Xbox Fitness: The Future?
Me completing my first Insanity workout on XBox One
I love technology, and I can not fail to express the delight that I now own a "next-gen" games console. The Xbox One. It is a great way to spend several hours on the sofa playing games but not so great when it comes to avoiding a sedentary lifestyle. Other consoles have tried to encourage activity in the past with some success such as the Nintendo Wii Fit. Dance and keep fit games have been available where you perform movements whilst holding your console controller, but these do not add much to the movement experience.
However, here is something interesting, some of the leading fitness programmes and personalities are now available for the Xbox One via the XBox Fitness application (free for XBox Live subscribers). These programmes include Tony Horton's P90X, Shaun T's Insanity, Tracy Anderson's Omnicentric Metamorphosis and Jillian Michaels' Ripped in 30. The workouts naturally cater for a variety of skill levels, exercise length and equipment demands - however what makes these programmes interesting are the features that are now possible using the included XBox One Kinect peripheral. The Kinect technology is astounding with high resolution camera, biometric infra-red scanning, several microphone sensors and very smart software. This offers the potential to make workout videos truly interactive.
In other words, instead of just watching an exercise DVD and repeating a series of instructions - you can view yourself alongside the workout video which mirrors your movement in real-time, the kinect detects body temperature, muscle tension and weight transfer, heart rate (without a heart rate monitor of any kind) and work rate intensity through the Kinect. Movements are "scored" and achievements awarded based on your efforts. You are not only told how to execute a movement, but also told to keep up with the trainer when you are falling behind, prompted to go lower whilst doing a press-up, given cues to maintain form whilst squatting and so on.
The system is not perfect (tracking sometimes fails, but that is a rare occurrence) - however this system demonstrates significant potential to the point where I have now done several workouts on the console ranging from 10 minutes to 45 minutes, some of which are very challenging but also much more engaging than a workout DVD!
Keeping an eye on future applications, I am also quite excited about what this technology could do with additional software updates, for example: prompting when you need to take a break based on your exertion levels; taking regular snapshots to check body composition progress; checking fitness markers such as V02 max based on oxygen utilisation and detecting whether you are using equipment or not.
If you are fortunate enough to have an XBox one make sure you load the fitness app, and give it a whirl. You may find you end up spending more time on the fitness apps than the traditional gaming applications!
