I first caught wind of this particular Nintendo DS exergame when I was at E3 with the Joystiq crew. As I work on Joystiq’s sister-site, Massively, I had zero chance of checking it out there, sadly. Nonetheless, my curiosity piqued, I filed this title away in memory to check out for ShrinkGeek once I was back and everything was sane again. The truth is, I should have had this product well before E3, because I’ve gotten addicted to checking out my step progress every day, and probably would have been much better prepared for the walk-fest that is E3! No, it’s not a deep game – and if you go into it expecting that, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. That said, for what Personal Trainer: Walking sets out to do, it nails it effortlessly.
What is that exactly, you ask? Well, I could call this a pedometer, but that’s just not doing it justice. Sure, the small peripheral you carry that comes with Personal Trainer: Walking counts steps like any regular pedometer does, but it also acts as something of a fitness mentor – a feature you’re just not going to get with a regular pedometer. When you first fire up Personal Trainer: Walking, you’re given the option of creating your own personal mini-Mii, or importing one from your Wii. That said, when I wanted to import my Wii Mii, the program suggested I do some strange Wiimote chicken dance where I had to press four buttons, stand on one leg and sing Louie Louie. Needless to say, this didn’t work very well. Thankfully, I found my Wii had anticipated this peripheral, and instead there was an easy on-screen option in the Mii area to connect to my DS. I took the easy way out – a move which I heartily recommend to anyone wanting to import a Mii.
Once imported, my Mii then made friends with my new pedometer peripheral, and they proceeded to take me through the initial setup steps. The program started me out at a very reasonable 3,000 steps based on my initial information (37, overweight, sedentary job) and explained just what I could expect in terms of the program. In exchange for checking in, Personal Trainer: Walking would not only check my daily number of steps against the target, but also how fast or slow I was stepping, when I was stepping – an overall life rhythm, essentially. Easy enough, I thought, and headed for bed – ready to try out the peripheral the next day.
I opted for the first day to see what type of steps I’d get in just from a normal day, without exercising. Surprisingly, I managed to fall short of 3k step goal the program had set. What really took me by surprise was the long stints of no activity whatsoever. Sure, I write about games for a living – so some periods of it are to be expected. Gaming isn’t terribly active. However, I’m also a mom who regularly deals with two kids out of school for the summer and has a household to take care of since I telecommute. The next day I added back in my regular walking at night, but again – most of the day was so inactive, with only this one brief period of heart-healthy walking. Suddenly, I realized the whole reason why I liked this: it gave me a real insight into not only how I was getting my steps, but let me know what part of it was healthy walking, and what was just… walking.
Since I started seriously using it a month ago, I’ve grown really attached to mine – as I stated before. It’s very empowering to know how well or poorly your daily walks are meeting your needs. Also, not only does Personal Trainer: Walking give you a great idea of your step count, the intensity and the duration of your walking - it also times your walking. When you’re on a plan like Weight Watchers, this is a huge, huge boon. Those active walking periods can be tracked straight into eTools or your regular POINTS book to help figure out any extra daily activity POINTS you might get. Beats having to check your watch before/after a walk, or run a stopwatch. Just put the Personal Trainer: Walking peripheral on, and go about your day. When the little red light turns green, it means you’ve beaten your daily step target – and you can check rhythm when you connect the peripheral wirelessly to your DS. It really doesn’t get much easier than that.
There are other things that Personal Trainer: Walking does – it offers mini-games to turn your steps into a tour around the world, or what your steps would be in terms of electricity. It also comes with two pedometers, so if you have a walking buddy (as I did in Michael) you can challenge each other. Perhaps the only thing I can find to nitpick about Personal Trainer: Walking comes when you have another person who you are tracking steps with. At times it spends a bit too much time praising the other person, or comparing you two than it really should. After all, the point is to cheer you on towards your goal, and competition doesn’t spur everyone – nor is everyone at the same level of fitness.
Overall Personal Trainer: Walking is a great tool if you’ve got a Nintendo DS and are interested in getting more out of your walks. To be honest, for the price, you’re going to be hard-pressed to buy two pedometers with even vaguely similar features and a nice companion program to go along with them to track your progress. Besides, it’s just good fun – and if there’s one thing I’ve heard from many people, nobody wants to work out if it feels like all you’re doing is working.
Now if you’ll pardon me, I’ve got 11,000 steps to get in today, and I’ve been at this desk long enough!
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I am so annoyed that this isn’t available somehow for the Wii. It seems like such a natural fit for Wii Fit. I don’t want to buy a DS just for this one game.