My Fitness Trainer

My Fitness Trainer is what Wii Fit should have been. It's a much more fluid and well designed workout program.

When you first install it you are asked to do an initial fitness evaluation. This involves entering your measurements, age and weight. You then do a fairly brief fitness check which has you measure your resting heart rate and then measure it again after doing a few minutes of exercise, which you follow on screen.

When it has your information it asks you if you own any of the following.

1. Heart rate monitor.

2. Aerobic step

3. Balance ball

4. Weights

If you answer yes to any of those it will incorporate them into your workout.

Finally, it asks what your goal is. This can be weight loss, cardio fitness, upper body strength etc. It will make recommendations too, based on your weight and fitness test. It recommended I lose weight, and it ' s right unfortunately. When you tell it your goal it then sets up a weekly routine for you. It told me to do a total of two and a half hours per week, which it spread over five days. You can tweak the days and duration as much as you like. You can also go back at any time and adjust it if it ' s too much or too little or inconvenient days.

The first workout. I loved it. The on screen woman that you follow is really good and hops around like a real instructor. She does very occasionally repeat herself but it is very occasionally, unlike the three or for times per minute in Wii Fit! I ' m quite fit but the workout made me sweat and I found it just about bang on for what I was after. I did a full (uninterrupted, unlike the Wii Fit) half hour aerobic workout which incorporated my step, weights and balance ball. Occasionally I was asked during a brief rest period if the previous exercise had been too easy, bang on, or too hard. It then adjusts the rest of the session accordingly.

After a few sessions (which are always different and interesting) you unlock new exercise rooms (garden, dojo etc) and new music types (dance, Latin etc). This only happens if you follow your weekly routine, so don ' t be a couch potato : )

After every 10 workouts you are asked to do the initial fitness test again. It then shows you on a graph how you have improved in all areas. I ' ve lost half a stone in three weeks with this and laying off the alcohol.

I can ' t recommend this program too highly. I only paid £14.99. I ' d have happily paid three times that. Outstanding.

Oh, and this programme doesn ' t use the Wii balance board.