As I described in my last entry, I found the cardio equipment at the local YMCA not to my liking, so it was back to the drawing board for cardio alternatives. Kat and I have wanted to replace our old treadmill with an elliptical machine for a while now, so that’s a definite possibility, but I want to hold off on making that investment until I’ve had my doctor’s appointment. If the doctor tells me that training to run a marathon in three months is out of the question, then I’ll plan on walking it, and that doesn’t require as much cardio work. That doctor’s appointment is still a week away, though, and I don’t want to just sit on my butt all week, so tonight I turned to my Playstation2 and a game called Dance Dance Revolution.

Playing a video game doesn’t usually qualilfy as exercise, but DDR isn’t a typical game where you sit back and control all the action with hand-held controllers. Your controller is a 3ft. x 3ft. dance mat divided into 1ft. x 1ft. squares, with arrows on the squares pointing up, down, left, and right. You stand on the mat, and while songs play, arrows scroll up the screen and when they reach the top, the goal is to step in time with the arrows and music, with the overall effect being that you end up dancing. At least, dancing is how it turns out if you’re good at it. If you’re like me, then it’s more like a bunch of spastic jumping around to hit the arrows, with none of the usual grace and style normally associated with dance. Graceful or not, it can be quite a workout, which is why I did it. If you’ve never tried it or seen it, check out this YouTube video of a 5-year-old kid who’s much better at it than I am:

I was a little concerned that it might not be low-impact enough for my knee, but the kind of dance pad I have has a foam insert for cushioning and the steps at the level I can keep up with weren’t all that jarring, so I didn’t have any problems with my knee. Each song has four difficulty levels to choose from, and with few exceptions, the hardest one I can pass is “Light”, which is the second easiest. Harder than that, and the routines start throwing in steps on the half-beat and more complex doubles (two arrows at once) than I can keep up with.

Besides being fun to play, DDR is one of the few video games that can also be fun to watch someone else play. Kat plays, too, and we even got a second dancepad so we can play at the same time. She was busy when I started playing tonight, but joined me for about the last forty minutes. I wasn’t in constant motion like I would be if I was running or exercising on a machine, but I played for about an hour and a half total, and feel like I got a decent workout.