EASA: Day 3

Yes, I’m aware two days have elapsed since Day 2. The day after Day 2 was scheduled as a “rest day” so I took advantage of it. Yesterday I came home from work dribbling with snot and hacking up a lung so it probably wasn’t the best idea to overdo it. Took today off as I felt awful this morning and had a throat so sore my voice put James Earl Jones to shame. Spent much of the day playing The Sims 3 and accumulating a large pile of snotty tissues next to my computer, but decided that I would give EASA a go again today.

(It’s worth noting today that EASA doesn’t seem to “guilt trip” you if you miss a day, unlike Wii Fit - it simply marks on your calendar that you’d taken a “rest day”, and it will likely make it more difficult to reach some of the goals it sets you, but otherwise it doesn’t complain at you at all.)

Yesterday I picked up a stronger resistance band and some wrist weights to make the upper body stuff harder work - the band that comes with EASA is a bit weedy if you’ve ever done any kind of exercise before, though I imagine it would be great for people who don’t exercise much, or who are recovering from an injury. The band I got was the only one that John Lewis had left - it was the strongest one, supposedly for “strong and athletic” people. I didn’t particularly feel I fell into that category but thought I’d give it a try anyway.

Today’s workout programme had me warming up with a bit of running on the track followed by some pretty relentless abuse of the upper body. The game picked today to start combining upper body workouts together - bicep curls into shoulder presses were particularly unpleasant!

The new band worked great with the only minor problem being that it’s either a little bit too short or I’m a little bit too much of a pussy to pull it up over my shoulders. Still, this is easily resolved by doing the “above shoulder height” exercises on your knees instead of standing on the band. Seemed to work fine, and I certainly felt the burn on my arms today.

First impressions of the new band then? Very positive. And I’m pretty impressed with EASA as a whole package so far. It’s a much more comprehensive “healthy lifestyle” package than Wii Fit is. Still, without Wii Fit, would we see EASA? Possibly - after all, Sony had the excellent (if slightly flawed) EyeToy Kinetic first. But it’s pretty obvious that Wii Fit has done a lot to raise the profile of videogame-based fitness programmes.