Friday, September 22, 2006

Overtime Fitness offers teens a videogame workout

A new fitness center that uses videogames to get teens excited about exercise opens this Saturday in Mountain View, CA.

Overtime Fitness restricts its membership to teens aged 13 through 18. "It's a first-of-its-kind fitness center because it's focused solely on teens," founder and president Patrick Ferrell told Ars Technica. "Getting kids interested in fitness has some interesting challenges which we've managed to overcome by having the right combination of electronics, fitness equipment, and a place to socialize."
In addition to DDR, PowerGrid and the other usual suspects, their offerings include a machine I hadn't previously heard of, the Cybex Trazer:
The Trazer is a "virtual reality" fitness machine that "puts you in the game," as Neale-May describes it. The kids put on an infrared belt which then maps their movements to the action onscreen. They play games that involve lunging, jumping, and other vigorous movements, which show up on the monitor as the user reacts to virtual dodgeballs and other stimuli. "We had kids try out the Trazer. They'd have a blast and come out completely drenched in sweat after ten minutes," said Ferrell.
More in the ArsTechnica article.

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2 Comments:

Blogger iportion said...

I think it's a good start but tehy might want to have a parent fitness room as well.

9/23/2006 10:22 PM  
Blogger Glen said...

Kilowatt recently announced an agreement with Gold's Gym; I suspect we'll be seeing the traditional gyms dabble in this sort of stuff as time goes on.

9/28/2006 11:51 PM  

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