DAY FOUR

I am filled with glee that this is my last day of this shit, which is probably enough proof right there that this workout “regime” isn’t exactly cutting it for me.  I go for the last topic—Strength Training.  To my delight, this actually feels like a normal workout.  Me and Little Brii and Sven are lunging and leg-lifting our way to a tighter ass.  We even get down on the ground to do a plank—my favorite strength training move.  Then there's the sideways leg lifts, the jackknife, the push-up challenges and I'm thinking, "Yeah, ok I can get down with this."  But I suddenly realize that I could also get down with just getting on the floor and doing this myself.  OR buying one of 65 million workout DVDs that show an actual person doing these moves correctly rather than an animated see through yoga lady with an unrealistically perfect ass.  So it's either get down on the floor and do some push ups and lunges and planks in my living room for free...buy a workout video for about $20....or pay nearly $200 for a game that barely requires movement. 

And so, because I just couldn’t wait any longer, I go outside and book it down the street with my iPod blasting, practically giddy with the discovery that I haven’t developed muscular dystrophy in the past four days.  So basically, Wii Fit is successful at preventing the development of muscular dystrophy...but not much else.

Takes me back to the good ol days...

The conclusion that I came to is that Wii Fit belongs in nursing homes across the country, because not only will that not get anyone “fit”, it will make for an exciting end to Bingo Night when Hilda busts a hip on the hula hoop challenge. 

DAY THREE

Rest assured I DID NOT look this composed.

By the third day I can hear myself getting fatter.  I lumber to the front of the television, horrified at the fact that I’m not running outside on such a beautiful day.  I decide to try Yoga—something I’ve never been good at, but have tried many, many times.  Yoga in my living room makes sense to me…more so than hula hooping or running in place, so I’m optimistic.  My jazzy new see-through instructor starts me off with some stretching and some poses where I have to have one foot on the balance board and one foot off, so my legs are in some kind of weird unbalanced lunge.  We go through a series of standard moves: sun salutations, deep breathing, and warrior poses.  I’m not sure if my form is right because my yoga instructor can’t see off the television screen to correct my posture.  Then she suggests we do balancing poses.  Like what the hell is the obsession with balance?  Never in my life have I needed balance in order to work out.  I hold tree pose (or Trii pose) for an unimpressive amount of time which results in my instructor telling me I have poor balance which results in me telling my instructor to fuck off and turning off the TV. 

DAY TWO

Since I didn’t lean three pounds off the day before, I decide to try Aerobics.  Little Brii looks sufficiently rested, so I decide we’re going to do some hula hooping.  By hula hooping I mean I’m standing on the balance board swinging my hips around sans hula hoop while Little Brii is racking up the points on the TV screen.  After about three minutes the two hula hoops I’m spinning around my animated waist start to slow and wobble so I attempt to make a comeback by awkwardly squatting and humping the air to the front right-ish area.  But I can’t get them back up.  I actually feel like I might be working some oblique muscles so I go for round two.  Four minutes in and I’ve got three hoops on, my arms are extended up in the air, hips swinging wide, knees slightly bent—the form of a goddamn champion.  Little Brii is killin’ it…all is well, and then suddenly out of the corner of my eye I see my cat wander in from the kitchen.  I immediately stop because yes, I am embarrassed.  I am embarrassed that my cat just saw me fake hula hooping in front of the television.  To make myself feel better I sit on the floor with him and scratch his head while also gently giving him a verbal reminder that my mom shaves him regularly so he won’t bring leaves in from outside and that he looks like the pussy of the feline world…no pun intended. 

After verbally abusing my cat, I decide to give some more Aerobics a try.  I am like…somewhat perspiring?  From hula hooping or shame, I can’t be certain, but I think there are the beginning signs of moisture gathered at my brow.  I select Basic Run on the screen and am blue skadoo’d into a lovely scenic park where roundish Wii people walk roundish Wii dogs.  It’s a beautiful day—I can tell because the Wii people are wearing Tii shirts (still find that hilarious…).  I am relieved to hear that I don’t have to run ON the balance board because that would just be…awkward.  So I start jogging…in place…which is just as awkward.  I soon discover that the faster you shake your arm, the faster Little Brii runs—which allows for me to go make a sandwich and sit there and eat it with one hand and shake my remote in the other.  My gosh I’m just exhausted. 


I decide to give one last aerobics activity a try just to see if I can get one droplet of sweat to form on my face.  Rhythm Boxing seems like a good choice.  I've taken kickboxing classes before and got so obsessed with them that I developed intense shin splints from all the bouncing and jumping and..well, kicking.  I'm curious to see how rusty I am in this department.  Sven stands in front of me transparently holding two arm pads that I'm supposed to punch in a rhythmic matter.  I find myself wondering if this is how Muhammed Ali got his start.  The punching is great and all, but it get's deathly boring after about 45 seconds and i'm supposed to be punching at a snail's pace when all I really want to do is unleash a roundhouse on Sven.  I'm completely over it.

DAY ONE

Because my mother and stepfather are the only people still financially supporting Blockbuster, it takes me about fifteen minutes to figure out how to unhook the frequently used DVD player and hook in the Wii, which is literally behind the television gathering dust.  This is a good sign. 

I spend another fifteen minutes designing my little Wii version of myself and secretly being jealous that my legs will never be as thin as the animated, bug-eyed Brianna that stares back at me from the TV screen.  I am told to enter my height and then stand on the Wii Fit board (which doubles as a scale).  I’ve gained a pound since the last time I weighed myself so I am immediately angry with the Wii Fit.  None the less it determines that my BMI (Body Mass Index) is “normal”.  Good to know.  Then my personal, yet slightly see-through trainer rattles off a bunch of useless information that suddenly makes me realize that Wii Fit is designed for people who are brain dead.  My trainer—who I’ve named Sven—tells me that people with “normal” BMI’s are more healthy and therefore less likely to get sick or fat or any of those other things this Wii Fit is apparently going to save me from.  Next I have to do a balance test, which seems literally pointless so I barely try (that’s laymen’s terms for I apparently royally failed the balance test even though I’ve been snowboarding and wakeboarding for close to ten years…so screw you Sven.)  Then to top off the insults that keep on rolling, Sven tells me that my brain age is 20, but my body’s age is 23.  Like…what?!  What does that even mean?  Am I supposed to be royally pissed that this video game thinks I’m three years older than I actually am from the neck down?  (Because I totally am.) 

There are four different types of activities I can choose from.  Aerobics (I laugh out loud), balance, strength training, and yoga.  Since I’m still bitter about failing my balance test, I decide to start there.  While I scan over the various activities I am still puzzled as to how being good at balancing is going to make me have a super bangin’ bod.  I start with one that looks completely idiotic, yet proves to be unrealistically difficult.  Little Wii…or as I’m now calling her Little Brii (I found that hilarious…) is standing inside of a bubble that is floating on top of a river.  Suddenly, without warning, my bubble starts moving towards the ominous pointy rocks on the side of the river.  Shit.  Like an Asian driver, I over-correct and lean too far to the right, which causes Little Brii to smash into the opposing riverbed and burst her bubble.  What the fuck.  So I start over.  Let me tell you…this shit is so unbelievably frustrating…it’s like I can’t even slightly put pressure on my pinky toe or Little Brii dies a miserable aquatic death.  I spend literally twenty minutes trying to navigate Little Brii down this unnaturally winding river before I suddenly realize that I have spent twenty minutes leaning slightly to the left and then slightly to the right with the stiffness and rigidity of a 90 year old woman.  I feel like a total moron.  After this epic fail, something possesses me to try "soccer heading".  I had a scarring soccer experience in fourth grade that's managed to keep me on the bench for 13 years.  I'm not going to get into it but it ends with me puking up carrots onto my cleets.  Anyways, Little Brii is standing in front of a soccer net...just standing there...when out of nowhere soccer balls start flying at her.  I'm assuming the objective is to hit the soccer balls with my cranium, so I attempt to lean awkwardly left and right in time with these flying balls.  I actually end up being not that bad at this one, until I realize that I'm still just LEANING.  I switch off the TV and make a smoothie as I ponder how my newly acquired balance skills will play into my future.