Wii Fit

Other products by Nintendo

Product Features

• Wii Fit comes with the Wii Balance Board and requires a Wii console to play. Wii console sold separately.
• Wii Fit combines fitness with fun and is designed for everyone, young and old. Wii Fit players work towards personal fitness goals and they block soccer balls, swivel hips to power hoop twirls, and go big on ski jumps to get themselves there.
• Check your daily progress, set goals, check your Wii Fit Age, and even enter exercise time you've done outside of Wii Fit.
• Wii Fit Age is measured by factoring the user's BMI reading, testing the user's center of gravity and conducting quick balance tests.
• Training is at the core of Wii Fit. You can spend as much (or as little) time as you want trying out all of the 40+ activities Wii Fit offers.

Product Details

• Our recommended age: 5 - 20 years
• Manufacturer recommended age: 0 months and up
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000VJRU44
• Product Dimensions: 20.5 x 13.2 x 3.1 inches ; 10 pounds
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: May 21, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1,497 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5 in Video Games (See Bestsellers in Video Games)

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Product Description

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The active-play phenomenon started by Wii Sports now spreads to your whole body thanks to Wii Fit and the pressure-sensitive Wii Balance Board, which comes bundled with it. Used together players will experience an extensive array of fun, dynamic and surprisingly challenging activities, including aerobics, yoga, muscle stretches and balance oriented games. The focus of these activities is towards providing a "core" workout, a popular exercise method that emphasizes slower, controlled motions, but it's the fun approach to fitness of Wii Fit that will keep players hooked on fitness for years to come.

Have fun while you get fit

The Wii Balance Board. View larger.

Calculate your BMI and Wii Fit age. View larger.

Enjoy a wide variety of mini-games. View larger.

Follow your own personal trainer. View larger.

Track your progress against friends. View larger.

The Wii Fit Balance Board
The primary tenet of Wii Fit is balance. Your center of balance, the point between your left and right sides when you stand upright, has a lot to do with your health. Those without an even center of balance will be unnaturally compensating for this imbalance, which causes their posture to become misaligned, increasing the possibility of putting unnecessary strain on their bodies. This is where the Wii Balance Board comes in.

Similar in appearance to a step aerobics board, the Wii Balance Board is much, much more. Easily capable of supporting weights up to a maximum of 300 pounds, it is sturdy and precise, able to measure weight and register pressure accurately when placed on a variety of flat surfaces. This advanced level of sensitivity allows for both the wide range of activities found in the Wii Fit software as well as the board's amazing ability recognize individual players by their weight alone.

Getting Started: Create a Profile
Before you jump into doing exercises and activities, you’ll start by creating a profile. This is done easily and intuitively by simply choosing a Mii, entering your height and age information, and doing a few quick tests that will serve as a baseline for your new Wii fitness regimen. These tests are:

• BMI Check: BMI, or Body Mass Index, is a measure of body fat based on height and weight that is the standard used by agencies such as the World Health Organization and the National Institute of Health. To check your BMI, you’ll enter your height then stand on the Wii Balance Board and let it read your weight.
• Wii Fit Age: After you’ve checked your BMI, you’ll do a basic balance test and find out your current Wii Fit Age. This basic balance test measures how well you can control your left and right balance. Based on the results, you’ll be assigned a Wii Fit Age.

Four Categories of Fun
Once you have created your profile it's time to have some fun. Wii Fit features four main categories of exercises to choose from: Strength Training, Aerobics, Yoga and Balance Games. Wii Fit will guide you through the first three with the help of your own virtual personal trainer, while the balance games offer variety and fun to help keep you engaged and excited about your fitness goals. In addition, as you spend time exercising, you’ll earn Fit Credits that unlock additional exercises and activities within your favorite categories that will allow you to continue to push yourself. See more detail on the four categories below:

• Strength Training: Put your strength to the test with muscle-toning exercises like Single Leg Extension, Sideways Leg Lift, Arm and Leg Lift, Single-Arm Stand, Torso Twists, Rowing Squat, Single Leg Twist, Lunge, Push-Up and Side Plank, Jackknife, Plank and Tricep Extension. Challenges include Push-Up Challenge, Plank Challenge and Jackknife Challenge.
• Aerobics: Get your heart pumping with fun, interactive Aerobic exercises like Hula Hoop, Basic Step, Basic Run, Super Hula Hoop, Advanced Step, 2-P Run, Rhythm Boxing, Free Step and Free Run.
• Yoga: Work on your balance and flexibility with Yoga poses and activities like Deep Breathing, Half-Moon, Dance, Cobra, Bridge, Spinal Twist, Shoulder Stand, Warrior, Tree, Sun Salutation, Standing Knee, Palm Tree, Chair, Triangle and Downward-Facing Dog.
• Balance Games: Get into the action with fun, balanced-based games like Soccer Heading, Ski Slalom, Ski Jump, Table Tilt, Tightrope Walk, Balance Bubble, Penguin Slide, Snowboard Slalom and Lotus Focus.

Keep Track of Your Progress
Because keeping fit is an ongoing process, Wii Fit also tracks the activities you do the most and puts them into your Favorites category. With this information players can note exercises and activities that they are strong in, as well as others that may need to improve at. Some of the ways players can use this information for are to:

• Keep tabs on your daily progress with easy-to-understand graphs and charts. Using your personal profile, you can set goals, view a graph of your BMI results over time, see how many Fit Credits you’ve earned, check your Wii Fit Age and even enter exercise time you’ve done outside of Wii Fit. It’s all about coming back and exercising a little every day, and the personal profile makes tracking your daily progress simple and easy.
• Quickly check your Wii Fit Age and BMI without even putting the game in the console by going directly to the Wii Fit Channel.
• Allow up to eight family members can create their own profiles in Wii Fit. On the profile-selection screen, everyone in the family can see each other’s recent BMI progress and Fit Credit total. This will allow families to have a friendly competition to exercise and get fit.

Variety, fun and progress tracking; Wii Fit has it all. So, Wii owners if you ready to reclaim your balance and get fit all you need is Wii Fit, a few minutes a day to play and the urge to have fun. Get on board today.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1,006 of 1,070 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Own a Wii? Are an adult? Don't have time but want to stay fit? Then BUY THIS!, May 5, 2008

By	Sophocles Sophocleous (Nicosia, Cyprus) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

I own the Wii Fit since last week. I'm 32, 1.76m, ~82-84kg (fluctuates) and with my wedding coming up in a few months I wanted to lose some weight. I work all day and have little time in the evenings so the preparation and driving to and from the gym was too much. I wanted to use that 30-40 min to exercise, not prepare for exercise. I own a Wii since Xmas and decided to try this out after reading various reviews on the internet. Is this as good as going to the gym? No it does not replicate a gym. Will it get the job done? Will it keep you fit and help you lose weight? YES YES YES! I love it and highly recommend it. I get a great work out in 45 min. I feel great about myself, and have already lost a kilo. (note I have not changed my diet). Notice I get my work out in as much time as it takes to commute and prepare for gym. I also have more fun than going to the gym on my own. Perhaps going to a gym with a friend would be more fun. Depends. Anyway I love the Wii Fit! Note it takes a few times to get used to it and figure out how best to use it. Why? Well there is no prepared program for you. You have to decide on your own what you want to do and in what sequence. I start off by doing the aerobics (jogging, holla hoop) and then vary. Basically, the Wii Fit breaks its exercises into Muscle, Balance, Aerobics, and Yoga. I mainly doing the Aerobics and mix in some muscle and yoga. The muscle and yoga can be really tough. You wouldn't believe how much. You can really feel the muscles working. I do the balance exercises when I'm tired and want to relax a bit in between exercises. They may help with balance but are more of a game than anything else. The more you exercise, new exercises open up. In other words, you start of with a limited about of stuff to do and slowly you get more and more. Don't listen to the few negative reviews you may read on the internet. They were probably biased against the product before even trying it. This product costs a little more than going to the gym for a month (at least in my country). By the time I unlock all the exercises, I will have exercised more than a 1-month gym subscription, burnt more calories, and will have a fun game left too! Compared to nothing after a month at a gym. I highly recommend this. As I explained, you are getting more than your money's worth, having fun, and getting fit.

345 of 364 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!, May 20, 2008

By	Julie Neal "The Complete Walt Disney World" (Sanibel Island, Fla.) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

Addictive. Hard. Rewarding. Fun. Tiring. Frustrating. Amazing.

Too many adjectives, I know, but Wii Fit is all of those things.

I was impressed when we bought a Wii for our daughter last Christmas. Now I'm thrilled. Finally, a video "game" that seems tailor made for me! I've only had my copy of Wii Fit for a few days now, but already I can tell that if any piece of home equipment is ever going to help me get back in shape, this is it. Setting it up is hardly tougher than slipping in a DVD, and, unlike the Total Gym I once had, it makes you feel young just using it.

The first thing you do is weigh yourself by standing on the included wireless "Balance Board." After that, everything seems more like a game than a workout, but after 30 minutes with this thing I was sweating just as much as I do at the gym. There are four types of exercises: aerobics, balance, strength training, and yoga. Lasting from a minute to 10 minutes each, specific virtual activities include boxing, hula-hooping, jogging, push-ups, some very fun snowboarding action and this funky tilting game where you push balls into virtual holes.

Back to that balance board. You'll hate what it tells you about yourself, but love that it told you. Besides your weight, you learn your Wii Fit Age, a figure that combines your weight, body mass index and sense of balance. As you exercise, the program tracks your progress, or lack of it.

My only two complaints: the voice that speaks to you is little-kid cute, and there are no pre-set workouts.

If you're like me, you buy a lot of video games for your kids. If you can find it, buy this one for yourself. I got mine at list price, but I'd say it's worth about $150.

984 of 1,077 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Adjust your expectations and you'll have a lot of fun, May 22, 2008

By	Damodar Chetty (Minnesota, US [www.swengsol.com]) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

First of all, remember that this is *not* a "game". Its a way to get your 40 minutes of daily exercise without making it feel like a lot of work.

What this means is that you probably won't buy this for your under-11 year old. Before you start the "game", you are asked for an objective ... in terms of how many pounds you want to gain/lose. Whether this question is meaningful for your child depends on many factors - and other reviewers question the use of the BMI measure for kids, anyway.

The only true game component of this are the "Balance Games" which turn your balance board into a snowboard, or into a tightrope, etc. However, I don't expect kids to return to this game everyday just to play. In short, its not a replacement for Wii Sports.

So, how does it fare as an exercise regimen?

Not very well so far. I use an elliptical for aerobics, and a [...] machine for strength training, and I can't see myself as shelving those two in favor of this toy. With the elliptical, I can adjust the resistance, get feedback on my calorie burnout, and can determine how long I want to keep going. Best of all, I can even watch TV, listen to music, or read a magazine if I care to.

With the Wii Fit, the cutesy graphics are good, but once the novelty wears out, I'm guessing the chinks in its armor will begin to show. My TV is taken up by my virtual Mii running along, I get to listen to canned music, and there's really no way I can read along.

Strength training is purely isometric exercise based (such as push ups). So, if you're fairly fit and need to work with additional resistance, this is not the place to come find it.

Yoga is where it truly shines. I tried the breathing exercises and a few of the postures, and the instructions were fairly detailed and easy to follow. I expect that I'll use this as a cheap and convenient personal yoga instructor for months to come.

The final aspect worth mentioning is core muscle control and balance. I particularly enjoyed learning how my body is balanced, and it does highlight whether you tend to favor one leg over the other. I can see this as being a worthwhile tool as part of a physical rehabilitation or therapy regimen.

To summarize - if you have trouble getting motivated to exercise, or get bored by exercise machines at home, or can't get to a gym, and you don't care about its limitations, then this is for you.

For those who are really serious about losing weight or getting fit, either setup a home gym or get a gym membership. This will be fun, but will likely be a large waste of your time. The biggest problem would be the inability to set up a sequence of activities that you could run through one after the other. Having to navigate menus to start up the next set is distracting. There is a Favorites tab that lets you get close to achieving this - but I haven't tried it enough to see if its a good replacement.

I'm still in the "novelty" phase - so I'm going to try and make this work. I like the way it tracks your weight/BMI, which is much better than the paper and pencil approach I use currently. However, as stated before I expect to use it more for the balance and yoga portions, *after* I've completed my aerobics/strength activities on more conventional machines.

Bottom line - as with every Wii product, the apparent "shortage" drives up demand and makes this seem more desirable than it should.

As long as you are aware of its limitations, you're in the best position to determine whether this is for you.
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Update (Week + 1):
I've averaged about 30 minutes/day in the past week using this product, and here are some updates to my initial observations:

(a) I've been surprised with how interesting the kids find it. They can't wait to get higher scores than me, and are constantly pushing to get ranked higher in almost all activities. Every evening I come home to scores that are better than mine, and am forced to play catchup. The balance games were an expected favorite, but I certainly didn't expect push-ups and the tree pose to capture their fancy.

(b) The menus are nagging at best, and annoying at worst. My workout style is to focus on the activities at hand without needless conversation/distraction, and that's hard to do when I have to repeatedly click the A button just to get started. The text has this annoying teletype format as it prints across the screen, and can't be dismissed until it is displayed in its entirety.

(c) This is compounded by the fact that this device can be very chatty. While some of the messages are good to know, I'd really like the option to turn these off. Counting the number of messages that I need to click past has become a running joke for us now.

(d) Because I can't automatically string together activities in a logical sequence, I need to have the Wii-mote handy. Finding a home for it is a challenge when I don't have pockets, or need both hands for balance and can't be bothered to hold on to it (as in some of the more kinetic strength activities, or the yoga poses that need my fingers locked together).

(e) Even worse is that you need to aim the Wiimote at the screen to click the menu buttons, which is an exercise in frustration. I'm mastering the art of using the arrow keys (the rocker switch) and the A button while the Wii-mote is in my pocket, but its still a problem when I hit the wrong button, which I seem to do frequently enough :(

(f) A yoga/gym mat is a necessary accessory - otherwise having to lie on your back when doing the jackknife for your abs means your flooring comes in contact with a very sweaty T-shirt. I'm not so certain about the silicone cover. We've used ours pretty rough, and I don't see any serious stains or dirt on it. And anyway, I like my workout machines to show some wear as a badge of honor :)

(g) There is a half baked interface which allows me to track activities that I do outside of the Wii - such as jogging. So far, I've been logging my other workouts, but since I don't seem to earn Wii points for those, I can't tell how that factors into the overall Wii experience.

(h) The BMI/weight tracking using a line graph, is really a nice touch.

(i) Rather than a primary weight-loss device, I use it as a nice way to wind down from a heavy workout, and it serves that purpose very well. A commenter below questioned its usefulness for yoga. True, it does seem funny to learn yoga from a game console - but the funnier thing is that the yoga poses do seem to work very well to ease up strained muscles. Combine this with the immediate feedback as to how well you are balanced, especially on single leg poses, and you have a really unique combination.

(j) The balance games are fun, but I tend to spend only a fraction of my time on them. I'm willing to take Nintendo's word that its good for me, but I'd rather spend my scarce exercise minutes on the other Wii Fit activities. After all, there's only so many times I can enjoy riding my bubble to the end of the stream.

(k) The fact that the balance board is wireless is a wonderful touch. Its easy to hide it under the couch when its not in use.