Is The New Xbox Fitness Workout A Pile Of Pants Or Will It Help You Get Into Your Pants?

The New Xbox Fitness Workout Is A Dream For Gym Haters

Do you ever get that sudden urge to lose weight and pay a fortune for a fancy gym membership and new workout gear yet fail miserably to make a commitment?

Eventually we get tired of the judgey eyes and the big crowds at the gym and switch to home DVDs, only to have them end up in a dusty drawer.

The reason? Well, we're most likely not doing the exercise right (didn't see that one coming, did you).

Sure, it's right in front of us on the screen, but to what extent can we really mimic the instructor's motions without any guidance?

Xbox Fitness - saviour of couch potatoes and gym haters - has just launched their new online service exclusively built for Xbox One, turning the most popular fitness DVDs into an interactive adventure.

When I first heard about Xbox Fitness I instantly thought you'd have to attach hundreds of futuristic looking wires to your body for performance tracking.

Needless to say I was wrong.

So when Michelle Tatom - executive producer for Xbox Fitness - started chatting to me about incorporating instant feedback, famous trainers and precision technology into the workouts, I had to take a moment to re-adjust everything I thought I knew about getting fit at home.

With Kinect technology, not only is the console able to read your heart rate without a monitor (talk about no strings attached), it provides muscle mapping and an energy meter tracking your every move.

Once my tech trance had faded and I stopped blessing the 21st-century for all of its technological advancements I was anxious to try it out.

The quest to the new and improved you begins by customising the user interface (make it pink!) adding your age, height and weight and you're ready to go.

There are a variety of workouts available ranging between 10 and 60 minutes in length, heart rate monitoring and calorie counting are both included and can be checked on at any time.

When you switch on the console, the program reads your entire body and mimics the shape and movement onscreen. I found myself stretching into ballerina-eseque poses to see how it worked - pretty amazing.

Of course lovely though the team was, they thought it would be fitting to pair me with the fitness instructor Shaun T (whose workout is called Insanity, FYI) for my trial run.

The workout started with a leg warm up - a nice and easy introduction.

In fact I was getting quite into it, kicking my knees up high, while catching my breath when suddenly the energy meter turned yellow, then red... (Red indicating your intensity, rhythm or movement is off, yellow meaning there's room for improvement and green showing you're spot on.)

Followed by some annoying constructive commentary on the screen: 'Use your hands!' 'Knees higher!' - yes, a freaking console was telling me what to do, while silently judging me.

I needed a moment to let that sink in.

Then I gave it my all, trying to keep up with Shaun's pace when - thank the lord - the meter slowly changed from red to yellow and finally turned green. Hell yeah, I did it.

To turn up the fun factor even higher, there's personalised and social challenges available, as well as rewards and achievements since we all know our lazy alter ego will eventually take over unless there's a sense of competition and adventure.

And let's not forget the occasional 'ha!' when beating your friend's score that just makes it all worth the sore muscles.

I highly recommend this to anybody that wants to work out but has never been a fan of the gym.

Sure, you constantly want to prove yourself to your robot console friend but in return you get proper feedback, fun achievements to complete and you get to share your progress with your friends - all from your own living room.

I know I'll be voice controlling the life out of my Xbox during my workouts, randomly victimising my poor friends on Skype while Shaun T is yelling at me to kick those knees up higher.

For more information on how you can join the Xbox fitness community go to their website.

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