Video Games: Let’s Get Physical
Video games: “Exergaming”, which combines on-screen action with physical exercise, shows that gamers need not be couch potatoes
FROM THE ECONOMIST
IN THE heart of Silicon Valley, not far from Google’s headquarters, a new gym aimed at a teenage clientele opened its doors last September. As befits its location, it is an unusually high-tech establishment. As well as the weights and cardiovascular exercise gear, Overtime Fitness has “exergaming” equipment that combines video games with physical exercise. One controller allows ordinary Xbox games to be played using full-body movements: players exert pressure on a padded metal bar, rather than pushing buttons on a plastic controller. With another system, players stand in front of a screen and wear a belt equipped with motion sensors, controlling on-screen action with real-world movements.
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December 19, 2007, 4:03 pm
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Computer game translates physical activity into video games
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| Devices/Technology |
| Published: Monday, 17-Sep-2007 |
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Finding a way to motivate the billion people in the world who are overweight to lose excess pounds can be an overwhelming task, but a University of Houston professor is meeting that weighty challenge with a challenge of his own.
Ioannis Pavlidis, a UH computer science professor, and research assistants Yuichi Fujiki and Kostas Kazakos, have developed a computer game that translates physical activity into video games, such as races and logic puzzles. Dubbed Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT-o) games, they can be played on any hand-held personal digital assistant (PDA) with users wearing a lightweight, wearable sensor that detects movement like running, walking, bending over or even foot tapping.
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December 19, 2007, 4:00 pm
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research Video Games: Good for the Body, Good for the Brain
Mon Oct 1, 2007 5:48PM EDT
Treadmills and stretching are out: Physical therapists are turning to the Nintendo Wii to help the injured and infirm get their grooves back while increasing flexibility and strength. Click on over to see a
video of a 70-year-old patient looking awfully spry as he hits a few balls in Nintendo’s
Wii Sports tennis game… all part of a medical therapy regimen.
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We Don’t Play Games for Fun
By Susan Arendt 
January 16, 2007 | 1:58:44 PM
If you’ve ever been asked why you play video games so much, and you answered, “Because they’re fun,” it turns out that you are, in fact, a damn dirty liar. According to a study published in the January issue of Motivation and Emotion (sounds like a chick mag to me…all those feelings), video games can fulfill a number of psychological needs, opportunities for achievement, freedom and even a connection to other players. Surprisingly, “fun” was found to be a far less motivating factor.
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The Tickle Monster Needs To Lie Down Now
Why don’t parents like to play with their kids?
By Emily Bazelon
Posted Thursday, Oct. 11, 2007, at 1:39 PM ET
In his new book,
Children at Play: An American History, Brown University historian Howard Chudacoff gives us the following late-19
th-century snapshot of a mother-daughter outing to a city park: “The older person, quietly seated beside the footpath, is half absorbed in reverie. … The other, left to her own devices, wanders contented within the limited scope, incessantly prattling to herself; now climbing an adjoining rock, now flitting like a bird from one side of the pathway to the other.”It’s an entirely approving portrayal written by an educator of the period named William Wells Newell, which Chudacoff offers as a rare recognition of the importance of children’s free play. But to me, and I’d wager to a lot of parents, it’s all too sinkingly familiar. Yes, the kid seems happy enough. But what about that daydreaming mother—shouldn’t she be turning over pine cones and acorns with her daughter, or at least talking to her once in a while? Is that mom really giving her daughter the latitude to discover nature, explore the world, think her own thoughts—or is she just lazy?
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Parrellel’s to be Drawn from Guitar Hero…?
December 19, 2007, 3:16 pm
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play It seems for every Guitar Hero video posted by anyone, there will inevitably be comments like, “Go buy a real guitar!”, “What’s the point?”, “Get a life!”, and so on. I think people overestimate how much time it takes to learn how to play these games. If you play other music/rhythm games, the concept is similar and the learning curve is a lot lower. Even if you’re playing for the first time, it’s pretty simple.
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Get Out of the Rut…
Stuck in a Fitness Rut Why it’s bad for you: If you never vary your fitness routine, your body adapts to it after time, and muscle will stop growing, says Pamela Peeke, MD, author of Fit to Live and Prevention’s medical advisor. You’re likely to get bored with your workout if you’re doing the same thing every time, making it easier to find excuses to skip the gym altogether. A University of Florida study found that exercisers who varied the type of exercise were 15% more likely to work out regularly than those sticking to the same routine and 63% more likely than people who had no set schedule or rules.
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Work at Playing – to Gain a New Understanding
How does play develop, and how does verbal language become part of it? How does a verbal communicator participate in society, enjoy social events and offer their skills to society? The answers are probably easier to convey when a child is apparently developing, having mastered the very verbal environment in which they exist, or at least, feel that they are mastering it.
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Play, Personal Health and Well-Being
Play is the gateway to vitality.
By its nature it is uniquely and intrinsically rewarding. It generates optimism, seeks out novelty, makes perseverance fun, leads to mastery, gives the immune system a bounce, fosters empathy and promotes a sense of belonging and community. Each of these play by-products are indices of personal health, and their shortage predicts impending health problems and personal fragility.
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The Patterns of Play…
This page presents descriptions of many of the elemental forms of play – “patterns of play.” Like the periodic table of the elements organizes all matter into an understandable framework for chemistry students, this page presents seven patterns of play – that to most people are unrelated behaviors – as elements of a larger, holistic framework.
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National Institute for Play…
The NIFP is following what nature wants us to know about play. We are looking to what the biological, social and physical sciences can tell us, so we can help unlock the transforming power of play. Play is as basic and as pervasive a natural phenomenon as sleep. Like sleeping and dreaming, it is ready to be examined as a whole. This page overviews how we will go about this task and what we expect may emerge from that work.
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What is Play?
All children play. From the infant squealing in delight during a game of peek-a-boo to the older child playing a game of basketball, children of all ages play and they play in all kinds of ways.
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Fitness through the decades…
If there’s a magic pill for staying youthful, it may be one that’s hard to swallow: exercise. Daily doses have been proven to thwart a number of aging factors — stress, obesity, heart disease, diabetes — and the longer you’re physically active, the less you’ll notice getting older.
Weight training is good at any age.
The catch is that a 50-year-old’s body is not the same as a 20-year-old’s; you can’t push it the same way you once did, nor should you if you want to keep it in working-out order.
So listen to these coaches — they’re talking not just professionally but also firsthand — on how to remain fit, and proud of it, through the decades.
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Active, Healthy Kids!
Kids and Exercise
When most adults think about exercise, they imagine working out in the gym on a treadmill or lifting weights. But for children, exercise means playing and being physically active. Kids exercise when they have gym class at school, soccer practice, or dance class. They’re also exercising when they’re at recess, riding bikes, or playing tag.
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Adolescent Boys report…
Male adolescents’ reasons for participating in physical activity, barriers to participation, and suggestions for increasing participation
Kenneth R. Allison Physical activity and fitness are generally recognized as contributing to enhanced physical and mental health as well as prevention of a number of diseases and other problems later in life (Blair et al., 1989; Haskell, Montoye, & Orenstein, 1985; Powell & Blair, 1994; Stephens, 1988; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1996). Furthermore, concern about greater numbers of overweight and obese children, and the question of whether this pattern will continue into later adolescence, also suggest the benefits of physical activity among children and youth (Dishman, Sallis, & Orenstein, 1985; Sallis, Prochaska, & Taylor, 2000; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1996). The normal pattern during adolescence, based largely on cross-sectional studies in North America and other settings, indicates a decrease in activity with increasing age (or grade), compounded by consistently lower levels of activity among females compared to males (Allison & Adlaf, 1997; Tappe, Duda, & Ehrnwald, 1989; Trost et al., 2002). Because of the health and other benefits of physical activity, these lower levels of physical activity among older adolescents are of concern.
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Older Adults report…
Barriers to Being Physically Active for the Older Adult
We all face barriers to physical activity – time constraints, energy levels, boredom and so on. Seniors face even more barriers, like…
- Difficulty getting to facilities and programs
- A lack of interest in physical exertion and getting hot and sweaty
- Poorly designed neighbourhoods, or neighbourhoods that are unsafe because of crime or traffic congestion that make it difficult to even just get out and walk
- Trouble finding specialized programs
- Difficulty finding time for yourself because you’re busy caring for others
- Feeling you’re unsteady on your feet
- Stiffness, arthritis, osteoporosis or other medical conditions
- A previous poor experience or injury.
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Teen Girls report…
December 17, 2007, 3:13 pm
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05 Apr 2006
Teenage girls perceive lack of time as the number one barrier to physical activity, according to a new study published in the March issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise�, the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). The three-year survey assessing black and white adolescent girls reveals sedentary habits are mostly linked to internal barriers (interest, motivation), which were unrelated to external factors (jobs, recreation).
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In Motion Adults…
Why should you be “in motion”? There are many benefits to leading a physically active lifestyle. You will find you have improved energy, sleep better, deal with stress better and also you are taking a proactive approach to preventing many potential diseases.
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From the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention…
Overcoming Barriers to Physical Activity
“If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” —Anonymous
Given the health benefits of regular physical activity, we might have to ask why two out of three (60%) Americans are not active at recommended levels. There are barriers that keep Americans from being, or becoming, regularly physically active. Understanding common barriers to physical activity and creating strategies to overcome them may help you make physical activity part of your daily life.
Treadmills and stretching are out: Physical therapists are turning to the Nintendo Wii to help the injured and infirm get their grooves back while increasing flexibility and strength. Click on over to see a video of a 70-year-old patient looking awfully spry as he hits a few balls in Nintendo’s Wii Sports tennis game… all part of a medical therapy regimen. (more…)
If you’ve ever been asked why you play video games so much, and you answered, “Because they’re fun,” it turns out that you are, in fact, a damn dirty liar. According to a study published in the January issue of Motivation and Emotion (sounds like a chick mag to me…all those feelings), video games can fulfill a number of psychological needs, opportunities for achievement, freedom and even a connection to other players. Surprisingly, “fun” was found to be a far less motivating factor.
