Thread Drift

[crazycanuck]

Here's some inspiring reading..sad but inspiring...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ap...s-1853937.html

[Zen]

I would like to have some bongos and a large primitive drum to play in a drum circle.

[crazycanuck]

I'd join you but not today as it's too hot...38C...It's an insidenstayoutofthesunshinewherethere'snoshade day... I had a hard time riding home monday with the warm wind & no shade....ugh

[OakLeaf]

too many people have been getting anthrax from drum heads lately! I want to go to a drum circle next week but I think I'll stay upwind.

[redrhodie]

My friend got a "Wii fit" for Xmas, and the thing told her she's obese. I'm bummed, because she was seeming happier lately, and now she's depressed again. I might add, she doesn't look anything close to obese. It's just so stupid.

I feel like "accidentally" breaking it for her. I could borrow it, and run it over with my car. I'm sure she'd be heartbroken.

[Zen]

Who thought it would be a good idea to include that information?

Idiots.

[Crankin]

I am going x country skiing with a group tomorrow. Let's pray I don't get "dropped."

[crazycanuck]

I'm not a big fan of this Wii Fit thing..what a waste of time..why not just go outside for a walk or get a swiss ball & do exercises?? I don't get it...

Anywho...i thought I would try & get an afternoon swim in but didn't think of looking @ the timetable prior to leaving earlier this morning for work. Never try & go swimming during the looonnnggg school holidays without looking @ the timetable..(Our squad pm sessions don't start up again til Mon...I shall wait til then...)

[Crankin]

CC, I'm with you on the Wii thing. Of course, I have never played a video game, never will. Go take a walk or buy a dvd, if you can't get out. It's like when I went to Disney World (against my priniciples, but my DH was at a conference). We went to that place (my mind is absolutely blank) where you go on a boat to the island that has the fake representations of different parts of the world. There were some people that thought this was actually like the real thing. Then, another night we went out to dinner at a restaurant which was actually quite good. But, afterwards, we decided to take a walk around the town (this is a real place, with houses, schools) that had been billed as "a throwback to the real thing. A place where there's a town center and people know their neighbors." I got a weird feeling, like a chill, when I realized what the developers were trying to re-create was exactly what I have in real life. They had tried to re-create a typical New England town, one that was suspiciously like the town I live in. Like it was a thing from the past.
I had to leave immediately.
I know a lot of people will disagree with me on the Wii thing, but why spend money on electronics, when you can get fit for very little money.

[Dogmama]

On one hand, I'm all for people getting off of their couches. If they spend a bunch of $$, maybe the guilt will get them to exercise. But will it eventually go the way of the Nintendo? Probably.

I didn't know it could pronounce a person as obese. That's insane. Even BMI has been shown to be incorrect if a person has a lot of muscle mass.

Like Crankin, I don't play video games & prefer the real thing to an animated TV thing.

[OakLeaf]

Because guiding a marble down a hole, guiding a bubble down a river, or dropping marbles into the correct buckets using both your hands and your feet - sometimes in opposition - are a whole lot more fun than any proprioceptive exercises someone's trainer will give them. Sure you can spend an hour working only on balance and proprioception, but how motivated is anyone to do that day after day?

Because if you already have a Wii box, the balance board only costs about $30 more than a good wobble board.

Because it gives you on-screen feedback on your balance and center, whereas on a wobble board, you're either stable with all the edges off the ground, or you're not. If you're leaning slightly to the left, you'd never know.

Because most people, DEFINITELY including me, can't stand up on a Swiss ball (or even a small ball). Suggesting exercises standing on a Swiss ball as a substitute for Wii balance exercises is like telling someone to do full pull-ups as a substitute for 20# cable pull-downs. Great if you can do it, but too challenging even for most active people.

Because there is no "real game" to correspond to most of the balance games, and if someone went to the trouble and expense of re-creating many of those games in the physical world, any one of them would be WAY more expensive than a Wii, and many would have a really high risk of falling.


I guarantee you neither my mother (who's actually very motivated) nor my mother-in-law (who isn't particularly) would be doing ANY proprioceptive work if it weren't for their Wiis. If it'll keep them from falling and breaking a hip, then hear, hear.

Yes, the BMI thing is worse than stupid, but take that up with the medical/weight loss establishment that pushes it so hard. I might add, IMO the Wii's obsessive focus on small weight fluctuations is even more damaging than its reliance on BMI. You can always skip the weigh-in on the Wii. I do, even though I weigh myself almost daily on a non-talking scale. Four pounds is a typical weight fluctuation for me, and I can do without a machine criticizing me because I'm better hydrated one day than I was the day before, or ate more fiber at lunch, or whatever. But another thing to take into account is that apparently this machine acts EXACTLY like the weight-loss establishment. My mom has been going to TOPS/KOPS for years - I don't encourage it, but she likes the social aspect - and she confirms that the Wii feedback is just like the structure of that group. If she's a pound heavier than she was at the meeting the week before, she gets some kind of a demerit. So I think a lot of it is that the Wii is exposing a lot of us here - who've never been sucked into the weight-loss machine - to philosophies that have been getting shoved down overweight people's throats for decades.

[salsabike]

I share my office with an occupational therapist who has been using Wii with her kids this year. They LOVE it and it's far more fun and interesting for them than just doing exercises. Why not be open to many different ways of pursuing fitness?

[lph]

And I'm guessing, because people think it's fun. People just like different things. Many people feel that going outside for a run or bike ride takes too long/is too boring/is too cold/hot/rainy/dangerous/whatever, and something that looks and feels like a video game is more fun to do.

I used to spend lots of money going to an aerobic class near here. Some of my outdoorsy friends couldn't understand why I would "spend money to jump and down indoors when you can exercise for free outdoors" I did that too, but I loved that class and had a blast.

Most people have no idea why I bother riding a bike in winter either. My kind of fun

[lph]

awww, how cute is this?

http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/01/06/n...dmark/9802537/

We're having a cold snap, and the woman who took the photo writes "it's 20 below (-4F) outside, and I think she wanted to come in and get warm. She looked a bit hungry looking at the flowers in the window."

[bmccasland]

Reminds me of the time I caught an elk eating my Tulips early in the morning. I turned my kitchen light on, and up pops her head right outside the window, with a red tulip in her teeth. She bounced over my 4 ft fence and into the woods.