Note to self: read the list of exercises first

I was eager to try out EA Sports Active 2 today, so I did a load of laundry first thing in the morning, ensuring that I’d have clean workout clothes. If all went according to plan, they’d be soaked with sweat by the time I was done. Turns out that even though things didn’t go according to plan, I was still soaked with sweat. Funny how exercising can do that to a person who hasn’t had a solid workout in many moons.

I started out by making my avatar—the figure you create mimics your movements on the TV screen to show you running, doing the exercises, etc. The next step was choosing a workout, so I surfed around for a while to see what was available. My first thought was to set up a 9-week workout program at the “moderate” level, which in retrospect would probably have been a bad idea; I’m pretty sure that my eyes are currently bigger than my muscles.

I came to that conclusion when looking through specified workouts that the system created. Instead of a program that changes exercises week by week over time, you can go through a list that focuses on specific activities like basketball, mountain biking and… soccer! YESSSSS! There were two soccer workouts available: easy and hard. I opted for “easy” because it was supposed to take 30 minutes as opposed to almost 50. I didn’t last the whole 30 minutes, but there’s a reason. Aside from being out of shape.

In the middle of the program, it had an exercise called “mountain climbers”. If you don’t know what those are, imagine yourself standing with your legs spread out, one in front of you and one behind. Jump up and switch your legs from front to back. Jump up and switch your legs again. Now imagine doing that leg motion with your hands on the floor. It’s pretty hard and not very comfortable, especially when you’re doing it with a bad knee.

Still, that was the exercise I was supposed to do, so hands on the floor and start bouncing. I made it through the first eight and my legs were getting tired, but I figured if I was doing 10 or 15, I’d be okay. Then I looked up at the TV screen and saw the number of reps I needed to do, which wasn’t 10 or 15. It was 75.

I ended up standing upright and moving my leg up and down to partially simulate the leg action, tricking the Wii into thinking I was doing the exercise. After faking that, the program moved on to the next step in the workout, showing that I had 18 of 36 steps left to go. I was halfway there, my muscles were sore and I was soaked with sweat. According to the clock in the corner of the screen, I was 20 minutes into the workout. Another 20 minutes of gruesome torture coming right up.

I made it through two more steps before deciding I’d had enough, which was unfortunate. Active 2 keeps track of your exercises, how many calories you’ve burned, how long you’ve worked out for how many days… lots of information. However, if you’ve started a workout, you can’t stop. It sits there as your virtual trainer insists that you should do the exercise, try a little harder, etc. If you want to stop, you have to restart the program. All of that information—exercises, calories, length of workout—is gone.

So the Wii thinks I haven’t worked out yet, whereas my entire body was protesting otherwise. I iced my knee for a while, popped some Advil, took a long shower to rinse off the sweat, stretched some achy muscles… okay, a lot of achy muscles… and I was done for the day. I’m still at the point where it hurts to walk up and down stairs, but I’m sure I’ll be okay tomorrow, which is when I plan to try and get some permanent data entered into the program.

However, if I end up doing the soccer workout again, I’m going through the list of exercises and getting rid of the mountain climbers. Maybe the push-ups, too. And who knows what I’ll need to skip during the last half of the workout. If all else fails and I can’t get my body moving, well, I may have to settle for using my right arm, wrist and hand to steer the controller and make myself a new avatar.