What's Your Fitness Age?

Our family got its final Christmas present today—Wii fitness. For those of you who have never used one, let’s just says it’s pretty cool. (Nintendo can send me a check any time they want to.) It focuses on five aspects of health: weight, aerobic exercise, balance, strength, and yoga. First it measures your body mass index. That went well. My weight is great for my age and height. Then, it checked my agility and balance. It gave me a “Wii Fit Age” of 47! That’s much older than I am—that’s Calvin’s age.

Needless to say, Calvin and the kids thought this was absolutely hilarious. I didn’t. Especially when the Wii said things like: “Do you fall walking down the street?” (No kidding!) Electronic insults are not something I need. It also said, “Agility is not your strength, do you feel unbalanced?” Hmmm, is that physical or mental balance? Perhaps their next Wii “game” will be Wii psychotherapist…“I see, explain what you mean by rip out my circuitry and feed it to your dog.”

Of course, I couldn’t accept my Wii fitness age. So, I did their training exercises. I rediscovered my center, apparently I lost it sometimes after my years of ballet and jazz dance in college. I also found out that yoga is my thing. I was rated “yoga trainer” on “The Tree” movement. I’m not sure if I’m an oak or a maple, but as long as I’m not a magnolia it works for me.

I also did ski jumping, running, slalom, tightrope walking (I fell to my death) and table balancing, which is rather like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. After all this, I had my Wii age reevaluated. This time I scored 35. Yep, I now have the agility, balance, and all-around health of a 35 year old. Twenty minutes of hard Wii work took 12 years off my age. It’s truly an amazing product. Either that, or I figured out how to use the Wii balance board. Nah. I think I took 12 years off.

This is me doing “The Tree.”