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Great and innovative program

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 12
Date: February 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is not really a game but a customized workout program. I liked it because it gave me the motivation that I need to get some exercise in everyday. It customized the workouts according to your fitness level, and as you go along you can increase or decrease the difficulty of the workouts. You can chart your progress and chose what type of workout you'd prefer: Yoga, calorie-burning, lower or upper body workouts. It's great and it's like having a personal trainer/aerobics instructor in your home at your convenience. You can adjust your workout times and integrate some of your home equipment, though you don't need any equipment to use the program. I really enjoyed the program and thought it was innovative. Instead of using a DVD program to do the same workout over and over again, you can change it up.

Very Good Workout Program for the PS2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 75 / 75
Date: March 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Over the past few years, a growing number of people have been using videogames as a form of exercise. Up until now, the game of choice for "exergamers" has been Dance Dance Revolution, but games such as EyeToy:Groove and EyeToy:AntiGrav have been used as well.

Finally, here is a "game" that comes right out and calls a spade a spade - Yourself!Fitness. Like to work out, but hate the gym? Get tired of DVD workouts after you've memorized the pattern? Prefer 3-D animation to real images? This is the fitness program for you.

The program starts you out by having you input your personal data (age, height, weight, sex) and perform a brief fitness test. From there, you set up a weekly workout schedule.

Each time, your virtual fitness instructor, Maya, will serve up a customized exercise routine for you on demand. You can vary the time, difficulty, and area of focus (cardio, lower body strength, flexibility, etc.). Maya talks you through the routine, and her animated figure exercises along with you. You can zoom and rotate the camera to get a better view of the exercise. If a given move has you completely stumped, you can pause the workout and call up a tutorial that explains the move step by step.

Maya will praise you for sticking to your workout schedule, and chew you out for skipping workouts. By working out regularly, you can "earn" new workout areas, songs, and the like. Also, as you progress in your fitness program, Maya will increase the difficulty of the routines and mix in new exercises. If you own equipment such as a heart rate monitor or a step bench, Maya will incorporate those into your routines as well.

The program also offers weekly menu planning and a "meditation garden" that serves up a yoga routine. I haven't used either of those features, so I can't comment on them.

Pros:

1. Routines contain a wide range of exercises, and vary from day to day.
2. Videogame format will motivate its target demographic in a way other exercise modes will not.
3. Marketed towards women, but a great workout for guys as well.

Cons:
1. Music is generic.
2. Load times on the PS2 are pretty bad. This problem is most bothersome when a workout routine is held up midway through for 10-15 seconds for loading purposes.

All in all, the program is great fun, and a good way to exercise on those days you can't be bothered with hauling yourself to the gym. Recommended.

Fun and a Workout at the same time

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: April 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I read about this "game" in a gaming magazine.
It sounded good,so I recently bought it.

Think of all the money you pay into commitments
with health clubs!,there are no fees here.

Maya walks you through the member set up,
height,weight,gender all that.
Then she customizes your program.

Overall,I would love to see more like this.
If there is a "your fitness" follow up,
I'm gonna buy it!

Hope you had as much fun with this as I have,
remember no pain no gain..

Yourself Fitness is a fantastic program for health!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 132 / 133
Date: April 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

From the minute I met Maya, my new personal trainer I was hooked. Maya is a virtual fitness "person" who will help you meet your fitness goals.

The program begins with Maya greeting you and giving you a fitness assessment. Here you will input your height, weight and activity level and you will do a series of exercises; crunches, sit-ups, push-ups, and jumping jacks. Then you check your heart rate and input the information. Based on your level of fitness Maya will recommend an exercise program for you. She will tell you what you need to do and how many days a week you need to do it, to help you achieve your goals.

Maya will give you a selection of spaces to exercise in and ask what equipment you have. If you own a stepper, stability ball, weights and heart rate monitor, she will incorporate these into the workout. I would highly recommend adding all the equipment - especially the weights and heart rate monitor as these can really help you achieve your fitness goals.

After selecting your space (different virtual rooms with a different feel to each one) Maya begins your personalized program. During the workout she will ask you how you are feeling or you can at any time increase or decrease the intensity of the workout. At the bottom of the screen a scroll tells you what is coming up next in the workout ie squats, sidesteps, a stepper etc. You can also change the music selection - over 70 songs are available including hip hop, latin and 80's. The bottom also counts down the time of your workout - a fabulous feature.

Over time as you exercise, you will "unlock" treats from Maya like new workout spaces. Because she has so many "moves" your execise time with Maya will vary from one day to the next and keep your interest.

Maya also will hold you accountable. If you miss a day she will ask (nicely) where you were. As you exercise she will encourage you. Maya's voice is a beautiful, easy to listen to voice and you can lower or raise the volume of her voice and/or the music.
Maya herself is a buff looking brunette, it would have been nice if one could personalize their trainer's looks, and I will bet that's not to far down the road!

Maya also has a peaceful room where she will lead you in a nice yoga interlude. As you progress through the program Maya will help you adjust your goals and set new ones.

She will also set meal plans for you if desired.

I have to admit Maya has amazed me, besides kicking my booty in our exercise sessions. And the price point of $35 is so reasonable. Others love it too and there is an online community at www.yourselffitness.com devoted to discussions on this program.

Highly recommended!

UPDATE: I had a question about the program and was very pleased with the Yourself!Fitness representative Caroline's fast response and helpfulness. Double delight - a great program with super customer service!

Totally worth your time & money.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 16 / 16
Date: April 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Okay, so I'm a bachelor with no kids who could stand to be in better shape, so I figure what the hell, let's try this thing out. Quite honestly, this is one of the best things I've bought in a long time, and for about $35, it's a really good deal.

In about two weeks, I've noticed some big improvements. I look better, I feel better, and I have more energy than I've had in a long time. What's really cool is the fact that I actually look forward to exercising with Maya.

The creators took great care to make Maya fun & accessible to as many people as possible, and I think they did a good job. She's pretty without looking too perfect, she's intelligent without sounding like a know it all, and she even has a bit of a sense of humor. The writers and voice-actress did a very good job of giving her personality. I find myself awaiting to tell her how I'm feeling, or what I want to work on for the day, and when she tells me how good I'm doing, I actually feel pretty proud of myself. Yes, I know it's just the computer program crunching the data I'm feeding into it, that she's not "real", but the illusion of working out with someone who is a pleasant trainer is really effective. It's basically gotten to the point to where I say I'm going to work out with Maya, instead of saying I'm going to put in the Yourself Fitness game.

All in all, I really needed something like this to help me out. I wasn't really disciplined enough to workout consistently by myself, nor did I know all the styles and methods to use to workout all the various muscles in my body properly. I really feel like I'm finally becoming the physically fit man I've always wanted to be, and for only about thirty bucks! I'm happy I bought this.

...One order of crow, please...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 16
Date: April 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I first saw this "game" in the console section of a store around the time I began considering that I needed to work out more. At the time, I actually laughed at it. I just couldn't believe that something like exercising to a game console was going to be any better than a video: What a waste of technology. I mean, exercise routines are all the same, right? Dull. Boring. Repetitive. Gimmicky. Painful in all the wrong ways. So, this had to be the same, right? What was this thing going to do that I couldn't get anywhere else?-besides a pixilated workout character who may not be all she's cracked up to be?

Well, after spending about another week passing up the usual exercise tapes and swallowing my pride to purchase this, I have had my question answered; and have been eating my words daily for the past two weeks.

Y!F is really almost addictive: The level of personalization and interaction in the game is really great for someone who is tired of being spoken at by a pre-recorded person on video. The workouts are very fun (and pretty painful, if you're not used to doing them--but in a good way!) and versatile. The extras (earning new music and backdrops; using extra equipment; meal plans; personal fitness tracking; fitness goal setting/customization; scheduling; etc.) really help you to get along to whatever fitness goals you may have, as well. Most of the exercises are easily adjusted for higher or lower impact depending on our ability...and of course, if you already do great on floor exercises, try it with the equipment and increase the difficulty and exercise time. You simply can't loose.

Maya, the personal trainer character is also very encouraging yet down to earth, which is great for someone like me, who usually equates exercise with annoying bouncy, bubbly video queens in pink spandex and legwarmers yelling at me to "Feel the BURN! Woooot!". In comparison to those types, Maya is much more realistic. The animation for her is pretty good during the workout sessions. If you pause, she will stretch, and walk around while waiting- she is never really still. Nor robotic, just like an actual person.

I like the fact that every day I log in to work out, I'm greeted and acknowledged. (and when I skip days that I've scheduled, that I'm acknowledged in having done that, too: commitment is good.) I have the option of choosing what kind of workout I would like to do, and then have the workout adjusted for me depending on my mood (which can be all over the place, and effecting most of what I do, especially things like working out) and how easy/difficult the workouts actually are once we get started. You can also adjust the time that you spend working out, which is good for those days when you don't have but 15 minutes, or when you think you could go for 1 hour or more.

Personally, my favorite part of this 'game' is the Meditation Garden. In this feature, you get about 15-20 minutes or so of yoga, also dynamically performed, like the rest of the workouts. The yoga is very useful for muscle aches from the regular workouts, and helps me to ease my pre-existing body pain. I would suggest that if you get this product, to use this feature at least once every other day. It's very enjoyable all on it own.

--and after two weeks of faithful application, I have been noticing marked improvements. I'm glad I got this instead of opting for another bland workout tape, or simply walking in the park once a week. It wouldn't have worked out for me at all. I've been down that road and back, many times in the past.

Y!F Has really helped me to enjoy exercising. I'm not perfect about it, but at least I feel like it's something I can do and enjoy for the challenge; and not something I'm doing in order to torture myself for the eventual, far off benefits. There are benefits, now, even this short into my long term goal of loosing weight.

I highly suggest this to folks who need to get out and move more, and/or to folks who are tired of the same old boring notion of exercise tapes. If you haven't seen the light, yet, you probably will begin to after giving this a try. Don't knock it till you've tried it.

5 stars, hands down.

Varied exercises - with some sloppy programming

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 22 / 22
Date: April 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is a useful and fun way to exercise, but it does have some problems (asking you to use equipment you don't own, bad load times). I use it three times a week and would buy it again.

Pros:
- Measures your flexibility, upper body strength, lower body strength, core strength, and aerobic capacity to match the workout level to your body.
- You can adjust the workout level for each category (flexibility, upper body strength, lower body strength, etc)
- You see exercises being done so it helps with your form
- Tutorials on each move
- The workout has breaks, but they aren't too long or too short, usually.
- You open up new areas and music by sticking to the exercise program.
- Exercises chosen based on what equipment you have (step, dumbells, ball, or heart monitor)
- There's a Yoga section for Yoga fun. It gives you about 15 minutes of Yoga at a time.
- It has numerous meal plans based on how many calories you want to eat a day.
- The variety of exercises is good, but not great.
- Most of the exercises will work for woman and men, even though they are geared toward woman

Cons:
- The music is boring, and I doubt you will recognize any of it.
- Sometimes she has you use a piece of equipment she knows you don't own! Example, she tells me to use a ball of free weights to exercise my biceps, even though I don't own a ball and she knows it!
- The load times are disgustingly bad. If it changes songs during an exercise, then the game will come to a stop for several seconds. Then the woman will do one rep at an incredible speed you can't reproduce, then she will slow down to the regular speed.
- The exercises are clearly geared toward women. She sometimes has me do bicep curls without weights for about a minute. I would get more exercise drinking a pint of beer. I'm not even sure many women would get anything out of this exercise.
- Some of the stuff the woman says doesn't make sense. Example, "Get in your body." I wonder where she thought I was.
- Sometimes there isn't enough variety to the exercise. It seems like she only has two or three exercises for each muscle group at a given intensity level. If you don't progress to the next level, you will see that exercise again. And again. And again. Realistically, you can expect to see some of the same exercises in every workout for at least a month.

Wonderful!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 18 / 18
Date: May 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As someone who doesn't feel comfortable enough working out around other people, this program is *perfect* for me. I love how I'm able to customize practically everything so it's tailored just for me. I'm down 13 pounds so far and I'm actually enjoying my daily workout routine, something I haven't been able to say in a long time.

If I could change anything, it would be this:

-Less downtime, Maya sometimes takes a good 5 - 15 seconds to 'find the beat' to get back into routine if I had to pause the program.
-The ability to increase/decrease the difficulty of a single exercise. When Maya asks how I did at the end of a section - where half the exercises were too hard and half were too easy - what do I say? I would like the ability to give a thumbs down to a specific exercise, basically saying dump that but keep everything else.

Over all, this is the best PS2 purchase I've made in a long time.

You WILL NEED hand weights!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: July 13, 2005
Author: Amazon User

In addition to the other great, informative reviews that others have written (all things I agree to), I'd like to add a tip: buy hand weights if you don't have them already. The upper-body workout is worthless without them. While the game is fabulous and I enjoy every minute, the makers seem to indicate it's not necessary to own certain exercise equipment.....but unfortunately it is.

Surprisingly good

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: August 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I highly recommend this game to anyone looking for a good cardio workout. I've tried Tae-bo as well as others, and this is far better due to the variations each day which other disks cannot offer. You really never do the same routine twice which keeps you guessing and stops the boredom. I like how the bottom of the screen tells you how long you have to go before the next exercise also, so you're never doing jumping jacks and thinking when will this end. There are thousands of recipes if you're interested in that, but I just wanted a good cardio routine and I am very satisfied.

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