We're Kinecting!

We bought an Xbox Kinect over Christmas. Let me back up... when Ryan talked about wanting one months ago, I didn't see the point. While this may offend our friend Jeremiah, I thought the idea of reigniting a childhood video game habit, at 29, was ridiculous. Even though, I have to say that I FULLY enjoyed my role as lead singer of Ryan and his roommates' Rock Band band. So Ryan would bring that up, something like, "but you loved Rock Band!" We have two friends that come over on a semi-regular basis. With other company, we're still on our best behavior, so pulling out the fake drumset would probably be crazy. There's no point to Rock Band in Switzerland.

Meanwhile, over Christmas, we decided we would join a gym once we got back to Lugano. Even though I had doubts about whether I'd feel like going, when I didn't even have the motivation to run around one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, that just so happens to be right outside our front door.

Cut to us hanging out with Ryan's Mom's family over Christmas. His cousin brings her new Wii dancing game, we all have a great time, and I LOVE it (and I'm not even a dancing girl). Ryan thinks this is a great reason to go shopping immediately. Justification? They have workout games, and that means we can forget about the gym membership.

It worked. We went shopping for game consoles the VERY next day. At that point, I was all for it. Mostly because it's what Ryan wanted anyway, and I figured the gym membership would be a waste of money. What I didn't expect was, after the Best Buy employee showed me demos of Kinect games, I would be the most excited of the two of us. I was telling Ryan all about the better graphics, and how the variety of games would catch up, and blah blah blah - I WANTED A KINECT! Total role reversal.

Now, to the actual point of the story , we are actually using this thing as a workout tool. It's amazing. I've done home exercise DVD's in the past, and this is 100x better. It requires no controllers. There's a camera (or something) that actually sees your whole body, and can tell you when you're doing something wrong. So, this is not like home workout DVD's, this is like actually having a personal trainer. It tells you to take wider steps, keep your arms steady, etc. After making the corrections, you actually feel the difference, so you can tell that the move is working - that you're doing it right.

Although sometimes, it really freaks me out. The first time I did it by myself, I left halfway through an exercise to go get water. I'm in the kitchen, and I hear, "where did you go?" And tonight's comment was the worst. I'm logged in as me (it keeps track of your goals, has exercises geared towards men or women specifically, gives you harder games once you've completed easier ones, etc - so it pays off to stay within your profile), and at one point, in the middle of an exercise, the thing says, "don't over analyze it." DON'T OVER ANALYZE IT?!? First of all, I am the queen of over analyzing it, and second of all, how is this camera reading my mind??? I can guarantee that line NEVER gets activated if you're logged in as a man.

Here's a screenshot of Ryan doing his exercises. The "trainer" is the guy on the left, and Ryan's silhouette is on the right, so he can actually see the mirror image of what he's doing. SO helpful. The information in the top right corner tells you what exercise you're on, how many reps to do, and if you're fulfilling that exercise's main goals. You can see that Ryan is taking the required narrow stance (because the green circle is filled in), but is not properly moving his back. The box near his feet shows that he's in rhythm. This status changes if you're not keeping up. There's a time clock in the top left corner.

This thing is THE COOLEST. Hopefully, in a few weeks, we'll see some results. It's become our evening ritual. Ryan watches me and makes me laugh (which sometimes I don't appreciate - it messes with my score). Then when it's his turn, I take pictures of the screen... I think we're even.