This weekend I tried out the Jackie Chan Studio Fitness J-Mat for the Xavix. I played it for about an hour and a half with my 14-year-old son. The J-Mat consists of a wireless mat that has four spots to step, hand-weights and the game cartridge. The fitness game comes with 4 modes: the step lively, which is an aerobic workout with Jackie Chan as your personal instructor, the vigorous step, which has varied dance step routines, Jackie's Action Run, in which you become Jackie Chan and travel through the streets of Hong Kong in a 5 minute workout which includes walking, running, jumping, squats and side-step, and dash and reflex, which are designed so that you can test and improve your agility and reaction time. The J-Mat seemed to have the potential for high intensity exercise and it was a lot of fun.
My favorite was the dash, which actually measures how many steps you can do in 10 seconds. My son and I had a lot of fun competing with each other on this one, trying to see who could get more steps in the 10 seconds, and I am proud to say that I beat him by 4 steps, a great feat as that I am 20+ years older than him. It was great that it could be a family activity, be fun and an exciting platform for fitness. After the workout, my heat was pumping and I was sweating, so I think that for indoor fitness, this is a good game system and if the calorie counter is correct, I burned over 500 calories during my workout, which is good for an exergame. The major drawback of the J-Mat is the graphics, they are very primitive, but for me it didn’t affect the workout. Also the side-to-side shape of the J-Mat has you stretch your legs out to reach the two furthest pads for some of routines so if you are short this might be difficult and it takes coordination to follow some of the dance and aerobic routines, so that can take some time to catch on to; it did for me, but I am as uncoordinated as they come, however I would definitely use this again for a workout option.
No comments:
Post a Comment