I am a WAHM of one 14 month old; I gaining a LOT of weight during my pregnancy (no thanks to the women who kept saying "You're too small!" as they shoved cake and chips in my face!) and I've had a heck of a time getting it off (even though I eat VERY healthy). I used to be VERY active and loved running and/or going to the gym, but we can't afford a gym membership (or a babysitter on a daily basis so I could actually GO to the gym and I'm too tired after my husband gets home to go to the gym anyway) OR one of those outrageously expensive jogging strollers (for those prices, they should get better ratings!). I've tried baby & mom yoga (a book)that didn't work for me. I purchased a DVD on Amazon, Pilates for Everyone I think it was calledthat was better than the yoga book, but I found that the gap between the beginner and intermediate workouts was WAY too wide for me (the beginner workouts got too easy and the intermediate workouts, yeah, I couldn't even make it through the first five minutes of one). This is the BEST thing I've found so far and I am LOVING it! :-)
So let me break it down.
Things I LOVE about this:
1. Custimizationyou enter your weight, target weight (if you need to), resting/active BPM, flexibility, etc, even the excersize equipment you already own and it will tell you what your MAIN goal should be (mine being weight loss, obviously). You enter days of the week you can work out and how much time you can spend working out on those days.
2. TempoIt doesn't seem to be repetitive at all, like my Pilates DVD was, it never got boring.
3. Scroll barThere's a scroll bar on the bottom of the screen as you do a work out that tells you what you're doing and shows you what is up next as well. For example, it shows a picture of two free-weights before the next segment if you need to use them during the next excersize. And there is a clock counting down the time (which I REALLY need, I need to be able to see that the time is going DOWN and I'm making progress) and it tells you the level of difficulty of the exersize that you're doingboth under the time and on the scroll barone line for level one, two bars for level two, you get it.
4. TutorialYou can pause and review the tutorial at ANY time, as needed.
5. The Personal InstructorShe virtual and she doesn't look like freaking Barbi, THANK GOODNESS! :-) (In fact, she looks a lot like me BEFORE I had my daughter :-) )
6. ReinforcementBefore you start your workout for the day, you can change what the personal instructor has chosen for you (if she recomends cardio, and you aren't feeling up to it, you can change it to some other area of focus). She asks you how you're feeling both before you start your workout and in between at intermitent points so if you need MORE positive reinforcement, she will do more "rooting". :-)
7. Recipes and meal plans and shopping lists, oh my! I don't use these, I'm vegetarian, no sugar, and I'm decreasing my intake of dairy products so I have my own healthy recipes customized to fit MY life and budget, BUT these are a great idea and I may actually flip through the 4500 (gasp!) recipes for something new.
8. She KNOWS if you missed a day! Yup, I guess if you miss a day, it will show up on your "progress", which may annoy some people, but I feel guilty VERY easily so if I miss a day I'd feel guilty because not only would I know, the virtual Personal Instructor would know it too, so she'd remind me of it. And that would work to my advantage so I wouldn't skip a day unless I was really sick or something.
9. The "LEVELS" I think this is so cool. Like most other video games, the more time you spend doing it, the more levels open up to reward you. In this case, the "levels" are the spaces where your personal trainer works out (yeah, I'd like to work out in a field surrounded by green grass and waterfalls for REAL!) but it makes for a nice change of scenery.
10. Calories At the end of your work out, it tells you how many calories you've burned! That is SO important for me because I need to see improvement.
11. Workouts I get bored easily, and my target is weightloss so when the personal trainer recomends I do cardio, it's not just cardioin my cardio workouts there are some cardio weight training exersizes too, which is nice so I don't get bored! There are also water breaks after strenuous steps and stretch breaks after each cardio weight set and the workout time includes stretching at the end. ALSO even though my main goal is weight loss, the personal trainer doesn't suggest that I do just cardio for every single workout. For example, if I do a 30 minute workout, the first 10-15 minutes will be cardio, and the remaining workout could be upper/lower body strength, flexibility, core body strength, etc. So I end up with a very well-rounded week of workouts.
12. The "camera angle" changes throughout the workout so you can see what it should look like from different angles and it changes the back drop behind the personal trainer too, so it's not boring.
13. In addition to the daily workouts, you can also chose "Meditation Garden" and do a roughly 20 minute yoga session. I've been doing this at the end of the day before bed after my daughter is asleep and it's WONDERFUL! It's so great to have yoga in this "game" too! It's like having everything I need in one place!
Things that I would improve:
1. Ok, this is silly, but it'd be fun to change her body type or even her weight, and her clothes/hair color/eye color, etc. But that's more play and less workout and I guess that's really not the point of the "game". :-) That's just the child in me.
2. During the cardio, while you're doing any type of work with reps and weights, I wish that the number of reps would count down on the screen as you are doing them with the personal trainer, because again, I like to see results.
3. I think this is mainly geared towards women, for the very fact that the personal trainer is a woman. But my husband is going to use this as well (for improving his core strength) and he said he'd rather have a male personal trainer than female.
4. When I was setting up my customized section, after I plugged in my height and weight, the personal instructor instructed me that I was over the weight range for my height. Now maybe this is just me being uber-sensitive, but DUH! I'd rather just have it just state at the end that my target goal is weight loss so I will be doing a lot of cardio in my customized workouts.
5. Although I don't have a problem with this because my husband already had an x-box, it would be more versitile if they came out with one that can be played on regular DVD players OR one that can be played on BOTH an x-box AND a DVD player (and for the x-box, they could just have you use the x-box remote that plays movies instead of the controller).
6. Although I LOVE the Meditation Garden yoga sessions, I would like to know how many Calories I've burned at the end of each sessionthe "game" only tells you how many Calories you've burned at the end of each "Workout" session.
I was a little apprehensive about this at first, I'll admit, I thought it was a silly idea, but I LOVE it now! Once I got into it and started the workout, it was fun and not boring at all! This is perfect if you are a mom (or a dad, I know some dads stay at home or work at home too)/ hate the gym/ don't have $ for the gym AND a personal trainer AND a nutritionist/ get bored easily/ need positive reinforcement/ need a schedule/ need something different in each workout/ need custimization... ENJOY! :-)
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I was taken back when I noticed this on the shelves of my local gaming store. So I read the back, came home and did a little on line research.
It was less than 24 hours after that, when I decided to purchase this product.
This is a great "game" that takes getting in shape very seriously. You answer some questions at the beginning and do some exercises to allow the trainer, Maya, to get a feel for your overall health.
Once you've done that, Maya has created your personalized training schedule, eating schedule and I was ready to go!
During my first workout, Maya gave plenty of encouragement (based on how I was answering questions throughout the workout)to keep me going. The bottom of the screen displays the workout that you are doing along with the next one coming up, including rests and water breaks. She can incorporate a stepper, flexibility ball, hand weights and a heart monitor in the workout.
The variety of the workout was AMAZING and I sweating more after 30 minutes with Maya that I ever have doing other videos.
This is definitely worth the $34 price tag just to have your own personal trainer in your Xbox whenever you want one.
Overall, this is only a 4 star product since it doesn't really tell you how much you "need" to lose and how you are going to get there. I also would have liked a BMR calculation with calories taken in so I can see what I need to burn off to lose some weight.
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I'm a single male in his late 20's who one day kind of by accident found this game here on Amazon. So I went out and bought it and I have just finished my first workout tonight. I have to say that I am very impressed because this game is a workout and not really a game at all. I broke a serious sweat the first workout that I took. They even have yoga on there and I think that is one thing that I will be doing more of because it teaches you the positions as you go. This game may be targeted towards women which I think is great because not many games are. But, I think that men can even benfit from using the game too. I really like the concept and I can't wait to see what the developer responsdesign does next. They really do make as their motto says "Games that are good for you". I think any game that can make you get up off the couch and get involved physically is a good game to begin with. It's a really groundbreaking concept because Maya the trainer seems almost human at times. This is why I play video games not just to pick up a controller but to become involved with the action physically. I can't say enough about this title! It may not be the best selling or best looking XBox game but it's the most inovative concept I have seen since all the dance pad games came out and before that all the old NES games with the pad. So check this game out and this is coming from a hard-core gamer here.
Honest reviews on Yourself Fitness
Definitely not. After reading all the rave reviews this "game" is getting, I decided to be a sceptic and buy it for the sole purpose of finding it's flaws.
Then I met Maya, and she showed me all of my flaws instead. And then I started to hate her perfectness even more, because she showed me my flaws nicely!
I had no idea how out of shape I truly was until my fitness evaluation. I rolled my eyes and trudged through it, saying aloud that it was so lame, but secretly thinking it was the coolest, most innovative thing ever. I looked at Maya, and sad, "Seriously. Jumping jacks??!! Puh-lease. Are we in third grade gym here?" Then I began doing them.
So after I regained consciousness, I huffed and puffed through the rest of the evaluation. Then I was given a workout schedule recommendation, and a plan for healthier eating. I was happy with how thorough it was. And the food is very simple, yet extremely yummy! Nice, normal, healthy choices. Things I actually have in my house!
RUN, don't walk, to go buy this right now. It's wonderful for beginners, or even the advanced who is looking for a change of pace to get away from their latest plateau. The Yoga Meditation Garden is wonderful, the workouts are wonderful, Maya in wonderful, the food plans are wonderful. I know I sound like a broken record, but it's truly that impressive. My entire body aches so bad that it's painful to type this review. Who knew I had muscles in there somewhere?
A thousand times cheaper than a gym membership and a personal trainer, even if you have to buy an Xbox for it. They are planning to release a PS2 version in January, so it would be a great gift for the New-Years-Resolution-to-get-in-shape person. There is also access to a wonderful, supportive companion site where you can post a journal if you'd like, or just share your "war stories" about Maya.
All in all, this is the best thing I have ever bought for our Xbox. Besides Halo 2. ;)
I am editing this review today, Friday March 4, 2005 (originally written in Nov. 04) to add that with the help of this game, I have gone from a size 20 to a size 14. In 4 months!!! I follow Dr. Phil's food plan, and use this program 5 days per week, and the pounds have just melted off. Not a week goes by that I don't see improvement.
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You can read other reviews for the good things about this title. Here are a few problems:
1) Sometimes the program just won't do the workout you select. Three times today, I tried to make it give me a core workout and it kept doing upper body (which I just did yesterday and didn't want to repeat so soon).
2) I use other programs or running for cardio, so I'm already warmed up when I start YF. There's no way to tell the program to just get to the exercises. And there's no way to input workout data so the program knows you're doing cardio elsewhere. It will keep suggesting you need it.
3) There's no way to tell the program to not use a particular exercise. If you're bored by a move or it exacerbates an injury, too bad. Chances are, it's a move the program will use over and over for minutes at a time.
4) There's no option to build your own workout. I really wish the program was more customizable, giving me a list of exercises to string together to work the muscles I want to work on any given day.
5) It asks how groups of exercises made you feel, but there's no option to indicate a particular exercise is too much. You can make the whole workout easier, but that's not necessarily a good thing. For example, yesterday's upper body workout kept hammering me with pushups. I simply couldn't keep up. Telling the program to ease up only meant the next few exercises were shown without weights...but those exercises were for my biceps. I needed to tell the program enough already with the pushups.
I haven't decided if I'll keep using the program or not. It's definitely good to have some variety in my workout, but it's not good to feel frustrated by limitations and glitches.
