I bought Wii Fit and the balance board and after using it a few times I thought that it was good enough to use instead of my £32 per month gym. So, I cancelled my gym membership and off I went, for about two weeks. The more I used Wii Fit the more it became frustrating because of two show stopping reasons.

The first and least show stopping was that the trainer repeated himself so often that I ended up having to turn the sound off. During a 20 rep arm exercise I heard `this exercise will strengthen your arm muscles’ four times! At the end of every exercise you hear `doing that exercise regularly will help.. blah.. blah.. blah…’

The second and complete show stopper is the fact that you have to choose every exercise individually, one at a time. This means that, let’s say, you chose to do 10 push ups. You tell it that and off you go. At the end of that you have to go back to the chose exercise menu and chose 10 sit-ups or whatever it is you decide to do. It took me about 45 minutes to do a half hour workout because of this.

So, there are none of these problems with My Fitness Instructor. It’s a much more fluid and well designed workout program.

When you first install it you are asked to do an initial fitness evaluation. This involves entering your measurements, age and weight. You then do a fairly brief fitness check which has you measure your resting heart rate and then measure it again after doing a few minutes of exercise, which you follow on screen.

When it has your information it asks you if you own any of the following.

1. Heart rate monitor.

2. Aerobic step

3. Balance ball

4. Weights

If you answer yes to any of those it will incorporate them into your workout.

Finally, it asks what your goal is. This can be weight loss, cardio fitness, upper body strength etc. It will make recommendations too, based on your weight and fitness test. It recommended I lose weight, and it’s right unfortunately. When you tell it your goal it then sets up a weekly routine for you. It told me to do a total of two and a half hours per week, which it spread over five days. You can tweak the days and duration as much as you like. You can also go back at any time and adjust it if it’s too much or too little or inconvenient days.

The first workout. I loved it. The on screen woman that you follow is really good and hops around like a real instructor. She does very occasionally repeat herself but it is very occasionally, unlike the three or for times per minute in Wii Fit! I’m quite fit but the workout made me sweat and I found it just about bang on for what I was after. I did a full (uninterrupted, unlike the Wii Fit) half hour aerobic workout which incorporated my step, weights and balance ball. Occasionally I was asked during a brief rest period if the previous exercise had been too easy, bang on, or too hard. It then adjusts the rest of the session accordingly.

After a few sessions (which are always different and interesting) you unlock new exercise rooms (garden, dojo etc) and new music types (dance, Latin etc). This only happens if you follow your weekly routine, so don’t be a couch potato : )

After every 10 workouts you are asked to do the initial fitness test again. It then shows you on a graph how you have improved in all areas. I’ve lost half a stone in three weeks with this and laying off the alcohol.

I can’t recommend this program too highly.

Oh, and this programme doesn’t use the Wii balance board.

Rating: 5 / 5

The first thing you notice about My Fitness Coach is how it differs from Wii Fit. The graphics are clearly aimed at those who prefer a more realistic exercise experience. The software itself seems to have had a lot of input from professional sports technicians and thus the exercise routines are well structured and provide an even workout to various areas of the body.

When you first start the software you enter your age, height, weight, measure your sitting and post warm-up heart rate and measure the circumference of your biceps, thighs, waist, hips and chest. This provides the software with an accurate account of your overall fitness and uses said information to personalise your workout routines. Then after every 10 workouts it will ask for the above information again, minus age and height, and chart your progress in all of these areas. As a man I would want to increase bicep and chest size but reduce waist, thigh and hip, so being able to monitor these areas as opposed to just weight or the highly inaccurate BMI is excellent.

Maya will suggest the appropriate workout each day, e.g. cardio one day, then upper body, then flexibility another. This allows every part of your body to receive an even level of exercise due to the software having approximately 500 different exercise moves. This avoids repetitive strain injuries and helps to improve the condition of the entire body.

The routine length is chosen by the player as either 15, 30, 45… etc minutes. It is constructed as if you were at a fitness class so one exercise move will be followed by another; however there are breaks in between particularly difficult ones. The exercise moves are broken up into difficulties ranging from 1 to 5 so this allows the routines to develop in difficulty as you increase in fitness. At certain points in the routine you will be asked whether that particular set was too easy, a good workout or difficult to keep up. This is how the software monitors your development in the routine and will then adapt the next one based on your answer. The routine is also comprised of warm-up and cool downs which help to avoid any strain injuries. Finally, should you have more than one player profile you can have an extra 1-3 players do the routine with you at the same time.

The trainer, Maya, is modeled on a real life personal trainer and she provides you with constant encouragement. Her tone of voice, while being a little flat at times, is clear and the advice she provides assists you in executing the workout routine accurately and thus avoiding injury. Her movements are fluid and easy to understand, however if you do not understand any of the moves you can ask her to explain them. Finally at the beginning and end of each workout she provides you with a brief screen with some healthy lifestyle advice. This morning for example she told me about the benefits of exercising in front of my daughter and drinking peppermint tea being more effective and healthier than coffee in the morning.

There are various locations available for you to exercise in and there are over 70 different songs across 7 selectable genres of music. The graphics of these locations are nothing special and the songs are nothing you would want to listen to outside of the workout however they do suit the exercise theme of the software and wont annoy you like some chart songs I can think of.

The one thing most people will want to know is how it compares to Wii Fit and since I own both I can make it an accurate comparison. Wii Fit has been constructed very badly. It does not tailor make routines to suit each individual user thus you have no idea what part you should be exercising and how frequently. This causes an uneven development of the health of the body and can cause weakness is some areas whilst strengthening others.

It has a very low number of exercises and because of this you exercise the exact some area each time. This does cause repetitive strain injuries. It does not include any warm ups and does not tell you how you should do them. It just says to do it and for those who haven’t a clue how or for how long this can lead to injuries. It has the same music every time and the graphics are very weak and bland. Everything is just white, including the trainer! BMI has been found to be very inaccurate at measuring health and fitness and since this is the only way that Wii Fit measures it you are never given an accurate account of your health development. And finally there is the price. Wii Fit costs 70 whereas My Fitness Coach costs 15. This is because My Fitness Coach does not utilize the Wii Balance Board which I have found to be completely unnecessary.

To sum up. If you want some software for your Wii to get you into shape safely, monitors you accurately and has enough variety to keep you interested for years to come, then choose to buy the very affordable My Fitness Coach. You will not be disappointed. I know I’m not.

Rating: 5 / 5

all of the above reviews are correct and this is going to motivate and increase your fitness so much more than the wii fit. If you find the wii fit is out of your budget or you want to get really fit this is the one, so much cheaper and all you need is a bit of space.Having had both the wii fit and this I think this is better(seriously).wii fit now seems more suited to getting the kids and family of the sofa but if you want real results get this one!
Rating: 5 / 5

Wanting to lose a few pounds for a summer holiday to Spain (w00t), I decided to buy this out of mere curiosity; I heard it was good and obvioulsy it has very positive reviews on here. After just experiencing very thrilling exercises of any choice I wanted (e.g, yoga, upper body, weight loss etc.) I found myself actually looking forward to tomorrows workout. Honestly, this is the first new experience to make me actually look f-o-r-w-a-r-d to exercising

It is tough, there is no denying that, but out of my own experience with this game, I’ve found myself thinking the reason why the select few have given it bad reviews is because they don’t know that your little personal coach makes it as difficult as it needs to be depending on your weight, size etc. For someone who choses weight loss, it’s going to make the whole package hard. Whereas something like lower body, will concentrate only on making your legs work hard. You catch my drift! Aka, it’s not out to kill you but test you to the best of your ability and there are many chances to rest along the way ;p

Another good thing is you get a personalised calender in which you can pick out the days you want to exercise and how long for, even for the busiest of people; this could work out great for you – even if you only have 15 minutes to train. You get a personal opinion from your trainer into which option she would p-r-e-f-e-r you to concentrate on, but you can chose yourself, you may just want to buy this to learn yoga after all xD Also, you may be thinking, what’s the motivation into wanting to play this everyday apart from toning or losing weight? Well, there are a variety of things to unlock, whether it be genres of music, different back drops, or progress charts and goals, it’s going to make you interested, I’ll be carrying on just to see what other training rooms I can get! You can even tell her what equipment you have so that she can enhance it into your training! (I was displeased with the fact you couldn’t add a trampoline though :O Lol).

You don’t have to be physically fit to play this game, if you fill out your profile correctly, you won’t have the slightest of problems as long as you take your time to take proper measurements and answer the questions trufully. Don’t cheat and make it harder for yourself Or you will collapse in a heap of puffing air

I will be playing this again tomorrow, and shockingly, I can’t wait. Oh one more thing, if you think it’s one player… think again, you can do group workouts depending on how many Wii remotes you own! So get ready for the laughs and pure entertainment No need to pay money for the gym if you have this game!
Rating: 5 / 5

Just got my Fitness Coach yesterday. I found setting up my profile to be a bit fiddly, as you need to measure certain body parts and I simply couldn’t figure out the rounding down and rounding up of the inches? Anyway with the measurements done, I moved on to performing a set amount of exercises designed to evaluate you fitness level, which took about 20mins.

I absolutely love that you can tailor make your workout times to fit your schedule and you can select workouts to targets areas, like upper body and flexibility to name a few. I have so far enjoyed the cardio the most, and found it to be varied and the steps really easy to follow, (which is great as I get lost pretty easy with complicated step routines.)

There are also other things that add to the workout, such as choosing the background music, choice of environment back ground which adds to the mood and the option to incorporate other workout equipment such as dumbbell, which really add to the variety and results. You can also log other exercise you have done which then shows in a graph to mark your progress.

During any workout, you have options to increase or decrease the difficult, and there is a bar running along the bottom which shows what the next workout will be. There are also rest break and water breaks, which usually come after a high intensity exercise, so no need to pause! At the end of every workout it also states your estimated calories burned, which I find to be really motivational in itself.

The only issue I have are graphic, which could have been a little better, (I would have been more than happy to play a little extra for good graphics), but at least the pictures on the adverts did represent the game, so no false adverting there. It would be more beneficial, when choosing to decrease or increase the difficulty that it changed immediately.

I would highly recommend this for anyone looking to add to there exergaming, it is fun, challenging and really motivational.

Rating: 4 / 5