A Manhattan gym is charging its customers $110 an hour for a personal training session with a Wii.
Personal trainer Dorothy Evans has started to employ the Wii in her sessions with customers, combining it with workouts on treadmills and boxing classes.
"You'd be surprised," said Evans in an interview with the New York Post.
"It may have little to do with the real sports, but we get people's heart rates up to 140 to 150 beats per minute - although some of that may just be the excitement of the game."
Evans employs the Wii in what she calls 'active recovery time' - the period between exercising that allows her customers to catch their breath.
She also gives Wii workouts on 20-foot screens in the gym. We want to try Resident Evil 4 on that.
Not surprisingly, clients were originally sceptical. One customer said: "When you envision someone playing video games, you get a vision of some kid zoned out. Or you get the picture of that slacker in his mom's basement." That was ten years ago, things have changed a bit.
Nice to see New Yorkers being open-minded. You better not change his view on gaming too much, Dorothy. If he gets into it, he might realise he can buy a Wii for less than three hours with you (if he can find one).
It's not really JUST to use the Wii though is it? It's a combination of Wii and personal training, so for fat rich sweaty Americans it's really quite reasonable.
I think it's about time that the title for every 'news' story put up here were prefixed with 'entirely misleading headline alert!'. This is just normal training with the wii in-between to keep the heart rate up from what I read... Hardly charging $110 an hour for the Wii now is it?
yea, the title is so misleading i was already on www.xe.com checking the exchange rate and putting an add up in the window, i thought this was a viable new business opportunity.
when the article actually tells me i'd have to help "people" exercise. and by "people" i'm referring to people whose bpm gets to 140 just from "the excitement of the game". is she sure its a wii, can't remember much exciting on it? trauma center maybe?
the article actually tells me i'd have to help "people" exercise.
Dammit! I was about to advertise £50 an hour to get the "larger lady" to play Pacman:
"You see? See? Look what all this eating is doing to you? Oh yes.. The ghosts are coming to get you now! Quick, eat some fruit and you can scare them away. FRUIT, woman!! No, that's a cake in your hand!" etc...
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