Day 7: Beginning of Week 2 – and some DDR

Week 2 started for me today and I got right back on Body For Life after my day off. So far most of my posts have been related primarily to nutrition and I haven’t talked much about the exercise portion of it. I hit the gym Monday through Friday this week, running on Tue/Thu and lifting weights Mon/Wed/Fri. My designated running days are Sunday/Tue/Thu. I generally use the treadmill at the gym to do the interval running (more details to come soon about my exact routine).

On Sundays I have a hard time getting myself out the door and to the gym. I’ve decided for the Cardio piece on Sunday instead of running I will do at least 30 minutes of DDR at home. If you’re not familiar with DDR, it stands for Dance Dance Revolution. First released in 1998 by Konami in Japan, it made it’s way to the United States and swept across the nation in arcades everywhere. Eventually it made it’s way to gaming consoles where you could play it in the comfort of your own home. In DDR, you use a dance pad with four arrows – up, down, left and right. The dance music plays and arrows travel across the screen to the beat of the music. You stomp on the correct arrow when it reaches the white arrows:

They now have DDR games for most all platforms including PS2, XBox 360, Wii and PS3.

About 9 or 10 years ago Allison and I were sitting around one day and talking about Dance Dance Revolution. She thought that sounded like fun and wanted to get it. When I broke the news to her that it was on the PS2 platform and that we only had a Gamecube, she stated “well, let’s get a PS2 then.” My response was (imagine Eeyore’s voice) “I guess we’ll have to get a PS2 then.” 😉 I’ve treasured that moment for 10 years now – the moment my wife actually encouraged me to go buy a video game system. The first month we had the PS2 and DDRMax I lost 10 pounds! It was so much fun – and had you work up a sweat too. Since then I’ve built some custom DDR pads that make it much better than the original pads that slip and slide around on the floor. Maybe I’ll post a video at some point of my DDR. For now, I’ll be pulling out the ol’ DDR pads every Sunday to get my cardio in.