Nintendo’s Wii Fit software “has little effect” on fitness, according to a study conducted by academics at the University of Mississippi. Could it be time to jump off the balance board and back onto the treadmill?
The University of Mississippi study ran from Autumn 2008 and was intended to discover whether the Nintendo Wii Fit leads to enough physical activity to improve family fitness.
The researchers gave eight families a Nintendo Wii and a copy of Wii Fit for six months and tracked their fitness levels for three months without the system and three months with it.
The families were rated on various factors including aerobic fitness and balance and body composition. As the period with the Wii Fit system went on, the average time spent using by the test subjects reduced from 22 minutes a day in the first six weeks to four minutes a day by the end of the study.
The study concluded that modest amounts of daily Wii Fit use may have provided insufficient stimulation for fitness changes. The researchers did find that children displayed a significant increase in aerobic fitness after three months but that there were not significant changes in activity, fitness and flexibility for the whole family.
So it seems that adults better look elsewhere to fight the flab but that kids could well feel the benefit of jumping around on their Nintendo Wii balance board. Will the NHS continue to recommend Wii Fit Plus?
