TL;DR Summary: There is no such thing as a perfect piece of exercise software. They all have shortcomings. Make peace with that. Nike+ Kinect Training is the best piece of software I have used so far. That said, it’s got some issues.
The treadmills and elliptical machines at the gym just got so boring I was finding it difficult to keep myself motivated. More than once I drove into the gym parking lot, sat there for a minute staring at the front door of the place, said "Yeah... I ain't doin that", and drove off.
Seriously.
It wouldn't take much. Maybe I could see that it was a little crowded. Maybe it was raining. Maybe it was a little cold and windy...
Obviously, I needed a change. Sure, I hiked on the weekends and that helped switch it up somewhat but I wanted something I could do during the week that didn't depend on the weather or the angle of the sun in the sky. I wasn't about to go running in the freezing darkness. Hell, even if the weather was perfect and the roads were well lit I probably wouldn't have done it.
I borrowed some P90X DVDs from a friend but they stayed in the box untouched. I saw this software somewhere and decided to pick it up about the same time a couple other friends of mine did. I started using it in the morning to augment the aerobic part of my workout routine three months ago. You can find out what I thought of it then here.
Oh, by the way, this is not a review. It is neither a promotion nor is it an indictment. It’s just one dude’s opinion. If you want to find out what the software can actually do, go to the official site or go to Amazon and read the reviews there (stick with the 2 to 4 star reviews - they tend to be a little less fake and a lot less ax-grindy than the 1’s and 5’s). The game might suit you, it might not. Who knows? Everyone is a beautifully unique freaking snowflake, after all.
I just started my fourth month this morning. While I was getting my butt kicked around by the virtual trainer I finally came up with a way to whine about the shortcomings of the software without going all “Stephen King describing the what the leaves sound like during a typical Maine autumn (76 pages)” or “J.R.R. Tolkien writing a short note asking the UPS guy to just leave the box on the porch (143 pages)”.
So here it is, the first installment of Nike+ Kinect Daily Waaaahhhh! Note: “Daily” here means “occasional and subject to termination with no notice because I get bored easily”.
Who the Devil Are You?
Over the past three months (52 workout sessions) the software has identified me correctly only once. Once. Can you imagine what it would be like if your real-life personal trainer said "Now... Who are you again? Cuz I am drawing a total blank here." every single time you met to work out? Can you imagine making such a feeble impression on others that they have difficulty remembering you exist from one minute to the next?
Dude, it's me. You have one client, and it's always me. Now, I know it's tough to recognize someone with the top one third of their head missing like my scanned in body image always shows, but at least give a guess or something. Don’t just give up after, like, one second. Say... maybe in the future you could key on the fact that I seem to be missing a large asymmetrical chunk of my skull or something...
Besides, you don’t seem to have any problem at all remembering that I once did a less than flawless jumping jack eight weeks ago and now you feel compelled to say “You have struggled with these in the past but today I know you are really going to nail these” .
Every. Single. Time.
Wait... You're trying to make me go berserk, aren't you?
Oh, you're good...
(More Later)
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