With the new year upon us, many will have (as usual) made resolutions to exercise more or lose weight which they will (as usual) probably fail to keep.
For myself, I resolved some years back not to bother making any more New Year’s Resolutions. It’s about the only one I’ve ever managed to stick to.
However, as gamers, there are more tools than ever available to us should we want to attempt the feat of burning calories while never moving more than a few feet from the couch. But I’m not here today to talk to you about Wii Fit; others have said more about it than I ever want to. Today I am here to talk to you about something else. A subject close to my heart which is, I’m sure, also close to the hearts of many of you.
Today we will burn calories with the Power of Rock.
A little while ago Ready Up popped along to a Guitar Hero: World Tour event in London, where we were given our first showing of the new instruments along with the new game, and I got my first opportunity to have a go with the new drum controller.
One of the things I was told while we were there was that Clem Burke, the drummer from Blondie, had been taking part in a research project which measured him as having a heart rate of 140bpm and burning over 400 calories an hour while drumming. Because of these findings, the University of Gloucestershire aims to develop community outreach programmes targeting “overweight and disengaged youngsters” (see the project’s web site).
I fought the flab, but the flab won.
400 calories an hour and 140bpm. That, right there, is your actual cardiovascular workout. I wouldn’t expect to come anywhere close to that without being able to play on Expert difficulty, but it’s nevertheless good to know that one can work out while also rocking out, and not only do we not need to move far from the couch, we can actually burn calories while sitting down. That, surely, is a dream we can all believe in.
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