Blasting Obesity With Video Games
Maila Rible explores how one local gym is fighting fat with computer games in this weekend edition of Web World.
Greensboro, NC -- Childhood obesity is a serious health problem and there many reasons kids are at risk.
Long hours spent surfing the net or playing video games are factors that play a big role in junior's expanding waistline.
But one local gym, yes gym, has found a way to inspire tweens and teens to dump the remote and instead jump up and down for their gaming fix.
Rather than trying to pry the video game controls from the hands of their younger members, Fitness Coordinator Jason Joyner says the staff at the Spears YMCA has given the kids a better way to play.
"This is the energy factory... We have two cat-eye game bikes which are kind of like bicycles which are hooked up to video games... it's going to be a racing game, and you pedal the bike to make whatever your bike in the video game is go forward."
Along with a treadmill and elliptical trainers, the Y gets kids as young as five breaking a sweat while playing video games.
"We also have a Dance Dance Revolution which is you've got a pad in there and the game goes and you step on an arrow on your pad according to whatever the game tells you to do."
Taking the place of the Y's teen room, the energy factory is aimed at kids too old for child care but too young for other free programs at the gym.
And Joyner says it wasn't hard to mix fitness with fun.
"They don't realize that they're working and working out and getting healthy hopefully... I'll see kids come in they're perfectly dry they come in from outside and they're not sweating or anything and then they walk out and they're drenched. I mean pouring down sweat, just rolling off of them from doing the games."
And it seems that just being in the same room as a PlayStation has convinced some kids, like John Russell, that exercise can be fun.
"You get to run a lot. And I like running... If you come here you get to run and it actually tells you your speed and how many miles you've ran."
There are quite a few activity-inducing video games parents can buy, including a home version of Dance Dance Revolution.
Do a little research online, or ask a salesperson at your favorite electronics store for more information.
Kids aren't the only ones who might need a little help when it comes to staying fit and healthy.
For grown-ups who are a little gym-shy, the web could be the perfect place to start a fitness regime.
Plans and programs abound online and many are not only free, you can custom-build them to fit in with your busy lifestyle.
You can find calorie counters, fitness journals and online forums and support groups.
But as with anything else online, it's "buyer beware."
Make sure you check with your doctor before trying out any diet or fitness tips you found online.
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