Fly mii to the moon....

Because Tony and I are on a budget, we don't have a gym membership right now. We are both guilty of having many gym memberships in the past and never using them, watching that $20 or $30 a month fly out of the checking account while never even thinking about going to the gym, or going half-heartedly for a few weeks and then allowing our gym shoes to gather dust in the corner.

However, in our legally-enforced sabbatical, we have become quite the home-gym rats. We work out between four and five days a week, sometimes twice a day, if perambulations around the neighborhood count as a workout. The upside to this is that I don't have to pay an exorbitant fee to watch my neighbors get gross and sweaty and I don't have to color-coordinate my gym clothes. The downside is that it can get a little boring. At the gym, you have treadmills, stair climbers and five different types of ellipticals, in addition to all the group fitness classes, the weight machines and the tanning bed, which isn't technically an exercise, but does make me sweaty, so I think it should count. The gym is a veritable playground for fitness. An amusement park of sweat. (Well, I guess all amusement parks are sweaty, but hang with me here.)

At home, we have whatever we can cobble together from Amazon.com, Target and Mom's basement. (Thanks for the yoga mats, Mom!) To date, that includes a mini-trampoline, an assortment of free weights, some resistance bands, two yoga mats and a box full of workout DVDs starring a variety of different trainers, rotated depending on who I feel like cursing at that day. My favorite tool, though, is the Wii Fit. I won't bore you with the explanation of what that is - if you don't know, you and Wilson really need to be rescued from that island. Soon. The Wii is my favorite because it isn't that strenuous, the little Mii people are cute, and I get rewarded for working out with that little change-jar thing that tracks how many minutes I've been working out. OOOH, and it tells me to take a break after 40 minutes, which is AWESOME.

Since we've moved into the house, I haven't really used it, though. I've been cycling through P90X, Jillian Michaels, jogging outside, and staring resentfully at my thighs while not working out. (Burns 10 calories an hour.) Today, though, my legs were really hurting (I have IT band issues on both of my legs, which would be laughable if it weren't so damn painful) so I decided I was going to jog on the mini trampoline. Which isn't nearly as fun as it sounds. You don't get to bounce too much, you can't do somersaults and after about five minutes, the squeaking sound makes you insane. To mitigate the frustration and keep myself going, I decided a mash-up of fitness equipment was in order. I strapped on my iPod with a fitness mix queued up, tied on my sneakers, and turned on the Wii, prepared to use the running game to keep track of my time and provide some hi-def scenery to keep me going.

Then I went down to the basement to fetch Tony so he could tell me why the heck the Wii wasn't working when we paid ten bajillion dollars for all this stupid electronic equipment that every time I touched, shut off. (Turns out the Wii wasn't plugged in to the TV. Who knew you had to do that?) After ten minutes of fiddling with my electronics, I was off. Or, rather, up. Jogging in place on the trampoline, listening to OK Go! and some Kanye, with a little Eye of the Tiger mixed in.

As I jogged, I realized that the Wii people could really improve upon their model. I like the free running "game," but there are few things that I would normally encounter on the road that don't exist in Wii-land that I think could be entirely motivational:

1. Savage dogs. Who doesn't get a little burst of speed when you trot gaily past someone's yard, only to feel hot breath and saliva on your heels? It's called interval training, people, and it works.

2. The homeless. Jumping over a guy under a cardboard box gives a little plyometric boost to the old jog, don't you think?

3. Traffic. Frogger had the right idea - running through traffic combines intervals with plyometrics AND a bit of an adrenaline rush. The perfect fitness storm.

4. The ability to body-check fellow Miis. Am I the only one irritated by the Mii running slowly in front of me? One good shoulder check and the rest of the Mii population would know to steer clear.

5. A guy standing along the road with water and petroleum jelly. If I'm running for more than 10 minutes, I want a water break and some help with friction. I'm just saying.

6. This is the most important one - a better way of judging my pace than holding the remote or putting it in my pocket. I don't know if the clothing designers are better in Wii-land but I have yet to find a pair of women's running pants that have a pocket large enough to hold a Wii remote. And there is nothing worse than trying to run with the remote jammed in your underoos. Well, perhaps playing Wii tennis later with a remote that's been jammed in someone's underoos. That might be worse.

So, I'm hoping someone from Nintendo reads my blog and can make these improvements. Until then, I'm in development for some sort of remote-harness that doesn't pull my pants down.