Thank you to Ubisoft for providing me with a copy of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 and sponsoring this fitness diary series. Please click here to learn more about Ubisoft. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own.
This week I received my copy of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012, and I am really excited about it. I’d like to start by stating/reminding you (without sounding like a pompous jerk), that fitness is and has been my profession for 22 years. I’ve done it all as a pro and as an athlete (full-contact kickboxer) and have a tremendous thirst to be either aggressively challenged or highly entertained by my workouts. This video “game”, my friends, excited the heck out of me on both levels. Using the XBOX 360 with Kinect, this thing is as high tech as they come and the workouts are fantastic. I’m even a bit sore from my first training session with this cool tool, which makes me and my sore parts absolutely giddy.
This will be a five part series, so even though I want to tell you all about all of it right now, I’m going to start at … the beginning. This game is easy to get started with, and will hold the hand of even the most nonathletic beginners. While providing very clear instructions, you’ll be able to input information about your fitness levels – are you sedentary or in elite shape? And then you’ll input your goals. Are you trying to lose weight? Gain Strength? Increase your endurance and athleticism? Become more flexible? With this info, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 will suggest a workout routine to help you achieve your personal goals. Nice, right? You don’t have to follow that advice perfectly, but it certainly serves as a great guide if you choose. I’m not trying to lose weight, so I chose the objective of “Toning and Defining”. It recommends I do two 30 minute workouts each week for four weeks. I assure you, I’ll be using this thing more often than that! In fact, since it monitors calories – I’ve decided on a personal goal of burning 1200 calories using this game each week, on top of my daily runs. Your Shape Center tracks all of my progress in detail to keeps tabs on all I’ve accomplished and how far I need to go to achieve these goals.
Once you’re done entering this information, you’re ready to start moving. The warmups are an absolute blast and really feel more like fun games than gentle exercises. Forget marching in place. These warmups do their job of gradually increasing your heart rate, range of motion and warming up muscles – which is most important. But even better, the warmups are incredibly fun, entertaining and require a little mental effort too. There’s a beginning and advanced level to everything, so just as much as I love the advanced stuff – there are an equal amount of beginner’s left training sessions for others. The first warmup I tried was “Juggle It” in which I had to use my feet, knees and head to keep a soccer ball from hitting the ground. I swear to you, it honestly felt like I was juggling that ball for real! I pulled out a bunch of my old moves from my soccer playing days and had a blast keeping that ball in the air. I’m amazed by how realistic this Kinect makes everything feel. There are no controls to hold, the machine just senses my body and that definitely takes this training to a whole new level. “Hu-La-La” requires you to swivel your hips appropriately enough to keep a bunch of swirling balls floating in the air (note the blurry picture below – I took it while swiveling my hips!). The other neat warmups include “Pump It”, “Hurricane” and “Kick It”.
Yes – that’s me hula hooping to keep those balls in the air. Hip power!
I’ve had a great time getting started with this program and can’t wait to share all else it has to offer. In the upcoming weeks, on Fridays, I’ll share how happy the athletic conditioning, boot camp, hip-hop dance, Bollywood dance, ab training and jump roping make me too. If you like the idea of getting a complete workout in the comforts of your own home, without facing the monotony of repeating the same video workout … this training tool is going to knock your socks off! In fact, we’ll be giving away a copy of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 at the end of this series, so stick with me here at Fitzness.com for future details on how to enter!
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