TORONTO – In the years since the release of Nintendo’s Wii video game system in 2006, many researchers have examined whether sports video games can be considered real workouts.
Past research shows that on average, kids spend five to seven days each week playing one to two hours of video games per day.
This is according to Scott Leatherdale, associate professor at the University of Waterloo, who published a 2010 study comparing a traditional (aka sedentary) video game version of tennis to Wii tennis.
Leatherdale found that students in his study burned an average of about 60 calories more per hour playing the active Wii tennis game.
“When we did our population estimates . . . kids could on average burn between seven and 14 pounds of fat a year, just by playing these more active video games compared to a sedentary one,” says Leatherdale.
Leatherdale stressed that his research was based on the first generation of Wii tennis, which involves only minimal arm movements. His study was also framed with an interest in obesity, rather than whether cardiovascular health would improve.
So, Global News took two “test subjects” to Paul VanWiechen, Director of Exercise Physiology at the Cleveland Clinic in Toronto, to record results we might see in terms of enhancing fitness using video games.
The young adults played Wii’s Dance Dance Revolution for about eight minutes while VanWiechen measured their heart rate and oxygen consumption to test how active they were during the game play.
“The measurements we were taking were measuring directly how well they’re processing oxygen,” says VanWiechen. “That oxygen is used to break down fat, so that’s telling us how many calories they’re burning.”
As the game intensity increased, the subjects reached 20 to 22 millilitres of oxygen every minute, which is equivalent to about 400 to 450 calories per hour.
VanWiechen cautions that counting calories isn’t as telling as you may think.
“You can burn a lot of calories but not actually improve your fitness, and you can burn very few calories but improve your fitness a lot, depending on how you structure the exercise,” he says. “This exercise here burnt about the same amount of calories you’d expect from a nice brisk walk for half an hour.”
However, because they were young and already physically fit, VanWiechen says the game won’t do much to improve their fitness.
While a brisk walk is beneficial to overall health, fitness recommendations typically include 20 to 25 minutes of exercise three times a week, with a breathing level that demonstrates your body is hard at work.
“If you can start to hear your breathing, you’re working hard enough to get some benefits,” says VanWiechen. “If you’re out of breath, you’re working too hard.”
Both Leatherdale and VanWiechen agree that while the active video games are better than traditional sedentary video games, they shouldn’t be the sole source of physical fitness.
“That’s not the right way to train for a marathon, it’s not the right way to lose 200 pounds of weight, but it certainly does have positive effects for your heart,” says VanWiechen.
Leatherdale says he is interested to see if further research influences product development in the gaming industry in the face of a “looming” obesity crisis.
“One of the things people have been pointing to is the amount of time people are spending in sedentary behaviours,” he says. “It wouldn’t surprise me if this industry responds by trying to make more active video games, because then they wouldn’t necessarily be seen as the sole scapegoat or one of the groups potentially causing the problem.”
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