Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012
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.
Last week I talked about getting started using Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 (YSFE) and I gushed about how much I loved the warmups and the game as a whole. It’s really suited for everyone and a lot of fun. Today I’ll tackle strength training and sports preparation. A nice option with this game is the ability to be really specific about what you’d like to do. Are you in the mood to dance? Do it! Juggle Soccer Ball? Go ahead! Boot camp? Mmm hmmm! Abs? That you can do too! I love the diverse options available for both the users goals and moods, cause quite frankly … sometimes we’re only in a mood for one thing! YSFE has specific training programs for most of your major muscle groups: abs, back, glutes, legs and arms. For each muscle group you can choose a very basic workout for beginners or various levels of more challenging workouts. I personally dove in to the hard ones, because I’m pretty darn good shape and really love a challenge. I’ve reached my goal of burning an extra 1,200 calories per week using this game. On top of my daily runs … that’s a pretty super benefit!
Some of the training I loved and some of it I thought was just OK. My favorite component was the sports preparation, in which I enjoyed having my arss kicked by the pro style football preparation. It incorporated a bunch of plyometrics and push-ups which eventually made me hide behind my couch for a few minutes so the XBOX lady would stop talking to me. Hint: If you hide well enough and the sensor can’t find you, she says “Hey! Where did you go?” and she’ll leave you alone until you come back. Just so you know, my muscle did a little shaking before I was through.
The strength training is a pretty good choice for anyone looking for a spot specific training, but out of ALL the choices the YSFE has to offer … this was my least favorite. It certainly isn’t awful, but the variety of moves for each body part are fairly minimal and the most advanced sessions weren’t as challenging as an advanced participant would hope. It’s possible that I just expect too much because this is my profession, but whoever was hired to create these routines used very “vanilla” moves. That’s a disappointment. But even with these uncreative/repetitive exercises, I’ve still felt soreness as a result of doing them. So I give the strength training session a B- and invite the folks at YSFE to call when designing next year’s product.
On the whole, I would still whole-heartedly recommend this game to anyone eager to get consistently strong workouts out home. I’ve used it at all times of the day and love how if fits in to my insanely busy life. Check back next Friday for part three of this series to learn about the interesting “classes” this thing has to offer: cardio boxing, yoga, dance (African, Latin, Hip Hop, Bollywood) and boot camp. We’ll also be giving away a game in a few weeks, so definitely check back if you’d like to own this game for free!
Read Part 1 of this series:Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012: The Ultimate Home Training Tool
fab job!! Wow, you’re meeting your 1200 cal goal in additional to your daily runs! I’d take Your Shape any day over a daily run. 😛