Exercise & Gaming can go hand and hand with the right strategies and discipline. That may sound strange but it’s one of those ideas that could play a healthy role in how you apply certain things together that are enjoyable and fun.
There are a lot of people in the fitness industry or who work out in general who believe playing video games makes one lazy or too stimulated to even build a workout program around gaming. Is there are problem in some aspects today with video games? Yes and no depending on what your resources are and who’s making some off the wall study. The truth is, video games overall are fun to do. I still play them in my 40’s and enjoy just messing around. Does that make me lazy? No, I workout every single day without fail and even threw in exercises while playing.
Some grew out of gaming which is fine and more power to them but those of us who grew up (especially Gen Xers & early Millennials) playing Nintendo, Sega, Atari, Sega CD, Super Nintendo and the likes, we got a kick out of the things we played and going against friends was a childhood norm. We still went outside and played sports, tag, wrestled, kill the carrier and other games so it wasn’t all bad.
From a fitness perspective, it’s another way of thinking outside the box and seeing what kind of creative things we can come up with. Here’s one I have done that actually builds muscle and even cardio:
One of my favorite Game series for Playstation is MLB The Show. Throughout the years, played countless innings, participated in online interactions, unlocking legends and playing game after game of Franchise Mode or Diamond Dynasty. In the scheme of things, I like doing Push-ups & Squats when I play. Simple right? Simple, but sure as hell not easy. Now you would have to play on a more difficult level in order to make this work or if you put it on Rookie Mode and you’re blasting balls all over the field or striking out batters, you’re going to have to improvise. Let’s just go with playing on Veteran or All-Star in this context.
Make Batting your Push-ups & Pitching your Squats. Whenever you strike out, you have to do 10 Push-ups, hit a foul ball, do 5 Push-ups. If you’re pitching, if a hitter hits a single, you have to do 10 squats, double is 20, triple is 30. Now, if you allow a homerun, 50 Squats. Write down your numbers throughout the game. How many push-ups and squats did you end up doing? It can be unpredictable and if you’re really good, you won’t come up with as many reps as you may believe but if you’re struggling, you’re going to be learning how hard it can be. You can do Lunges, Holds, Crawls, Burpees if you got a death wish, especially if you’re pitching. Do what gives you a challenge.
It doesn’t have to be a sports game, you can play Call Of Duty and challenge yourself after a certain amount of times you get killed or if you’re playing Grand Theft Auto or something, you can do Burpees or Lunges after losing a life or getting caught by the cops, whatever gives you the motivation to make things interesting while you play.
There are people who overdo it playing video games more often than getting outside or moving around altogether. It’s not a new thing but I would love to encourage my fellow gamers to get moving around, even if it means getting up and stretching every few minutes or so. Pause a game and walk it off for a minute or sit on the floor and do some mobility work. Make gaming and moving a fun experience for you.
Set a goal to collect items and for every let’s say 10 items you collect, do some squats or hold a plank for a few seconds. Here’s one for my old school Sonic people: Set a goal to collect 120 rings, if you can’t reach that goal, do 12 push-ups or 12 reps of whatever. If you play with a friend, encourage each other in a fun competitive manner. Whoever wins, the loser has to do some kind of exercise for the amount of reps the winner has in mind. If it’s a tie, do reps of something until someone gives up. It’s a game within a game. Make something out of it that benefits both mind and body.
Video Games are fun as hell most of the time. Just be careful not to get frustrated and break a controller or yourself. Sometimes we can be competitive against ourselves and want to beat the hell out of the boss who has killed us a few dozen times before we finally beat him/her/it. Gaming can be part of your fitness journey if you create opportunities for it. You can get in insane shape if you do it wisely and channel that anger at a game sometimes. Might save you some bucks from having to replace something.
Be amazingly awesome, play your hearts out and throw in some exercise to balance out your body from just sitting around.
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