Lose Weight in the Dancing Revolution

I've had DDR Hottest Party 2 in the box since Christmas. I am a terrible dancer and have horrendous rythem. I've played some version of Dance Dance Revolution a few times before for a song or two and the results were what you would have expected: Boos from the croud. But since it was bad weather outside, and I didn't want to go to the gym and do anything too heavy because of my back, I decided it was finally time to break this out. I am as bad as I remember.

Is It Fun?
I played for over an hour and was entertained and simotaneously frustrated to the max throughout. There are 4 levels of difficulity: beginner, basic, difficult, and expert. I started on beginner and scored a few C's and D's, then switched to basic where D's were the norm but I worked to a C on most songs after a few tries. The harder the difficulity the faster and more complex the steps are. I think these types of games are much more fun when playing with others, but even though I was playing alone, I enjoyed it the entire time.

Is It Exercise?
I averaged 3.4 METs playing on the easy side of the difficulity settings. For me, that means buring 272 calories an hour versus the 80 I would burn sitting playing solitare for an hour. I haven't gone for a walk in my GoWear yet(I will update this when I do), but the ExerciseCalculator in BodyMedia's Activity Manager rates walking at 3 mph at 3.3 METs. Based on that, Playing DDR on basic difficulity is slightly better for weight loss than a 3 mph walk, and in my opinion, lots more entertaining and probably doubly so when done with a friend or your kids!

And that is just on basic difficulity. Get better and increase the difficulity and the calorie burn will go up. I accidently started one song on the expert mode, and the arrows(step indicators) were flying up the screen faster than I could reckognize them. Keep up with that and it would not surprise me if you were well over 5 METs.

Does the Research Agree?
University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, conducted a study using DDR Extreme 2 on the PS2 using participants that were proficient or at least praticed the game. For the Adults, aged 20-25, they reported the following results:

	Cals/hour		Heart Rate(bpm)		VO2(ml/kg/min)
	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Mean	SD
Light	372	±95	117	±12	17.7	±2.68
Standard	462	±152	128	±12	21.3	±3.75
Difficult	564	±155	144	±16	26.7	±5.18

Read more about it here.

West Virginia University & West Virginia Public Employees Insurance Agency conducted a 24 week study with 50 children 7-12 years old with a BMI in the 85th percentile. Participants played DDR for at least 30 minutes, 5 times a week. Many measured health risk factors improved; and while weight loss was not demonstrated, a decrease in BMI was observed(remember these are growing 7-12 year olds).

So break out your Wii and get to dancing the weight off.