Er, floor, rather. And I don’t know if you can really call Dance Dance Revolution “dancing,” but it’s fun!
Here’s what happened: I needed to workout today in order to keep my wagon on the right track, but I’ve been working out pretty intensely all week and wanted to take it a little easy. What’s a girl to do? Whip out DDR for the Wii, that’s what! Just right for what I was looking for.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Dance Dance Revolution is an interactive video game that gets you on your feet and “dancing” by stepping on specified arrows on a mat to the beat of the music. The DDR Hottest Dance Party 2 for the Wii (the version I have) also integrates hand movements with the Wii-mote and the Nunchuk, which gets your whole body into it. Basically, you control the intensity by the level you choose and how “into” it you get.
The version that I have (and maybe all of them) also has a workout mode, wherein you enter your weight and how many calories you want to burn, then you play until you reach that number of calories. I entered 350 as my target calories to burn, which took about 27 minutes to reach. Clearly, that’s not perfectly accurate. Even though I worked up a sweat, it wasn’t as intense as running, and that’s more than I would burn in an equal amount of time running. In fact, I generally don’t trust machines like this to accurately calculate how many calories I’ve burned – I tend to cut them in half, which would mean about 175 calories for today’s DDR workout. (Tip: When you don’t know for sure, always UNDERestimate your calories burned and OVERestimate your calories eaten, and you’ll be safe!)
Yes, there are better workouts out there. But this was just right for a day like today. And to be honest, it was DDR or nothing, and it’s definitely better than nothing. And certainly more fun!
