EA Active Challenge - Week 1 in review

I've been all fired up (probably a result of no longer feeling weak and crappy), so my kick-off week to the EA Active 30 day challenge was great!

When you first select the EA Active in your Wii homepage, be prepared for BLASTING ENTHUSIASTIC music. (Sorry for the caps, it's just the only way I can properly prepare you for the auditory assault that you have to bear through every time you start this thing. I've learned to start by turning down the volume, then selecting the program.)

Now you get the option of either creating a new profile, selecting a pre-existing one or using a guest pass. First step in creating a new profile is selecting gender, age, height and weight. Now, please someone tell me if you've figured this out, or if you have different starting stats, but the system seems to come automatically set with female, age thirty, and my exact height and weight - 5'9", 159lbs, which as far as I know, isn't really representative of the average woman. At first, I thought it was sneaking the info from my Wii Fit stats, but then you'd figure it would get the age right, no?

Anyway, you can then standardize your body type. I tried to make mine look like me by choosing level 3 out of 4 (on the curvier side) but that automatically gave me a double chin! So I scaled down to 2, cuz clearly it's more important for me not to have a double chin (which I don't, thank you very much) than it is for my body type to be at all accurately representative.

You then get a few more features you can mess with, a number of hairstyles, 6 hair colours (sadly nothing that strays from the "natural") and then about a gazillion workout outfits, hats, shades and shoes. This is all clearly very important.

Now you're ready to start! The next screen you get is the welcome screen you see whenever you log in from here on out. The options on this screen are: Journal, Fitness Profile, 30-Day Challenge, Preset & Custom Workouts, Help & Settings and Info.

The Journal invites you to "Start here," so I did. This screen looks like an open notebook, and is where you're supposed to fill out what you've done each day. For each day, you have the option to complete an EA Sports Active workout (it gets automatically checked once you workout), fill in a lifestyle and nutrition survey, and fill in the "Other Activity Survey." Once you start checking off these three items, you can track your progress in the lower left corner where you see the percentage of your daily requirements count up. On the opposite page, you see the trainer feedback for the things you've done, as well as a place to go check on your goals, edit your profile and view your upcoming calendar.

Now time to get started! I selected the 30-Day challenge program. There are a bunch of videos as you're getting started about the program, the challenge, the workouts. Most can be skipped but I decided to watch them all to see if there was anything really important I needed to know. There wasn't really in most of them. The only useful videos were the leg strap one and some of the demo moves ones, but even then, they were often intuitive. (Plus skipping these videos does allow you to skip some cheesy "LookForwardToANewYou!" moments)

Still more choices to make! I had to select a male or female trainer, how much of a workout I wanted: low, medium or high intensity, whether or not I have a Wii balance board, and then musical type (about 7 options). I selected Medium intensity because I figured I was still recovering from being ill, but I still don't think that the Low option would be enough of a challenge.

Finally, I made it past the questions. For every workout, the program shows a projected amount of calories burnt (it seems like the low intensity aims for around 100, the medium 130 and the high 170 or so).

I completed the first week at medium intensity, figuring I could upgrade if they were too easy. The first workout wasn't all that challenging but the trainer did explain that the purpose of the first workout was to ease me in and teach me how to use the program, so I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and see if it got harder.

More importantly, it was really fun! There was a track workout section that alternated between slow and fast running (in place, but cool to see the little avatar moving as I moved, but along the track and passing people), inline skating on the balance board (which consisted of holding a squat position then lifting one leg or the other to go over obstacles - whooo did that burn!), boxing at changing targets... Good stuff for the short-attention spans amongst us.

In general, the format was a sort of circuit training. After several minutes of warm-ups (either running on the track or squats and side lunges), the workouts seem to have 2 or 3 strength moves, then a sport (like boxing or tennis), then back again to the strength moves, etc. They switched up frequently enough that it was fun. The moves were difficult enough that I felt my muscles burn and was sweating and tired by the end.

The challenge setup is 2 days in a row (generally one that focuses on upper body, one that focuses on lower body) and then a rest day. So far I have yet to encounter a workout longer than 25 minutes, but when I combine this with my running schedule, it's perfect because unlike P90X, I can do these workouts in addition to my running - they're just enough of a workout without wiping me out completely.

Week 1 was good - all completed at medium intensity except for Sunday's which I did at low intensity because I ran my first really long run since before Thanksgiving earlier that day and I could hardly move anymore. What is even more exciting is that I've barely even scratched the surface of types of moves this program has to offer! Looking forward to Week 2!

(I'll have screenshots to upload by then - my camera was on a little extended vacation - and I also will review the custom workout options.)