American Council on Exercise (ACE) Announces Study Findings on Fitness Benefits of...

American Council on Exercise (ACE) Announces Study Findings on Fitness
Benefits of Nintendo Wii
Leader in Fitness Industry Releases Proven Data on Health Benefits of Popular
Interactive Video Game in Conjunction with University of Wisconsin

SAN DIEGO, July 22 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Council on Exercise (ACE),
America's leading authority on fitness and one of the largest fitness
certification, education and training organizations in the world, today
announced key findings of an exclusive study conducted at the University of
Wisconsin, La Crosse Exercise and Health Program, on the Nintendo Wii.
Investigating the potential fitness benefits of Wii Sports, including
baseball, bowling, boxing, golf and tennis games, the ACE study revealed that
playing Wii Sports increases heart rate, maximum oxygen intake and perceived
exertion, which ultimately translates to calories burned.
"With interactive video games becoming more popular than ever before and
Americans now spending an average of 19 to 25 hours per week watching TV and
playing video games, we set out to discover whether or not the Wii is truly
beneficial as an exercise tool," said Cedric X. Bryant, Ph.D., chief science
officer. "While they have managed to get traditional gamers off the couch and
our results show that Wii Sports offer more of a cardio benefit than sedentary
games, we believe there is no substitute for the real sport."
Coming in at number one in the study, Wii boxing produced the most
significant results, approximately 216 calories per 30 minutes, followed by
tennis, baseball, bowling and lastly golf, which came in at 159, 135, 117, and
93 calories respectively. None of the Wii games burned more calories than if
participating in the actual activity. Actual bowling burns twice as many
calories -- tennis and baseball also showed significant differences. The
Wii's golf game burns a little less than one calorie per minute than hitting
balls at the driving range (3.1 calories per minute vs. 3.9 calories per
minute).
While playing the Wii does not produce as good a fitness benefit as
playing the real sport, the video games proved to burn more calories and
increase energy expenditure than playing a sedentary video game. According to
the ACE study, users can burn anywhere between 3.1 calories (golf) to 7.2
calories (boxing) per minute playing Wii Sports. Boxing was the only Wii game
tested that would be considered intense enough to maintain or improve
cardiorespriratory endurance as defined by accepted industry standards.
The study tested men and women between the ages of 20-29 years old and was
led by John Porcari, Ph.D., Karel Schmidt, B.S., and Carl Foster, Ph.D. An
ACE-sponsored study examining the new Wii Fit is currently underway.
A complete study summary appears in the July/August 2008 edition of ACE
Fitness, Matters magazine or on the ACE Web site at
http://www.acefitness.org/getfit/studies/WiiStudy.pdf.
The Nintendo Wii, launched in the fall of 2006, is an exergame that
requires users to apply physical movements to manipulate actions of a video
game.
About ACE
The American Council on Exercise (ACE), America's premier certification,
education and training organization, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to
promoting the benefits of physical activity and protecting consumers against
unsafe and ineffective fitness products and instruction. ACE sponsors
university-based exercise science research and is the world's largest
nonprofit fitness certifying organization. For more information on ACE and its
programs, call (800) 825-3636 or log onto the ACE Web site at
http://www.acefitness.org.
SOURCE The American Council on Exercise

Tara Shaffer of Formula, +1-619-234-0345, Shaffer@formulapr.com, for The
American Council on Exercise