'Go For It!'

So Kate and I, realizing that we hadn’t made the time to drive 20 minutes to the gym in, well, months, pitched $30 at Amazon and got a copy of “Yourself!Fitness.” It alleges to be a personal trainer in-a-box, more or less, and they’ve got versions which run on Windows, the PS2, and the XBox. Since we’ve got an XBox which really only gets used for playing Halo2 (poorly, I’ve been told by several 13-year-olds), it seemed a good idea. (Side note: the Y!F site specifically has a FAQ refuting the idea that the program is for women only. This idea had not actually occurred to me before I saw the FAQ, much like the idea that I could go down the drain had not occurred to me before Mr. Rogers assured me that I could not. Ah, psychology.)

Yesterday we started up Y!F and told it how tall (fairly), old (marginally), heavy (not really), and energetic (somewhat) we are. Kate did a workout with it yesterday, and I did my first this morning before work.

The bland encouragements from the non-threateningly skinny “trainer,” “Maya” are predictably “insipid,” but I got a decent 30 minute workout waving my arms around and doing crunches down in our TV cave. Not enough stretching and cooldown time, IMO, but this was meant as a “core strength” workout, not cardio, so maybe there’s room for improvement.

The program also has a yoga section, with which I had the same problem I have in live yoga classes: if one doesn’t know the various poses, it’s impossible to do them with any timing or grace and watch the instructor for what posture/breathing tempo one is supposed to be following. Maybe it comes with repetition.

I’d like to still go to the gym occasionally – I still want to do some weight training, above and beyond cardio stuff – but for a quick low-overhead way to get some exercise, it seems like it might be pretty cool. The real proof will be whether I’m still doing these workouts in a month or three, but the fact that I’m doing anything at all feels pretty good. (We’ve been swimming in the pond a bit more, too, revealing two things: A) Kate’s an awesome swimmer, fast and graceful and sleek, and B) I’m a terrible swimmer, slow, clumsy, and nearly always on the edge of panic.)