five bars around the circle light up so the more you have lit up, the more "correct" your moves are. It also gives you a handy countdown of how long until the next part of the exercise video.

And finally the bottom of the right sidebar gives you fitness points. It's a way of scoring how well you're doing on each exercise move. The program also uses past performance or performance of others in your age bracket to "challenge" you to work harder.

I've been slowly working through some videos and trying them out. There are several free ones to try and then, of course, if you want the whole workout you need to purchase the extra videos. We'll see how well I stick to these exercise routines. It's easy to carve out time when you're not working, but once I come back from vacation I'll probably be too exhausted to do much else in the evening.
Speaking of exhausted...Leki needed to curl up for a nice, deep nap to rest after his intense afternoon nap on the couch. He's a good cat, even if he does try to curl around my neck.

0 comments:

Post a Comment