On Resolutions, Nike+ Kinect Fitness Training, and Whatever Other Horseshit Pops Into My Mind

This is probably going to ramble, I apologize in advance.

Let's start with resolutions.  I'm 36.  I've made tons of new year's resolutions in my life.  Some I've held on to.  Most, however, have fallen by the wayside for whatever reasons I used to justify that in my mind.

Here's the thing, though.  In my opinion, resolutions are stupid.  They just are.  For me, anyway.  That doesn't mean they don't work for other people.  Personally, I'm starting to think they're asinine.  I'm not going to sit here and say "In 2013, I'm going to lose 50 pounds, cure cancer, and learn to speak Pashto".  It's not happening.

So I'm not laying one down.  I'm doing something else.  From now on, for conscious decisions that aren't of the "should I wear gloves today" variety, I'm going to do something simple.

I'm going to ask myself "Does this make me better?"  That's it.  I'm not going to put any pressure on myself to change my decision based on the outcome of the question.  I'm just going to ask the question.  Sometimes it'll affect my decision.  It already has a couple times since I've started.  I'm willing to bet that as time goes by, it'll change my decision more and more often.

So, yeah, I guess that's my new year's resolution.

Now, I want to talk about Nike+ Kinect Training.  I've had Kinect for Xbox360 for quite awhile now, and it's been gimmicky at best.  The Dance Central and Just Dance games are fun for the kids, but 90% of the tunes in those games are not in my wheelhouse.

I've taken a break lately from working out, I'm not going to make any excuses, I've been lazier than I've been ambitious.  The problem is, I don't have a treadmill anymore (that's a story for another time), exercise bikes are OK once in a while, but not regularly (boooooring), and with my daughter moved out, half the days of the week I can't take off to a gym or for an outside run, as I can't just leave the boys home alone.  Not yet, anyway, once the older one has another year or so, maybe.  But not now.

I could start back up into the Chalean Extreme program, but it just didn't appeal to me anymore.

I did, however, find Nike+ Kinect Training.  I snagged it this past weekend, and started it up Sunday.  It uses the Kinect to track your movements while you do them, to make sure your form is correct, etc.  It's actually pretty ingenious.

The first day of a workout program, you do a fitness test.  This has you do a bunch of plyometric type exercises and strength exercises to set your Nike+ Fuel score (at least, that's what I think it was called).  You get a fitness score and athleticism score based on how you do.  Once you finish that test, which is really damn strenuous in itself, you get your score, and can begin creating a workout plan.  You're given three options, Strength, Toning, or Weight Loss.  I picked Strength, just based on personal preference.  Then you pick what days of the week you want to work out (I picked Sun-Mon-Tues, Thurs-Fri).  Based on your choices, it creates workouts for you.

For those workouts, the ones it picked for me average between 22 and 25 minutes (30 minutes including warmup and cooldown periods)...perfect.  I didn't even tell it to do that.  And the workouts are strenuous.  They're very plyometric-flavored, I would say.  Especially the dodgeball one, which is a riot.  You have to avoid dodgeballs.  Shit-tons of them.  Constantly. For 60 seconds.  Then you get a break, and go back to it.  It's actually a stupid amount of fun.  If someone were looking in my windows without seeing the screen, they'd probably think I was a complete dipshit.  It was awesome, though.

Also, if you're an Xbox Achievement whore...this has 'em too.  I'm not going to lie, I've gotten a few already, and they kind of jack you up mentally.  Especially when you hit one in the middle of a workout.  During a warmup, I got an achievement for beating my personal record.  For jumping jacks.  There was still about 5 seconds or so of them left to do.  When I got that achievement, I completely spazzed out and started trying to crank out as many jumping jacks in the remaining time as I could.  Well played, Nike, well played.

But here's the rub.  You need space for this game.  Lots of space.  Just...huge amounts of space.  Probably at least 8 feet back from the sensor, with 10 feet available side-to-side at the 8 foot mark.  So yeah...you need space.  I had to completely re-arrange the living room.

Ok, that's all for now.