Wanna Get Fit? Forget The Disk, Power-lift The Pc

Sydney Morning Herald

Sunday March 27, 1994

Sue Lowe

IF YOU can exercise in front of the telly, why not in front of a PC? PCs are far more intelligent than tellies. Given the right software you can ask them to stop and go back; to miss out the hard bits or make the hard bits even harder. And with the right multimedia hardware, you can even get funky sound and full motion video.

Unfortunately, though, Fitness Partner ($139 from Light Years Ahead, 477 6666) does not make good use of all this potential. It is low-budget and intensely American - perhaps the latter will be viewed as an advantage in gym-going circles.

The producer has evidently decided to avoid the copyright fees on the thumping, energising, funk sound-tracks used in most gyms and instead gone for piped muzak. It gives you three choices; country, jazz and rock. They are amazingly indistinguishable.

The full motion video also leaves you feeling somewhat motivationally challenged.

There is no sign of the pain and sweat that dominates the more popular fitness centres. There is not the merest hint of a fashion or sexual preference statement - key elements in many regular gyms attendances. Instead we have a solitary male or female conducting a smiling but depressingly dull rendition of basic exercise components.

The video is full motion, but is not full colour. It is basically black and white with a daub of blue on the leotard and occasionally a hint of red somewhere near the mouth or relevant body muscle groups.

Behind the scenes, users have a simple Microsoft Windowsbased button interface to record personal details and objectives. Entries made in these screens will determine the basic daily program. For beginners, there's also a section to help you learn the basic moves. The narrator describes what you do, but not why you are doing it - tut tut.

More advanced users can set their own programs by combining different exercise components and setting the number of repeats.

A PC-based multimedia fitness instructor is an idea that could work, but happily it looks like we will have to sit back and wait a little longer for it. Another biscuit?