Shrinking Sisters Reviews

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 notebook: Week 5 and wrap-up

Thank you to Ubisoft for providing me with a copy of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 and sponsoring this fitness diary series. Please click here to learn more about Ubisoft. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own.

The game lines up your warrior pose for correct form. Photo: Ubisoft

While others around me and in the twitterverse are bemoaning their tight jeans and weight gains, I'm pretty cool with the fact that I didn't gain any holiday weight. I would have liked to report some miraculous December weight loss but that didn't happen. 

But!

I'm definitely fitter than when I began the Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 challenge five weeks ago. And I have a whole new appreciation for "exergames."

Let me count the ways:

1. This one works because it really tracks your movements well -- it realizes that you don't have eyes in the back of your head or on your backside. Seriously, that's a huge plus. I've spent many times cursing the robotic avatars on other games because I couldn't see what was going on or the game couldn't see me.
2. The variety in Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 is fantastic. You can simply take a yoga class, play fitness games with the kids or go all out and schedule a full workout with warmups, cardio, strength training and a cooldown.
3. Dancers have a wide variety to choose from -- African, Bollywood, hip-hop and Latin can satisfy your global whims.
4. Your junior athletes can even train for football or soccer with the sports prep programs.

Really, the only downside is that you should think about putting wheels on your coffeetable to make the living room more Kinect friendly.

My recipe for success with Your Shape? Add it into your fitness repertoire -- variety is the key to sticking to any exercise plan. Since the weather is getting colder up North, Your Shape is perfect to workout at home without heading outdoors. But down here in Florida, the weather is finally cooler, so I'll be relying on Your Shape for the sweltering, stormy summer months.

But my favorite combo workout is to start with a little Run the World, add in some Body Focus workouts (upper body and abs one day, lower body the next), and end with a yoga practice or Zen Zone for a calming cooldown.

Want to win your own copy?

It's the end of my five-week series, and I'm going to choose a random comment from the five weeks of posts. That person will win a copy of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012, so comment away! Deadline for commenting is Friday, Jan. 6 at 9 p.m. ET.

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 notebook: Week 4

Thank you to Ubisoft for providing me with a copy of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 and sponsoring this fitness diary series. Please click here to learn more about Ubisoft. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own.

("Is it heavy?" I asked him. "Mom, it's virtual!")

Unlike many fitness games for Xbox, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 can really involve the family with fitness activities that don't feel like exercise at all.

So this week I roped the kid into demonstrating a couple. (It's much easier to take pictures when someone else is doing the working out.)

First up was Stack 'Em Up, which was a favorite of ours in the first version of the game. The 2012 version ups the fitness by making the balance board larger and able to hold more bricks, but you have to balance on one leg, which is great for core strengthening and improving balance.

Wall Breaker is another kid fave -- you punch big bricks that shatter into pieces. You punch left and right across your body to smash 'em. Later on, you can kick them and knee them, too. He mastered Wall Breaker, as you can see by his glowing gold visage at left.

Both activities are great upper-body workouts and help work on core strength and balance. And the kids will never know it was exercise.

Mom and Dad will also find it cathartic to punch away the stress of holiday traffic and last-minute shopping (just sayin'...)

Exergames like this will be increasingly important to get young gamers off the couch and help stem the tide of childhood obesity.

Success!

Want to win your own copy?

At the end of my five-week series, I'll choose a random comment from the five weeks of posts, and that person will win a copy of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012, so comment away!

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 notebook: Week 2

Thank you to Ubisoft for providing me with a copy of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 and sponsoring this fitness diary series. Please click here to learn more about Ubisoft. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own.

(Remember last week when I said the motion tracking is better with this version? Here's a photo of me taking a photo of the TV screen -- it's kinda hard to shoot a photo while exercising. If you're at all familiar with Xbox Kinect fitness games, this is pretty darn impressive.)

This is the week I officially fell in love with Your Shape. Also the week my 13-year-old explained how to pause the game while I checked on dinner (I was roasting a chicken while doing mountain climbers -- multitasking!)

Since I'm really digging running (at least this week), I have my cardio accounted for, so I focused on toning with Your Shape.

I love the encouragement from the disembodied voice on the game. She also calls out tips to improve your technique, and thus, your score. Case in point: mountain climbers. Every time that exercise comes up on a DVD, I ALWAYS say "Mountain climbers? I can't do mountain climbers!" But unlike a DVD, your Kinect is "watching" you, so you can't blow 'em off. So I did them and apparently I did a good job because The Voice kept saying "good job!"

After the toning workout, I had a little fun with some Bollywood dancing and cooled down with the yoga-tai chi combo, which I absolutely aced.

I'm not sure about the calorie counting on the game, though. It said I only burned 60 calories during my workout, but my BodyMedia FIT registered 181 calories.

Some tips from this week's workouts:

• The toning workouts use weights, so make sure they're nearby before you begin. I had to pause the game and run into the bedroom for the dumbbells.
• The game is the most accurate if it can really scan your body, so try not to wear anything too baggy. I switched from a long-sleeved shirt to a T-shirt halfway through Thursday's workout and the Kinect was better able to track my upper-body movements, but I had on some baggy Adidas cropped pants and my lower half looked a little blobby on the screen (aside from the usual blobbiness).
• You'll also score higher on proper technique if you don't crane your neck to look at the TV while you're down on the floor.
• But how do you follow the exercises that way? There are sound cues to get the right pacing. My score rose impressively when I kept my nose to the virtual grindstone.

Want to win your own copy?

At the end of my five-week series, I'll choose a random comment from the five weeks of posts and that person will win a copy of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012, so comment away!

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 notebook: Week 1

Thank you to Ubisoft for providing me with a copy of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 and sponsoring this fitness diary series. Please click here to learn more about Ubisoft. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own.

Usually, the Xbox is the domain of the teenager, but Mama's got an appointment with it now -- I'll be letting you know about my fitness journey every week with Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012.

I get sent a lot of workout DVDs and "exergames" and the first version of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved was definitely my favorite of the bunch. It was the easiest to follow, it had the best variety of workouts and we liked the Gym Games for recreational fun.

So I was psyched to get to try out the latest version of the Ubisoft program. New this year is improved motion tracking (it really is better); Bollywood, hip-hop and Latin dance aerobics (cha cha!); and just more of everything.

As soon as it arrived, the kid and I popped it in the Xbox. He liked the Wall Breakers -- apparently punching things is a great way to get out your after-school hostilities.

(That's the Wall Breakers above. Blam!)

I liked the jump rope and the Hu-la-las because there were no real jump ropes to trip over or hoops to fall off my hips. Finally, I can do those!

I'll be tracking my progress at the online YourShapeCenter and I'll also be letting you know how I'm doing on the scale, because being accountable to someone other than myself is extra motivating.

What not to wear to the gym

This is sponsored content from BlogHer and The Laughing Cow.

Lately, as I've been losing weight and feeling more fit, I've been drifting away from wearing gigantic T-shirts to the gym and wearing slightly more fitted clothes to workout in.

But I still have some of those shirts, one of which got me in trouble some years back. My husband and I had just celebrated our anniversary with a trip to Vermont. Part of that trip was a visit to the Ben and Jerry's Factory, where I bought a huge, hippie-rific tie-dyed shirt.

One day, while working out at the gym, I spotted a guy giving me the stink eye. "Why are you wearing that to the gym?" he snapped.

(Seriously -- the guy cares about what I'm wearing to the gym? Sorry, but my "Hooray for Celery" shirt was in the wash.)

"Oh this? It's Ben and Jerry's," I said.

"You don't wear Ben and Jerry's to the gym!" The guy was steamed. Never mind that I was pumping dumbbells.

"Hey, it's ironic workout wear," I said with a laugh. He wasn't buying it and just stomped away.

Now those billowy shirts have been replaced with 5K T-shirts I've earned, and I don't think anyone would object to them. And the ice cream shirt is pajamas now -- for sweet dreams.

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